AP:

A solid summer lineup helped studios catch up to 2010, but ticket sales flattened again in the fall and have remained sluggish right into what was expected to be a terrific holiday season.

The result: projected domestic revenues for the year of $10.15 billion, down 4 percent from 2010’s, according to box-office tracker Hollywood.com. Taking higher ticket prices into account, movie attendance is off even more, with an estimated 1.275 billion tickets sold, a 4.8 percent decline and the smallest movie audience since 1995, when admissions totaled 1.26 billion.

“There were a lot of high-profile movies that just ended up being a little less than were hoped for,” said Chris Aronson, head of distribution for 20th Century Fox, whose sequel “ Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked” has been part of an under-achieving lineup of family films for the holidays. “The fall was pretty dismal. There just weren’t any real breakaway, wide-appeal films.” …

Hollywood is left right where it was 12 months ago, finishing the year quietly and looking ahead to a promising lineup to turn its fortunes around next year.

Even more so than 2011’s schedule once looked, the 2012 film list looks colossal. Among the highlights: the superhero tales “The Dark Knight Rises,” ”The Amazing Spider-Man” and “The Avengers“; the latest in the animated franchises “Ice Age” and “Madagascar,” along with “Brave,” the new adventure from animation master Pixar; Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones’ “Men in Black 3“; Daniel Craig’s new James Bond thriller “Skyfall”; Johnny Depp’s vampire story “Dark Shadows”; Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus,” a cousin to his sci-fi classic “Alien“; and Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” the first in a two-part prequel to his “Lord of the Rings” films.

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Any novel that opens with crazy jihadists killing jolly old Saint Nick on the first page can’t be too bad.

“Soft Target,” in bookstores Dec 6th, manages to be more than just not bad; it’s a modern Western on amphetamines; it’s Tom Clancy if Clancy were a better weaver of the old fashioned good vs. evil yarn; it’s… well, it’s Stephen Hunter all the way. Semper fi and all that.

Those who are familiar with the author will understand, and those who are not–well, what are you doing reading a book review by me when there is writing out there carved by a master?

“Soft Target” is the new Hunter thriller that takes place in a thriller writer’s fantasy land: America, the Mall. Appropriately, it combines the two things America loves the most: shopping and violence. Those two ingredients are enough to carry the novel through a harsh and very quick 254 pages. You will not want to put this one down.

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“As Keith Richards says, 90 percent of everything is crap.”

YouTube

Kurt Loder, a film critic for Reason.com and Creators Syndicate, quotes the legendary Rolling Stones guitarist to explain why most of the reviews in his new book, The Good, The Bad and The God-Awful: 21st-Century Movie Reviews are negative. Loder says he loves movies, but because of the constant demand for new product, the bad movies will inevitably outnumber the good ones. (more…)

If you’re any fan of Alexander Dumas’ novel ‘The Three Musketeers,’ save yourself the aneurism and pass on its latest screen incarnation. (Warning: There will be spoilers)

The new ‘Musketeers’ opens with a prologue where the famous Three – Athos (Matthew Macfayden), Porthos (Ray Stevenson) and Aramis (Luke Evans) – are working on mission for the King along with Milady de Winter (Milla Jovovich). After a successful plot to steal an ancient Da Vinci plan for a flying battleship – yes, really – Milady drugs the Three and steals the plans for the Duke of Buckingham (Orlando Bloom).

Flash forward a year later, and we meet young D’Artagnan (Logan Lerman), sent off by his parents to join the king’s Musketeers. Initially at odds with the Musketeers, he quickly is accepted by them as they team up against the Cardinal’s Guards, led by Rochefort (Mads Mikkelsen). Meanwhile, Cardinal Richelieu (Christoph Waltz) is conspiring to seize power from King Louie (Freddie Fox) using Milady to provoke a war with England.

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–DVD SALES DOWN 18.3% IN 2011; ITUNES DOMINATES DIGITAL MOVIE SALES–

Interesting Variety article, that for some reason isn’t behind their suicidal paywall.  Bottom line is that even though digital sales are picking up, they only make up a fraction of a market still dominated by physical DVDs — and that market is crashing. People are now renting and doing so through cheap retailers like Netflix and Redbox (as Blockbuster lowers their prices almost daily in order to stay alive).

If Hollywood wants to boost their sales biz, I have three suggestions:

1. Make better movies. The crap coming out now is not the kind of experience anyone wants to relive. Furthermore, the move towards 3D probably isn’t helping. That’s a THEATRE experience, not a living room experience. A huge theatre screen, super-duper theatre sound, and 3D might salvage a lousy movie for some people, but at home it’s just a lousy movie for all people.

2. For the love of all that’s holy, lower your prices — especially on the download side. Why in the world should we pay $15 for the digital download of a movie that we have to store on our own hard drive? Why should we pay that kind of money for an item no one had to manufacture, package, or ship? We might as well rent or buy the disc or wait six weeks and buy it as good as new from the Blockbuster previously-viewed bin.

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The first time I heard the phrase, “Politics is downstream from culture”, I had no idea what it meant.  After figuring it out, and explaining it to a few Conservatives, they dismissed the concept.  The truth, however, is that it may be one of the most important phrases of the New Media Age, and it’s vital that people understand it.

Story

Our lives — indeed, our very species — has storytelling wound into our DNA. From the earliest cave drawings, man has expressed himself in terms of story.  Ancient civilizations understood that stories are vital to understanding our place in the world, so much so that they codified storytelling and found base rules that form it.  Oral histories are a part of every culture across the globe.

Stories instill moral and ethical values.  They place joy and tragedy in context.  They preserve cultures.  At their best, they deliver the secrets and meanings of life.

As Dr. Neal Baer, the longtime showrunner of Law & Order: SVU tells in my book Inside the TV Writer’s Room, humans live story on a daily basis.  What happens when your run into a friend?  He asks what you’ve been up to.  You tell a story.

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As if the capitulation of the Republicans in Washington was not depressing enough, it too often seems like we can’t even find a decent movie to look forward to seeing.  Of course, most of us are not in Hollywood’s target demographic – we’re older, have jobs, and aren’t dead-eyed, drooling morons who yearn to clap our flippers like trained seals at the hackneyed antics of third rate “stars” splashed across out-of-focus screens while seated in moist, sticky chairs that we paid close to $15 each to occupy.  

But I still love movies, and I still have hope that Hollywood is going to accidentally let slip though its paws at least a couple films this year that don’t insult my intelligence, that don’t hector me with pinko propaganda, and that don’t derive from some obscure comic book beloved by a cult of social misfit fanboys whose idea of a romantic evening is a hi-speed Internet connection, a two-liter bottle of Pepsi, and an old tube sock.  

And I love trailers too.  I hate commercials in front of movies, but there can never be too many trailers.  Each new trailer is like a bright new dawn or a just-poured pint of draft Dos Equis lager – full of hope and promise.  Sure, most of the time that hope and promise fades when Kevin James waddles on-screen to make a fart joke, but still….there are moments where something awesome blows your mind.  

Those rare, fleeting moments where a trailer teases you with the promise of a great story, an exciting adventure, a hilarious romp…where you think “Wow, that looks cool!”…where you just know that as funny as the jokes the trailer reveals are, the ones that await in the movie itself will be even funnier…they make sitting through the crap worth it.  That’s what makes me love trailers – trailers have the power to remind us that movies don’t have to suck.  

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We are often asked why we emphasize the fact that we promote conservative artists at BigDawg Music Mafia instead of encouraging artists to join and share non-political content and promoting them as artists period.  Our answer is always the same.  That is our mission — to showcase conservative artists who want to make a difference.  If not us, who?  If not now, when?

Just as the anti-war artists of the 60’s expressed their political views through music, so too are an increasing number of artists of the TEA Party movement who refuse to keep silent about the destruction of this great nation by many who ironically subscribed to those radical, anti-government views of the 60’s counterculture movement.

James Kole - American Folk Blues Artist

One such patriot artist, whose musical style is reminiscent of the folk music of the 60’s, but with a contemporary blues/rock twist, is American Folk Blues artist James Kole.

We have been fans of James Kole’s for over two years since first stumbling upon his YouTube channel, impressed not only by his positive, pro-America lyrics, but also by his professionally produced videos, unique musical and vocal style, and his captivating delivery.

James is no newcomer to patriotic-infused songwriting promoting individual liberty and love of country.  His 1998 full-length release, Liberty, offered listeners a glimpse of what was to come over the years and culminate into his 7th full-length album (released July 4th, 2010):  Songs For Freedom in which he sings about the American Revolution, Frederick Douglass, the Constitution, U.S. Sovereignty, current uncertain times, and much more.

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X-Men: First Class had virtually everything going against it in pre-production– series fatigue (it’s the fifth entry in Fox’s X-Men saga), none of the original actors in starring roles, 1960s period costumes–on paper, it seemed like the ultimate studio cash-in, only to be outdone by the inevitable X-Men in Space: Electric Space Boogaloo from Space (in 3D!). Fortunately, it’s nothing of the sort.

Despite many flaws common to the superhero genre, First Class is quite possibly the best film in the series, not because it’s chock full of impressive special effects and action, but because broiling beneath its main characters’ performances are ideas–not just any ideas, but the central political and philosophical questions of the film’s time period whose minutiae our modern pundits still grapple over. This is not so much a review as a jumping-off point for discussion, so beware of spoilers ahead.

First Class focuses on young Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and Professor X (James McAvoy), at this point known as Erik Lehnshnerr and Charles Xavier, framing their worldviews through their respective experiences of World War II. Magneto is a Holocaust survivor forced to watch his own mother gunned down by Sebastian Shaw (a scenery-chewing Kevin Bacon), while X, though British, lives untouched by the war in New York, comfortable and affluent. As such, Magneto manifests the deep cynicism of Europeans, who decades before the first world war prophesied that civilization would make war a thing of the past, and X embodies the optimism of his young, victorious, prosperous nation.

If the film has one fatal flaw, it’s that McAvoy’s Professor X is a monstrously one-dimensional good guy–perfectly empathetic, perfectly charismatic, perfectly humble. He’s given a few humanizing moments of triviality in the first act, but once the central conflict kicks in, he merely serves as the angelic foil to the deeply tormented, deeply human, and deeply moving Magneto. Michael Fassbender, best known for his brief turn in Inglourious Basterds, deserves an Oscar nomination for his work here. He takes charge of the role with intimidating physicality, harnessing intense emotions into subtle shifts in Magneto’s inevitable path to top-hat-and-cape-wearing, mustache-tweaking evil. Yes, though we know exactly where he’s going, Fassbender injects suspense into the actual mechanics of the transformation; we care about him, sitting mortified but silently cheering when he gets his moment of revenge. (more…)

Hollywood and those who write about it need to face a very simple fact. Yes, new technologies like Netflix Streaming and outlets like Redbox are most certainly a part of the reason DVD sales are slumping. But another reason for the slump is the quality of today’s motion pictures. It’s just a fact that Hollywood is producing fewer films we want to see again and/or own forever.

The studios might be able to bait us into turning something like “The Green Hornet” into an opening weekend hit, but unlike anytime in my life, walking out of a theatre wanting to see “that” movie again is now the rare exception as opposed to the rule.

With video delivery technologies emerging in ways no one expects on an almost daily basis, there’s no silver bullett to solving the very serious DVD sales problem. But something that most certainly would help would be to make more films we’re actually excited about seeing again and again. 

Variety:

Consumers keep spending less on DVD as they switch over to Blu-ray, streaming services like Netflix and VOD, with the aging disc format earning 44% less last year than it did in 2009, despite strong sales for Fox’s “Avatar.”

The wholesale value of 415 titles released on DVD in 2010 fell to $4.47 billion from $7.97 billion in ‘09, a new report by SNL Kagan reports.

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As a follow-up to my debut piece, Conservative Culture Warriors Unite at BigDawg Music Mafia, I wanted to write another piece to let you all know that we’re really heating things up on the culture war front at BigDawg Music Mafia.  Since launching the free social networking site for conservative arts & entertainment last Fall, we’ve attracted some seriously talented artists with minimal National press prior to BIGDawg Music Mafia  (represented by yours truly) being added to the BIGHollywood Contributors roster (thank you, John Nolte),  a guest appearance on Breitbart.tv’s The Stage Right Show, and mentions on Foxnews.com and CNN.com.  Since then, we’ve seen a BIG surge in membership and daily traffic at our site.  This bodes well for conservative culture warriors who refuse to sit idly by as so many liberals in the entertainment industry continue to saturate our airwaves and movie screens with their radical, Marxist agenda.  “That’s right, I said it!” (Mark Levin-ism…love that guy!).  The word is most definitely getting out…

The beauty of having a central gathering place online is the great networking and collaborations taking place.  Case in point, one of our gifted members, Joe Dan Gorman, who has some great, hard-hitting conservative messages in his songs and videos (a couple of which YouTube has banned – “You(Tube) can’t handle the truth!”…this will be a topic for another day), recently wrote and produced a new music video entitled We Will Not Submit and invited some of our members to join him in recording some back-up vocals for the song and taking part in his video, and it is already getting tons of great reviews and being aired on conservative internet and AM/FM radio stations across the country.

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Other recent collaborations include  AlfonZo Rachel, Nate Smoove, and Rufus Troutman on their latest song, Government Not the Answer.  Bobby Powers and Party Time, my songmate, BigDawg, and I recently collaborated on Freedom Reigns and performed an acoustic version at our CPAC Liberty Fest.  Several other cool collaborations are currently underway between members of our site – something BigDawg and I are thrilled to see.

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A fight to the death in an urban hell between US Marines and an implacable, evil foe who murders civilians without a second thought – if only Hollywood had the moral courage to tell that story straight, the story of America’s finest who battled to victory over jihadi degenerates in Fallujah and throughout Iraq and Afghanistan.  But Hollywood can’t tell that story, not without exchanging the real menace our men and women are fighting everyday for a horde of CGI space aliens.  Sadly, the industry lacks the moral courage of the men and women it portrays.

Let’s be clear – Battle: Los Angeles is a terrific action film that makes no bones about its pro-American, pro-military agenda.  And that fact has invited carping from the usual suspects, lefty movie critics who work themselves up into a lather over the portrayal of better men than they will ever be.   

And note that when I use the term “men” here, I include the fighting women of the US armed forces – don’t worry, critics:  Heroines like Sergeant Leigh Ann Hester will protect you . . . just move to the rear with the children and try not to get in the way. 

The fact is that science fiction has long been a tool to comment on the present, including the relationship between our warriors and our society.  Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers was a fascinating depiction of military life as well as what the author saw as a degrading, decaying culture.  The Paul Verhoeven film of the same name, though different in tone, had its own insights into military vulture, including coed showers and a machine gun-packing Doogie Howser.

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Let’s be clear – the upper echelons of Hollywood are dominated by weirdos, losers and mutations.  I’m not judging – I live in LA, so naturally some of my best friends are weirdos, losers and mutations.  I’m simply pointing out a fact.  Most of the normal, hardworking, all-American folks in Hollywood are crew – and they showed it with their heartfelt booing of Michael Moore when he removed the muffin from his pie-hole just long enough to run down our country during the 2003 Oscar ceremony. 

But these great Americans are generally not members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and they don’t get to vote for who takes home the Oscar.  People like Sean Penn do.  And Tim Robbins.   And tranny vomit recipient Susan Sarandon.  

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These are the kind of folks who make up the majority of Oscar voters, so it’s no wonder that the Academy Awards show is so often a festival of nitwittery that leaves normal Americans scratching their heads wondering, “Um, what the hell was that?” 

Oscar has more than its share of astonishing failures, of crazy-uncle-locked-in-the-attic nods that the Academy sorely regretted about the time the after-party coke bowls ran dry.  The terrible Oscar choices listed here are only from the last few decades since the sting of choosing How Green Is My Valley over Citizen Kane and The Maltese Falcon has presumably faded since 1941– well, for some of us.  Oh, and you won’t find Marisa Tomei on this list – she rocks.  Deal with that, haters. 

So, in no particular order of insanity, here are Oscar’s 10 biggest recent screw-ups: ]

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It’s hardly a spoiler to say the couples at the heart of today’s romantic comedies will end up smooching before the screen fades to black. And, in most cases, prepping for their wedding day.

Today’s Hollywood product teems with liberal themes, from those nasty, soul-sucking corporations to documentaries slamming either the Iraq War or former President George W. Bush. And if you see a person of faith on screen, there’s a good chance he or she will be the heavy – just ask Kevin Smith.

Yet the modern romantic comedy, or rom-com to use moviespeak, remains conservative to the core. Not only do rom-com couples end up together at the end of most movies, they typically embrace monogamy and marriage. Take “No Strings Attached,” the new rom-com starring Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher. They play attractive singles who hook up and, rather than consider a relationship, decide to be the proverbial “Friends with Benefits.”

What begins as a thoroughly hormonal affair evolves into something deeper and more profound. And the film isn’t alone in its depiction of pretty people and their dating habits. Rom-coms often use progressive plot devices to reach some very conservative conclusions. In last year’s “The Back Up Plan,” Jennifer Lopez plays a woman pushing 40 who decides to have a baby on her own. How very “Murphy Brown.“ But when she meets a Maybe Mr. Right (Alex O’Loughlin), the story takes a more old-fashioned turn.

The 2008 film “What Happens in Vegas” begins with a hedonistic hook up, and then segues into the couple fighting like an old married couple. But, of course, by the final reel the couple decides they actually want to be married.

That’s movie magic. (more…)

It recently dawned on me that even though Hollywood couples often avoid marriage even when they have children together, while others are often married for embarrassingly short periods of time, the movies continue to promote the old-fashioned notion that marriage constitutes a happy ending in every romantic comedy they churn out. They do this because they realize that even though shacking-up and one-night stands are typical for many of them, it does not constitute the norm or the ideal for most people in the audience.

That being the case, you have to wonder why in so many other areas, they go out of their way to ignore or even deride the values and beliefs of most Americans. When it comes to such things as same-sex marriage, tax-funded abortions or the alleged villainy of the U.S. Military, Hollywood is consistently out of step with the majority and they’re darn proud of it.

Often the funniest lines delivered by these celebrities occur when they exchange marriage vows. The most appropriate musical accompaniment isn’t Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March,” but a couple of rim shots after the “I do’s.” On occasion, the marriage is over before the gifts have been unwrapped, sometimes even before the cake has been cut.

For instance, Julia Roberts/Lyle Lovett (21 months); Michael Jackson/Lisa Marie Presley (19 months); Charlie Sheen/Donna Peele (14 months); Jennifer Lopez/Chris Judd (7 months); Pamela Anderson/Kid Rock (5 months); Renee Zellwegger/Kenny Chesney (4 months); Nicolas Cage/Lisa Marie Presley (4 months); Drew Barrymore/Jeremy Thomas (6 weeks); Carmen Electra/Dennis Rodman (9 days); Dennis Hopper/Michelle Phillips (8 days); and, a drum roll, please: Britney Spears/Jason Alexander (55 hours).

Some of these ceremonies no doubt took place at Las Vegas chapels, but a couple of them, I suspect, occurred at local In-N-Out Burger stands, where the marriage certificates came with an order of fries. (more…)

[Editor's Note: This list is arranged in no particular order. Read Part I here.]

6.  “Nuclear weapons are awful.” – Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

There are probably a few inventions that have saved more human lives and prevented more suffering than nuclear weapons.  The wars since World War II, when we quite properly dropped two A-Bombs on Japan and ended the slaughter, have been a mere shadow of what they would have been without our thermonuclear arsenal.  That’s just a fact, and all the posturing about the “insanity” of deterrence in this inexplicably beloved movie can’t change that.  You should love The Bomb.

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Of course, Dr. Strangelove provides a better idea than nuclear deterrence by wholeheartedly embracing anti-missile defense.  Nah, just kidding.  The film advocates nothing except ironic detachment, essentially abdicating any responsibility and simply complaining about a strategy that, well, worked.  And let me be blunt – it just doesn’t hold up after all these years.  There, I said it.  Except Slim Pickens – Slim will always rock. (more…)

Selecting the stupidest liberal messages in movie history is sort of like trying to pick the world’s most annoying rapper – the competition is intense.  There are just so many candidates, and they each suck so badly in their own unique way.

Any attempt to pick the worst of the worst is bound to disappoint someone.  This list by no means contains all of the hackneyed, parochial, and just plain obnoxious bits of liberal received wisdom that the Hollywood brain trust has spewed forth over the years.  For every nitwit insight on the list, there are dozens more floating around the nether reaches of Netflix, waiting to annoy the unwary.  No doubt the commenters will find many more.

So, here my top ten in no particular order:

1. “All American Soldiers are psychos.” – Platoon (1986)

It’s pretty obvious that the American soldier is the greatest force for evil in all of human history – or it would be, if all you watched were post-Vietnam War Hollywood movies.  It seems that to most of the hacks in Hollywood, the mere act of donning an Army uniform turns you into a bloodthirsty killing machine with an appetite for murder.  And that’s not just on the battlefield.  In American Beauty (1999), the conservative Marine neighbor not only abuses his wife and son but murders people because he’s secretly gay!  That’s a liberal stereotype trifecta – they probably think it makes him a prime candidate for King of the Tea Party. (more…)

[Editor's Note: This list is arranged in no particular order. Read Part I here.]

6.  “Being exploited is different from being empowered ” – Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)

Often too-easily dismissed as a raunchy teen sex comedy, Fast Time was a tremendously influential and important mirror on young America in the early 1980s.  The fact that it is gut-bustlingly funny – Sean Penn’s turn as surfer/stoner Jeff Spicoli remains his only role where he doesn’t annoy me – seems to overshadow the serious undercurrents, as does the ample nudity culminating in the unforgettable swimming pool scene starring the glorious Phoebe Cates.

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However, there is a very, very dark undercurrent to this movie that provides a serious lesson to young people.  Jennifer Jason-Leigh’s Stacy is a pretty but not-so-bright 15/16 year old who does not understand the difference between love and sex.  In a world of absolutely no parents (not a single one is ever seen), she tries to find love (or at least attention) by basically trying to have tacky sex with every guy she meets – and it’s heartbreaking.  She’s not “empowered” – she’s used.  The ugly scene where she loses her virginity to a guy in his 20s in a Little League dug-out staring at graffiti reading “Surf Nazis Must Die” is a better repudiation of the “hook-up” culture than a hundred lectures.

After scaring off the one guy who actually likes her for herself by trying to bed him too, she seeks comfort underneath his skanky pal.  A grim, humiliating encounter in a pool house leaves her pregnant and she immediately seeks an abortion.  Regardless of one’s stand on the life issue, one cannot be anything other than horrified at how the fact she sees herself as literally nothing but a mere receptacle leads her to feel nothing at all about her decision. (more…)

We conservatives spend a lot of time criticizing Hollywood’s failings, calling out its errors and pointing to its hypocrisies – and this is entirely appropriate since so much of the crap spewing out of the Tinseltown cookie cutter is borderline commie nitwittery masquerading as profundity.  But if nothing good ever came out of Hollywood – if everything it produced hewed to the same lame party-line pinkoism rejected everywhere except in Westside L.A., university faculty lounges, and Washington, D.C. – we all would have stopped paying attention long ago.

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And many conservatives have.  Many of us have thrown our hands in the air and opted out of popular culture completely, exhausted from enduring liberal sucker punches buried within crummy flicks about magic robots battling Dick Cheney vampire clones that we pay $12.50 to see in theaters maintained at the hygiene level of your average bus station men’s room.  You can hardly blame them for giving up.

But as tempting as it is to withdraw from the battlefield, to dig in and hope it somehow changes, surrender was never an option.  This is our culture, not theirs.  And they don’t get to control it. 

The fact is that among the detritus of American popular culture, there are voices of sanity.  Sure, they are nearly drowned out by over-praised hacks like Aaron Sorkin and over-indulged clowns like Oliver Stone.  Yet, occasionally, Hollywood has allowed positive, conservative messages to slip through. (more…)