Continue reading "About the Comcast-NBC/Universal Merger" »
Overcoming much negative pre-release criticism and showing the public's rising interest in apocalyptic story lines in movies and television fare, 2012 finished tops at the U.S. box office over the weekend with an impressive $65 million in North American ticket sales.
That was actually $3 million less than 2012 director Roland Emmerich's 2004 disaster film, The Day After Tomorrow, brought in during its opening weekend, but it's a very good start and shows audiences' strong interest in apocalyptic story lines. Read more here.
Continue reading "Disney's 'Christmas Carol' Disappoints at Box Office, Carrey Slams Capitalism" »
The Michael Jackson film This Is It led at the U.S. movie box office during its first weekend, but its total North American receipts of $32.5 million for its first five days were well below industry expectations, which had pegged the film to draw in the $40 million range. For the weekend it brought in an unexciting $21.3 million.
This Is It did well overseas, snagging $101 million in its first five days. The independent film Paranormal Activity finished second with $16.5 million in ticket sales, for a film that cost just a few thousand dollarst to make and which has been given a limited advertising budget by its studio.
--S. T. Karnick
The repugnant Time Inc., publisher of Time magazine, is implementing massive employee layoffs, amounting to about 540 people let go, New York magazine reports.
The media behemoth, once a bastion of bourgeois classical liberalism but for the past several decades a forum for statism and a plethora of other forced social distortions, has been battered by the rise of the internet and Time's increasing distance from its readers' beliefs.
One feels sympathy for the laid-off workers but must recognize that this is a very salubrious trend indeed.
--S. T. Karnick
Continue reading "'Couples,' 'Paranormal' Show Value of Genre Traditions" »
Continue reading "Abrupt End to 'The Beautiful Life'" »
The usual fall doldrums have hit the Hollywood box office particularly hard this week--with Bruce Willis's lugubrious persona a prominent victim, S. T. Karnick writes.
Continue reading "'Surrogates' Stumbles at Box Office, Willis Appeal Remains Weak" »
Once again, low-rated shows, largely with a negative attitude toward American institutions and the conventions of bourgeois life, dominated Hollywood's Emmy Awards for primetime television programming this year.
In the awards announced on Sunday night's telecast, the industry's elites once again demonstrated their disregard for their audiences' preferences and their intent to continue using their bully pulpit to turn the nation into a banana republic.
For details on winners and losers, see the Reuters report.
Continue reading "U.S. Movie Audiences Continue Quest for Optimism, Positivity" »
Continue reading "Poll: Political Bias Is Sinking Newspapers' Fortunes" »
Continue reading "Leno Stumbles Out of Gate" »
Proving once again the power of appealing to Christian moviegoers, Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself finished at the top of the U.S. box office during its opening weekend.
Continue reading "Tyler Perry's Latest Tops U.S. Box Office in Opening Weekend" »
Continue reading "Audiences Shun Lee's Woodstock Comedy" »
Continue reading "TV-Style Virtues Bring Strong Opening Box Office for 'Inglourious Basterds'" »
Continue reading "ABC Cancels Two of Network's Best Shows" »
Stephen Sommers' simplistic summer blockbuster G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra opened well at the U.S. box office, but the smaller film Julie and Julia will probably be remembered much more fondly.
Continue reading "Top Two New Movie Releases Take Contrasting Approaches" »
Continue reading "Weak 'Funny People' Box Office Shows What Audiences Really Want" »
As I predicted last week, Sacha Baron Cohen's Brüno continued its precipitous decline at the U.S. box office this past weekend. A week after finishing first during its opening weekend on the strength of audiences' appreciation for Cohen's previous film, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Brüno fell to fourth this past weekend, with a stunning 73 percent drop in audience numbers from the previous week.
Even though critics did their best to pretend this turkey was a pheasant, audience members obviously were spreading the word of their disappointment with the boring and beyond-asinine Brüno, as the film was neither consistently funny nor amusingly iconoclastic. On the contrary, Brüno slavishly gave allegiance to contemporary social-transformation pieties while unintentionally making homosexual behavior and the attendant lifestyle look appalling.
Audiences aren't buying it.
--S. T. Karnick
Despite being trashed by the critics, Transformer: Revenge of the Fallen led at the U.S box office for the second weekend in a row.
With its strong complement of Christian themes and images, the Transformers sequel edged out the premiere weekend performance of the animated comedy entry Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, the third in that series, $42.3 million to $41.7 million.
Indicating that Christian themes, likable characters, and stories depicting people with a positive purpose outweigh critics' cavils, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen continued to draw well from all audience segments and shows signs it will sustain its ability to garner good numbers, according to a studio source.
--S. T. Karnick
Continue reading "Character Charm Overcomes Comic Anarchy at U.S. Box Office" »
Continue reading "Letterman Sex 'Joke' Exemplifies Socialist Stranglehold on Public Discourse" »
Continue reading "'Up' Success Could Bode Well for Positive Change in Hollywood" »
There's more disturbing news today for those who respect property rights and understand the importance of providers receiving economic returns for their goods: piracy of the Electronic Arts Inc. game The Sims 3 reached 180,000 illegal downloads in just four days, May 18-21, prior to its scheduled sale date today, Bloomberg News reports (hat tip to Aleks Karnick).
Fully 41 percent of all PC software installed last year was pirated, the Bloomberg story reports.
As with any good or service, video games, software, and other cultural items won't get made and distributed if people cannot make a living from them. Hence piracy on this level poses a serious danger to the culture and the economy.
--S. T. Karnick
Continue reading "'Terminator Salvation' Delivers Action but Little Real Drama" »
On the heels of a public relations juggernaut with the inspiring message that it's "not as anti-Catholic as The Da Vinci Code!", the cinematic conspiracy thriller Angels and Demons finished first at the U.S. box office during the past weekend, providing some useful evidence about the effects of church boycotts. S. T. Karnick examines the facts.
Continue reading "'Angels and Demons' Opens Well at U.S. Box Office, but Far Short of Predecessor" »
Speaking of "the class-warrior socialist elite of this nation [continuing] to press their agenda to the point of national suicide," as we just were, it is notable that the alt-punk rock band Green Day is about to release another politically charged CD criticizing economic liberty, Christians, and a variety of other evils.
Continue reading "New Green Day Disc Takes Strong Political Position, Solid Musical Approach" »
An excellent article at Big Hollywood notes that prominent entertainers in the UK are coming out in opposition to the government's plan to push the top individual income tax rate over 50 percent. The article by Big Hollywood columnist "Stage Right" quotes Andrew Lloyd Webber from an oped the renowned composer wrote for the Daily Mail pointing out that the contemplated tax hikes would push many of the nation's most productive people into exile:
Continue reading "UK Entertainers Bemoan Tax Hikes, Portend Grim U.S. Future" »
Despite early polling data showing a distinct lack of enthusiasm toward the Star Trek movie reboot by J. J. Abrams (Lost, Alias, Cloverfield, Fringe, Felicity), the film had an excellent opening weekend at the U.S. movie box office.
Continue reading "'Star Trek,' Abrams 'Make Optimism Cool Again'" »
As is sadly the case for all good things, the video Web site Hulu.com is likely about to come under attack by the government, specifically in the form of antitrust action by the Obama administration.
Socialism's great horde of media apologists has begun a strong drumbeat calling for the U.S. government to go after Hulu, the immensely and increasingly successful source of online streaming media content.
Continue reading "Hulu.com May Be Upcoming Target of Antitrust Attack" »
Surprising no one but pleasing audiences, X-Men Origins: Wolverine topped the weekend U.S. movie box office with a heroic opening-weekend total of $87 million in the United States and Canada and $160 million worldwide. The movie cost approximately $130 million to produce.
Wolverine led a strong first weekend of Hollywood's "summer" season of popcorn movies, with the rest of the top ten dominated by genre films such as comedies and action fare.
Last year's top-grossing film, Iron Man, brought in $98.6 million during its first weekend in U.S. and Canadian theaters.
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the FCC's authority to impose fines on broadcasters for allowing obscene language on the air. S. T. Karnick analyzes the implications.
Continue reading "Court Upholds FCC Authority over Broadcast Indecency" »
Escape was the theme once again for U.S. moviegoers last weekend-but don't blame the audiences.
Continue reading "Studios, Filmmakers to Blame for Hollywood Dramas' Lack of Box Office Appeal" »
'CNN Sucks,' says an excellent article by Paul Chesser of The Heartland Institute in The American Spectator. The Mainstream Media have dug their own grave, S. T. Karnick writes.
Continue reading "'Mainstream Media' Mainstream No More" »
Continue reading "'Hannah Montana' Movie Leads the Pack" »
Continue reading "Audiences Flock to 'Monsters vs. Aliens'" »
The latest PBS Masterpiece Classics adaptation of Charles Dickens's classic novel Oliver Twist demonstrates the urgent need for reform of the taxpayer-supported broadcasting service, S. T. Karnick notes.
Continue reading "PBS Dickens Adaptation Politicizes and Vulgarizes Classic Novel" »
Continue reading "Cage, Catastrophe Draw Top Weekend Movie Numbers" »
Race to Witch Mountain knocked Watchmen off the top spot in movie box office receipts this past weekend. S. T. Karnick explains why.
Continue reading "Audiences Race to Disney's 'Witch Mountain', Abandon 'Watchmen'" »
Continue reading "Audiences Watching 'Watchmen', but Fewer Than Expected" »
Government's effect on the culture is not always direct, as in the funding of so-called art that's repugnant to the great majority of the public—it also exerts its control by heavy-handed economic regulation, James Lakely writes.
Continue reading "NY Senator Schumer Endorses Unexpected Economic Advisor Springsteen" »
Tonight Hollywood tells us once again what we should like—and they might just get it right, S. T. Karnick observes.
Continue reading "'Slumdog Millionaire' Too Good for Oscars?" »
Among the luxuries taking a beating from the recession is a service until recently thought by most people to be close to a necessity: cable television. Subscriber growth among big cable systems fell significantly in the last quarter of 2008.
The three biggest systems—Time Warner, Comcast, and Charter Communications—were hit particularly hard.
In fact, Charter filed for bankruptcy protection after losing more than 75,000 subscribers in one quarter. The Dish Network satellite system lost 10,000 subscribers in the third quarter.
Verizon's fiber optic cable service is doing well, however, as consumers switch from a cable mentality to a Web viewpoint. Advertising Age quotes Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt as observing, "people, typically young people, are saying, 'All I need is broadband. I don't need video.' And obviously they are already saying they don't need wireline phone."
—S. T. Karnick
Are you ready to drop cable TV and move exclusively to Web viewing? Have you done so already? Comment here.
Sports Illustrated's annual swimsuit issue sold fewer copies during its first day on newsstands yesterday than last year's edition.
Clearly the recession is starting to force people to forego essentials as well as luxuries.
—S. T. Karnick
Warner Bros' and producer Michael Bay's remake of the influential 1980 horror film Friday the 13th significantly outperformed expectations by setting a new opening weekend box office record for a horror movie, taking in more than $42 million to finish first among U.S. audiences this past weekend.
But the best news was the continuing strength of Taken, the action thriller starring Liam Neeson, written and produced by Luc Besson, and directed by Pierre Morel.
The tastemaker who brought the world Jerry Springer: The Opera has announced the commissioning of an opera based on the life of the late Anna Nicole Smith.
Smith is the notorious professional celebrity and gold-digger whose bizarre and sometimes tragic life ended in a drug overdose two years ago shortly after she gave birth to a daughter.
The premiere is scheduled to take place in London, England, in 2011.
—S. T. Karnick
He's Just Not That Into You, a romantic comedy starring Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck, Scarlett Johannsen, and several other thirtysomething Hollywood luminaries, led the U.S. box office during its first weekend of release, taking in $27.5 million. That's a decent though not spectacular number, and its $7 million above what industry analysts had expected it to bring in.
Continue reading "Comedy, Suspense Remain Strong at Movie Box Office" »
Continue reading "Michael Phelps, Celebrity, and Moral Hazard" »
Paul Blart: Mall Cop, a comedy the critics hate, is still number one at the box office.
Continue reading "'Mall Cop' Survives Critical Raspberries with Big Audience Success" »
(Cross-posted at Infinite Monkeys)
A highly salutary outcome of the change to new media has been unfairly overlooked while old-media denizens continually complain about the fact that readers and viewers are leaving them behind: the internet is increasingly making getting away with plagiarism a thing of the past.
Most recent case in point: Neale Donald Walsch, author of the bestseller Conversations with God, has admitted plagiarizing another author's anecdote and passing it off as his own on his Beliefnet blog. His blog has been shut down as a consequence.
Continue reading "Shift to New Media Combats Plagiarism" »
At age 78, directing and appearing in what he says might be his last starring role, Clint Eastwood captured the top U.S. movie box office position with the release of his new film, Gran Torino. The film led the pack by selling $29 million worth of tickets in its first weekend of wide release.
It's a superb film, well deserving of the audience appeal it has shown so far. The Christian theme of redemption is strong throughout, and the film strongly expresses positive values without ever become maudlin or preachy. It is the best thing Eastwood has done in many years.
I will publish a review of it shortly. In the meantime, I recommend that you go and see it and post your opinions in our comments section.
—S. T. Karnick
Continuing the beneficial meltdown of the mainstream media, including bastions of the erstwhile counterculture (which long ago became the mainstream culture), Village Voice magazine has laid off three editors, including longtime columnist/editor Nat Hentoff.
Hentoff, who wrote about jazz and then civil liberties for the newspaper for the past fifty years, was a staunch leftist and counterculturalist, but he showed some intellectual integrity on the subject of freedom of speech in recent years, exemplified by his book Free Speech for Me—But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other.
The premise of the book is rather skewed, given that the right has virtually no power in either academia or the culture, especially the elite culture. Nevertheless, the fact that a well-known leftist and ACLU-style civil liberties advocate (meaning those who use the subject as a stalking horse for the left's agenda) would acknowledge the left's illiberalism was an important cultural event.
The decline and perhaps eventual fall of the Village Voice will be equally salubrious.
Update (1/15/09 11:30 a.m.): As Joe notes in the comment section below, another policy position that made Hentoff unusual—and unwanted—among the left was his opposition to legalized abortion. It was indeed a very courageous stand for a man of the left to take.
Hentoff is to be commended for acknowledging that his dedication to protecting people from exploitation by government and big business meant also protecting unborn children from the abortion industry. That industry constitutes an alliance between business and state that exploits women's desperation, especially through decades of destruction of the humane alternative, adoption.
The huge, extremely profitable, and unregulated abortion industry is one of those rare businesses that the left supports, in one of the great, perverse ironies of our time.
Thanks, Joe, for reminding us of this important aspect of Hentoff's life's work.
—S. T. Karnick
The decline of the mainstream media—a very good thing—is the real story behind an interesting L. A. Times article about Ben Lyons, a film critic on the syndicated TV show At the Movies. Critics and movie buffs alike both have nothing but contempt for the 27-year-old Lyons, son of former host and newspaper film critic Jeffrey Lyons.
Jeffrey Lyons was never any great thinker, or even a good one, but Ben Lyons makes him look like Samuel Johnson by comparison. The younger Lyons strikes the viewer as an ignoramus and a jackass, and the producers of At the Movies clearly made a horrendous mistake in hiring him.
Apparently they hoped to get frat boys and other Sports Center fans to watch the show, which only further confirms major stupidity on the producers of At the Movies.
Continue reading "Internet Blamed for Idiocy of 'At the Movies' Host" »
Yes, The Dark Knight made more money in U.S. theaters than any film in history except Titanic (in nominal dollars, unadjusted for inflation), but in terms of sheer return on the investment dollar, you'd have been better off putting your cash into the teen vampire movie Twilight, the teen musical High School Musical 3: Senior Year, or Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert.
And you'd have been much, much smarter to invest in Kirk Cameron's small, independent, Christian film Fireproof: it cost a half-million dollars to make and brought in $33.1 million, a return of mnore than sixty times its budget.
Continue reading "Independent Christian Film Was Hollywood's Best Investment in 2008" »
U.S. movie box office attendance remained strong in the first weekend of the year, with Marley and Me staying at the top of the heap with a three-day take of $24.1 million. The Adam Sandler comedy "romaction" film Bedtime Stories continued to be a strong draw, finishing second with $20.3 million.
Both films have good, positive values presented in an entertaining and rather thoughtful way, and audiences are responding enthusiastically.
Rounding out the top five for the weekend were The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Valkyrie, and Yes Man. All three boast big stars in the lead roles, and Button and Valkyrie both demonstrate that audiences will attend challenging films as long as the filmmakers attend to entertainment value and don't press unpopular left-wing political points, attacks on bourgeois normality, or cockeyed moral relativsm.
—S. T. Karnick
Vincent Van Gogh is definitely not one of my favorite painters, but I'm glad to hear that his artworks are about to be displayed in an Imax theaters documentary. This seems likely to create a greater appreciation for his works. Who know but that even I might come to like them a little more?
Unfortunately, the documentary includes some silly conceits intended to make it more interesting to ignoramuses, who will most certainly resist the lure pay the high ticket prices to see Van Gogh paintings anyway. In addition, the choice of Van Gogh appears rather trendy and asinine, meant to appeal to people's awareness of him as a disturbed genius.
Still, bringing great art to the masses in this way is quite a good thing to do.
The next step should be to present big-screen appreciations of Rembrandt, Vermeer, Michaelangelo, Titian, and the countless other great artists whose works the great majority of people will never get a chance to see in person.
Note: thanks to S. J. Perelman for the article title above.
—S. T. Karnick
Continuing the trickle of live 3D events in U.S. movie theaters, Turner Network Television's broadcast of the National Basketball Association's All-Star Saturday Night event on February 14 will be shown live in 3D in up to 160 screens in 80 digitally equipped theaters around the United States.
The NBA All-Star Saturday Night is not the actual all-star game but instead comprises the slam dunk contest, three-point shooting competition, and other such skills exhibitions. This is the first NBA event to be shown in theaters in 3D.—S. T. Karnick
Continue reading "Big Weekend at the Movies" »
The new remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still is getting terrible reviews. But is there something more going on here? S. T. Karnick writes.
Continue reading "'The Day the Earth Stood Still' Opens OK at Box Office Despite Horrible Reviews" »
Continue reading "Mainstream Print Media Continue Declines in Circulation, Ad Revenues" »
Continue reading "'Four Christmases' Stays Strong, Audiences Begin to Sour on 'Milk'" »
Continue reading "Extortion Against eharmony Erodes Everybody's Freedom" »
Continue reading "NFL, Fox Try Out 3-D TV" »
Continue reading "'Four Christmases' Leads High-Performance Weekend for Hollywood Genre Films" »
Continue reading "'Twilight' Leads at Box Office with Unexpectedly Strong Performance" »
Continue reading "'Quantum of Solace' Opens Big at U.S. Box Office" »
Continue reading "Hollywood Filmmakers Should Be Grateful for Audiences' Taste, Common Sense" »
Continue reading "Escapism Rules at Movie Box Office in Weekend Before Elections" »
Continue reading "'High School Musical 3' Rules Movie Box Office" »
Continue reading "Public Prefers Payne over Politics" »
What extraterrestrial societies could tell us about ourselves if they existed; bad news for Saudi Arabia
A regular feature of The American Culture, highlighting items revealing trends in American society and culture, compiled by TAC correspondent Mike Gray.
Continue reading "Revelations: Extraterrestrial Societies, How to Make Oil" »
AC/DC's forthcoming album, Black Ice, won't be available as a legal music download—or from any source other than retail giant Wal-Mart and the band's own website.
Continue reading "New AC/DC Album to Be Sold Only at Wal-Mart and Band's Website" »
Continue reading "Chihuahuas Beat Spies to Audiences' Hearts" »
British TV host and journalist Jeremy Clarkson says cover bands could be a great solution to the dire and increasing problem of our favorite rock stars aging and leaving the scene. Is it time for classic rock to go the way of classical music?Continue reading "Saying Yes to Tribute Bands" »
David Zucker's An American Carol is a superb satire on Euro-loving America-haters. It has started slow at the box office, but deserves real audience support.
Continue reading "'An American Carol' Off to Slow Start at Box Office, Deserves Better" »
The excellent TV drama series Friday Night Lights returns to the air tonight at 9 EDT—but not on the network where it began.
The season premiere of Friday Night Lights on the DirecTV channel The 101 represents a new step in the satellite company's efforts to bring first-run programming to its subscribers, and is another step in NBC's attempts to find cheaper programming options.
Continue reading "'Friday Night Lights' Returns—But on DirecTV Only" »
Fox's situation comedy Do Not Disturb is the first new network TV series to be canceled this season.
There was good reason for the cancellation of the show after only three episodes.
One, the ratings were spectacularly bad, with the show averaging a 1.6 rating and 4 share (percent of all TVs being watched at the time). A total of only 4 million people watched the three episodes.
Continue reading "Oversexed, Underinteresting TV Sitcom 'Do Not Disturb' Canceled" »
Morally and visually murky Nicolas Cage starrer undermines actor's usual appeal, fails to attract audiences on the late-summer weekend.
Continue reading "'Bangkok Dangerous' Leads in U.S. Movie Box Office Crash" »
Homosexual activists are applauding the rapidly increasing numbers of "transgender" characters and people on television, but they say there's much more work to be done.
Continue reading "Transgender TV" »
The Dark Knight has become only the second film in history to top $500 million in U.S. movie ticket sales.
Continue reading "'Dark Knight' Tops Half-Billion Dollar Mark" »
The FBI has arrested a man for posting copyrighted songs on his website.
Continue reading "Feds Grab Blogger for Posting Unreleased Guns 'n' Roses Songs" »
Hollywood conservatives are increasingly coming out of the closet and defying the McCarthyite bullying by the industry's overwhelmingly leftist power brokers.
Continue reading "Hollywood Veterans, New Film Challenge Industry's Far-Left Orthodoxy" »
The top three current U.S. motion picture box office draws all share a populist point of view—but without the ugly politics that often accompany such a perspective.
Continue reading "Populist Films Dominate Late-Summer U.S. Box Office" »
A British organization's crusade against a new Barbie doll is an embarrassment to Christianity.
Continue reading "Barbie Wears Fishnet Stockings, Civilization Totters on Brink of Catastrophe" »
Continue reading "Oprah's Magazine Tumbles" »
The recording industry is in a panic as album sales continue to drop. Is this really a problem?
Continue reading "Music Industry's Current Travails Are a Very Good Thing Indeed" »
Although The Dark Knight achieved the biggest opening weekend and opening week U.S. box office performance in history, it will be difficult to knock off the all-time champ, Titanic.
Continue reading "'Dark Knight' on Record-Setting Pace" »
A side note in a story about a new study of Hollywood actors' salaries shows that Will Smith has become the most consistently popular actor of our time.
Continue reading "Will Smith Is Most Consistently Popular Actor Today" »
Two new Sherlock Holmes film adaptations are taking very different approaches to the classic detective series.
Continue reading "Sherlock or Schlock?" »
The Dark Knight, the new Batman movie, brought in a record-breaking $66.4 million in its first day, according to Warner Bros, the film's distributor.
That's an impressive $6.6 million more than Spider-Man 3 took in during its first day of release in setting the previous record last summer.
Continue reading "'Dark Knight' Sets First-Day Box Office Record" »
The new series The Cleaner represents the A&E network's long-overdue return to fiction series television.
Continue reading "A&E Returns to Drama After Long Absence" »
Adventure fantasies with conservative values are maintaining their grip on American movie audiences.
Continue reading "Hellboy Hot at Box Office" »
Chinese artists are calling for less govenment control over culture—thanks to a cartoon bear. Americans can learn from this as well.
Continue reading "Chinese Artists Call for More Freedom, Citing 'Kung Fu Panda'" »
Continue reading "Smith's 'Hancock' Dominates U.S. Box Office" »
Pixar's WALL-E led a strong slate at the U.S. box office that resulted in the biggest-grossing weekend of the year.
Continue reading "'WALL-E' Leads Big Weekend for Hollywood" »
Radio talk show host Don Imus has offended black Americans again—but says he was misinterpreted. Law-abiding people should be even angrier.
Continue reading "Imus Puts Foot in It Again" »
Arguments over censorship tend to concentrate on it as a national issue, when there's really little to argue about there: according to the Constitution, the national government can't regulate anything but obscenity and should be very limited in its activities in doing so.
Where the real action is and should be is on the state and local level. Political columnist Mona Charen makes the case for one state's effort to curb child pornography.
Continue reading "Making the Case for Censorship" »
Robert Downey Jr., star of the megahit movie Iron Man, has signed on for a new film that crosses genres and may have some interesting and salutary ideas.
Continue reading "Downey to Lead Genre-Bender" »
Recent improvements to the USA Network TV series In Plain Sight show the value of character depth and likeability, both commercially and aesthetically.
Continue reading "Better Characters Welcome at USA Network" »
Get Smart, the spy spoof starring Steve Carell, led the weekend U.S. box office by a good measure.
Continue reading "Would You Believe . . . Steve Carell, Box-Office Champ?" »
The first theatrical film based on the American Girl doll series is about to hit U.S. theaters. Could it shame our public schools into doing better?
Continue reading "American Girl Empire Teaches Better Values Than Schools" »
New action-adventure and horror releases lead unexpectedly big weekend for movies, proving once again the power of genre fiction.
Continue reading "'Hulk,' 'Happening' Drive Strong Weekend Movie Box Office" »
The Screen Actors Guild is preparing to go on strike after its current contract with Hollywood studios expires at the end of this month. Expect their coworkers to suffer the most.
Continue reading "Possible Hollywood Performers Strike Could Hurt Industry, Coworkers" »
As telephones steadily evolve into miniature computers, becoming mobile, personal entertainment and communication centers, advertisers are increasingly pursuing the much-desired youth demographic through their cell phones.
Continue reading "Advertisers Seek Teens on Cell Phones" »
Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull hauled in an estimated $311 million in global ticket sales over the Memorial Day weekend--a near-record performance, and strong evidence that audiences will respond well to a film with an anti-communist attitude.
Continue reading "Anti-Communist Indy Jones Film Rakes in Huge Audience in Opening Weekend" »
Angry Americans are voting with their media choices, and the news is very bad for complacent leftists. The mainstream media continue their downward slide as the New York Times and Washington Post report continuing drops in profits and stock values. That's great news for the rest of us.
Continue reading "Profits Down Again for New York Times, Washington Post" »
Disney's The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian opened strong at the U.S. box office over the weekend—though not as well as expected.
Continue reading "'Prince Caspian' Tops U.S. Box Office in Opening Weekend" »
Continue reading "'Grand Theft Auto IV' Tops Half-Billion Dollars in Sales in One Week" »
After the immensely successful opening weekend box office performance of Iron Man, Marvel Studios has announced plans to release a sequel in April 2010.
Continue reading "Marvel Announces 'Iron Man' Sequel" »
Marvel Studios' Iron Man dominated the movie box office during its first weekend, at a near-record pace. Even more surprisingly, it has some serious thoughts behind it.
Continue reading "'Iron Man' Is Super Box-Office Hit--And More" »
Customers are flocking to big-discount clothing stores such as Steve and Barry's, and celebrities are lining up to endorse them. Is it a welcome rejection of materialism and slavery to fashion, or simply making a virtue of limited expectations in relatively tough economic times?
Continue reading "Cheap Chic" »
A strange, spiritually infused novel by a troubled Oregonian tech representative has hit the best-seller lists, thanks to plenty of free publicity in Christian media outlets. But it may be a very un-Christian book.
Continue reading "Best-Selling Book Shows Market Power of Christian Media" »
Continue reading "Lifetime Network Pursues Homosexual Audience" »
The embarrassing Miley Cyrus Vanity Fair photo shows the value of public relations people—and why investing real money makes people more careful about what they do.
Continue reading "Miley Cyrus, Unprotected Celebrity" »
The media industry publication Advertising Age reports that viewers are not returning in hoped-for numbers to the TV shows they watched before the writers' strike interrupted the television season, even though new episodes are airing.
The Advertising Age article suggests that the convergence between broadcast and cable TV audience levels may be even greater than in recent years. This bodes well for audiences, as it further undermines the power of the big networks and portends a possible increase of consumer choice as competition makes the networks more resonsive to their audiences' preferences.
This won't necessarily bring on a Golden Age of Television, as long as the most popular cable and broadcast networks are owned by a small cartel of media conglomerates, as they are today. Nonetheless, anything that further breaks up the networks' oligopoly is good for the public at large. Something good may thus come from the writers' and producers' mutual greed.
A new ad campaign for Absolut vodka shows open hatred for the United States.
Continue reading "Absolut Radicalism" »
A new TV network, Planet Green, is about to provide a forum for allegedly "eco-friendly" lifestyle choices. In reality, this entire movement will make money for opportunists and phonies and hurt everybody else.
Continue reading "Discovery Goes Green" »
Could this be the start of a new trend toward greater optimism and positivity in the culture? HBO, for two decades the home of dark, unhappy, "edgy" TV series, is debuting a new show with a light touch.
Continue reading "HBO Lightens Up With New Detective Series" »
'Big Four' network brings original programming to Saturday nights, chasing MMA's upscale, young audience.
Continue reading "CBS Brings Mixed Martial Arts to Major Network TV" »
In addition to the low box office numbers for most of the films nominated for Academy Awards and those that won, perhaps the strongest evidence that Hollywood—like the U.S. cultural elite in general—has become very distant from its audience is the fact that the TV ratings for Sunday's Academy Awards show were the lowest ever.
Continue reading "Oscars Draw Record-Low TV Audience" »
For those wondering when new episodes of network primetime TV series will begin appearing if the writers strike ends Tuesday as expected, there's a good AP article on the subject here.
Short answer: the rest of the season will be a mess. New episodes of popular fiction series will be scarce, and new episodes of most fiction shows that began this season are unlikely.
The worst news is for fans of the popular Fox series 24. The show will probably not return until early next year, according to reports.
Thus the writers union has accomplished what the worst supervillains in the world could not. Now that's power.
U.S. film audiences continued to show their preference for light fare this week, as two new releases, both comedies, topped the weekend's U.S. movie box office competition.
Continue reading "Romantic Comedies Are Strong Draws in Runup to Valentine's Day" »
Continue reading "Super Bowl, Miley Cyrus Rule the Weekend" »
Providing further proof that America's elites are delighted when people of low mental ability use Christians and Christianity as punching bags, ESPN has suspended sports-show anchor Dana Jacobson for one week after she indulged in a drunken, foul-mouthed public tirade that included an astonishingly vulgar curse directed at Jesus Christ.
The one-week suspension is very revealing of the mentality of the management team at the Disney-owned sports network, given that the same behavior would have gotten anyone not in the media fired, and it would have gotten a media person fired had it been delivered against an accredited victim group—cf. the termination of radio host Don Imus and basketball commentator Tim Hardaway last year.
Continue reading "Christ-Hater Skates,Thanks to Elite Prejudice Against Christians" »
Continue reading "EU Presses Computer Privacy, Thwarts Google" »
Cloverfield, the innovative monster movie directed by TV producer J. J. Abrams (Alias, Lost, Felicity), achieved the strongest January box office opening weekend in film history this past weekend.
Continue reading ""Cloverfield" Leads Pack, Shows Value of Ingenuity, Human Scale" »
Continue reading "Weird Comedies Take Movie Box Office Lead" »
After the success of several tie-in novels featuring characters from the USA Network detective-comedy series Monk, written by TV mystery veteran Lee Goldberg, two more USA Network series will get the same treatment, according to an item on The Blog of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers.
TV writer William Rabkin has agreed to write three original novels based on Psych, with the first going into print in January 2009, and Tod Goldberg will produce three books based on Burn Notice, with the first installment due out in July 2008, when the series' second season will begin on USA Network.
Continue reading "Tie-In Novels for 'Psych,' 'Burn Notice'" »
The witty, charming comedy Juno, about an unmarried, pregnant teenager who decides to bear her child, moved into third place in U.S. movie box-office take this past weekend.
In its second week of general release, Juno pulled in an average of nearly $8,500 per screen, significantly more than the healthy $5,376 gathered by National Treasure: Book of Secrets, which was once again the top moneymaker for the weekend. In just three weekends and the intevening weekdays, National Treasure: Book of Secrets has brought in a stunning $171 million in U.S. ticket sales.
Continue reading "Cheerful Juno, National Treasure: Book of Secrets Still Going Strong" »
A year ago, upon the release of the Fox Faith theatrical film Facing the Giants, I reported on an analysis by Christian screenwriter Barbara Nicolosi criticizing the film. It took me a long 
time to get around to seeing Facing the Giants, in large part because of the many negative reviews, but I saw it a few weeks ago and corrected the record in an addendum to the original post on this site from November 1, 2006. I think it worth placing the full text here on the main page, to give readers my own comments on the film. The original piece and my update follow:
Screenwriter and script analyst Barbara Nicolosi is extremely disappointed by the Christian-produced film Facing the Giants. I have not yet gotten around to seeing the film, but I suspect that Ms. Nicolosi is quite right. She points out that Facing the Giants is the cinematic equivalent of Contemporary Christian Music, bland nonsense meant to make Christians feel good and thereby bring in a steady stream of money from a highly defined market segment, what is known in the entertainment business as a cash cow.
Continue reading "A Bad Sign for Christian Cinema—UPDATE" »
Old-fashioned entertainment once again emerged as the strong preference of American moviegoers as National Treasure: Book of Secrets and Alvin and the Chipmunks again dominated the U.S. box office this past weekend.
The two fluffy and cheerfully entertaining movies again finished 1-2 in weekend movie ticket sales for the second weekend in a row.
Continue reading "Lighthearted Fare Remains Strong at U.S. Box Office" »
New The American Culture correspondent Mike Long has put together a very contrarian and very good list of the best movies of the year for National Review Online, and he has been gracious enough to allow us to reprint it here in its entirety.
Contrary to most critics, Mike claims this was a good year for the movies. I agree. Another thing I strongly endorse about the article is that it does not succumb to political shibboleths of either left or right. That's our approach on The American Culture.
And there's more. In an exclusive for The American Culture, Mike informs us that since he wrote the article, he saw Sweeney Todd and would move it to number 4 on the list. Instead of altering the article, however, we're leaving it as is, so that you will not miss the number 10 movie, which is well worth seeing.
Here's Mike's "2007 at the Movies":
Continue reading "2007 at the Movies" »
That is actually the natural position for U.S. audiences, although most critics would very much prefer the masses to support more "edgy," arty fare that distrurbs them and questions bourgeois values.
Given that audiences are bourgeois, of course, it is absurd to expect them to want to pay to have their values questioned and denigrated, but most mainstream media denizens are sure they know what people should want, and that the hoi polloi should just line up and take it.
That's not happening. Quite the contrary, in fact.
Continue reading "Escapism, Star Power Drive Movie Box Office" »
Planned sequels to failed pro-atheism children's film are increasingly unlikely.
The controversial children's film The Golden Compass, which has accomplished only very weak box office appeal in the United States, has fallen off in foreign appeal as well, landing in second this past weekend, behind I Am Legend.
The Golden Compass has earned $130 million in non-U.S. markets and is fading.
None of this foreign money will go to the studio that made the film, New Line, because the company sold off the foreign rights a couple of years ago in order to raise enough money to produce and market the film. It has earned only $48 million in the United States since opening three weekends ago.
As a result of the poor U.S. showing, it is unlikely that any sequels will be made.
Continue reading "Golden Compass Sliding Outside U.S." »
As expected, the Will Smith-starring intellectual zombie film I Am Legend opened very strong at the U.S. box office last weekend, leading all films by a good measure in its opening weekend.
The film starring the well-liked Smith, whose movies consistently deliver his likeable personality and positive personal and religious values, grossed an impressive $77.2 million during its first weekend in theaters. That's $25 million more than any film in which he has starred has taken in during its opening weekend, and is a very strong performance indeed.
Finishing a surprising second was the CGI animated comedy film Alvin and the Chipmunks, selling a startling $45 million worth of tickets for the Fox studio. Fox was expecting the film to bring in about $20 million. The presence of Jason Lee (My Name Is Earl) as the Chipmunks' boss probably helped extend the film's appeal, though obviously the chipmunks must have been the big draw.
It is now obvious that audiences do not want to see the controversial fantasy film The Golden Compass, as it took in only $8.8 million and finished third. The money total represents a vertiginous 66 percent drop from the film's already disappointing opening weekend total the week before. It is officially a disaster for New Line Cinema.
Continue reading ""Legend," "Chipmunks" Dominate Movie Box Office" »
Senator's thinly veiled threat of congressional action to ensure fans see New England football game is emblematic of what's wrong with America's government today.
Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) has decided to step forward to handle one of the great crises of our time.
No, not the War on Terror, concerns about global warming, or increasing access to good health care.
Continue reading "Thanks but No Bloody Thanks, Sen. Kerry" »
Our friend Jeff Emanuel reports that atheist parents who took their kids to see The Golden Compass thinking that they could have some good, committed atheist fun, were outraged that the preview for Prince Caspian was shown before the film.
Prince Caspian is the forthcoming second installment in the series of films based on C. S. Lewis's Narnia books—which Philip Pullman utterly despises for their Christian content. Pullman is the author of the "His Dark Materials" book trilogy, the first volume of which provided the story for The Golden Compass.
Parents at a 12:50 showing of "The Golden Compass" in Fort Worth's Eastchase district were both shocked and appalled to find that the movie was preceded by a trailer for the upcoming big-screen adaptation of the novel "Prince Caspian", which some parents fear may cause their children to read a series that promotes spiritual belief and "denigrates Atheism."
Continue reading "Atheists Offended by Movie Trailer" »
The epic fantasy film The Golden Compass, based on the first book in British author Philip Pullman's trilogy of novels "His Dark Materials," opened very weakly at the U.S. box office over the weekend. The film, which cost $180 million to produce, finished number one among U.S. releases last weekend but brought in just $26.1 million during its all-important opening weekend.
Comparable films The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (also 2001) captured much bigger audiences during their opening weekends six years ago, totaling receipts of $47.2 million and $90.3 million, respectively.
New Line, which released The Golden Compass, had expected $30-40 million during the first weekend.
Continue reading "Fantasy Film Not Golden at the Box Office" »
The controversial fantasy film The Golden Compass opens today in theaters across the United States.
With a production budget reported to be in the $150 million range, the film will have to sell a boatload of tickets in the United States and abroad if the investors are to get any return on their money—and the controversy over the film's origins in the first novel of an openly atheistic trilogy of books does not help things from their perspective.
Continue reading ""Golden Compass" Movie Opens Today" »
Program's mistakes show the importance of narrative coherence.
The NBC TV show Heroes, a widely acclaimed program just a year ago in its first season, slid badly in audience numbers during the first half of this year's TV season, and has lost much support among the show's fans.
In fact, in response to the criticisms and decreasing ratings, a couple of week's ago the show's creator and driving force, Tim Kring, apologized to the fans, saying that his team had underestimated the viewers' willingness to sit through long expository sequences as opposed to wanting the action to move forward.
Continue reading "Heroes Audience Shrinks Due to Producers' Missteps" »
Disney's Enchanted, which generated the second-biggest Thanksgiving opening weekend ever a couple of weeks ago, remains number one at the U.S. box office for the second weekend in a row. The film brought in $17 million, double the amount of the second place finisher, the African-American comedy This Christmas.
The success of both these films seems to reflect audiences' weariness of the sort of depressing films Hollywood has been releasing in recent months and the increasingly dark and grim conent of most network TV fiction series this year.
Continue reading "Movie Audiences Remain Enchanted by Charming Disney Fantasy" »
There's good news and bad news for the TV networks in recent figures released by Starcom, a leading media buying agency.
The good news is that the TV networks are making a substantial amount of money off of ads shown during online, streaming video releases of their programs. The bad news is that the writers want a slice of that rapidly growing pie.
Continue reading "TV Networks Are Making Big Money Online: Report" »
National Review Online has just published an interesting article praising FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. The thrust of the piece is that Martin, a Republican, has been better than a Democrat would have been. That's true, just as President Bush's compassionate conservatism is better than the Democrats' coercive progressivism, but just as with the President's agenda, "better than the Democrats" definitely does not mean "good".
The article's authors, Cesar V. Conda and Lawrence J. Spivak, make a good case for the proposition that Martin does indeed favor markets in general, at least in the abstract, and they make the following argument:
Continue reading "The Idea Behind the FCC's Intrusive,Coercive Regulatory Agenda" »
Continue reading "Disney's "Enchanted" Opens Strong at Box Office" »
Film directors Brian De Palma and Paul Haggis have attacked the media for not reporting enough on the negative aspects of the Iraq War, and said that they felt compelled to make up for that poor reporting by making their recent films Redacted (De Palma), which opens tomorrow, and In the Valley of Elah (Haggis), which opened a few weeks ago and crashed at the box office.
There has been no word yet on whether reporters will return the favor by making quality movies to compensate for the shoddy filmmaking behind the current crop of films opposing the Iraq War.
Robert Redford's oppressively earnest Lions for Lambs opened very weakly at the box office in its opening weekend, coming in fourth in U.S. receipts, bringing in just $6.7 million.
The film explicitly opposes President Bush and the Iraq War (what a brave stand to take these days!) and features Tom Cruise in a supporting role, which clearly was not enough to overcome the film's unappealing trailer and astoundingly lame concept: a long-winded and superficially fair but fundamentally skewed discussion of the merits of the Iraq War.
Continue reading ""Lions for Lambs" Continues Run of Unpopular Films Opposing Iraq War" »
Daytime syndicated talk show hostess Ellen DeGeneres has decide to return to work, defying the Writers Guild in its strike against TV and movie producers, studios, and networks. She decided to break the strike after only one day.
DeGeneres said she "loves and supports her writers,' according to a statement by the Writers Guild of America-East, which vowed to picket her show and urged her to stop appearing for work.
Representatives for the show said DeGeneres' program is not like the late-night network talk shows that have decided to close down production during the strike, such as The Tonight Show and Late Night with David Letterman. Instead, DeGeneres' representatives said, her program is more like unscripted daytime talk programs such as The Oprah Winfrey Show and Live with Regis and Kelly.
Continue reading "DeGeneres Breaks Writers' Strike" »
As the movie studios and TV channels and production companies contemplate the writers union's demands, they might want to take a serious look at the lackluster performance of this year's film releases and the horrible ratings for the current season's new TV shows.
The latter are simply disastrous and aptly reflect the lackluster quality of most of the new series. Although the new season has brought a continuation of the gradual increase in moral seriousness of new shows evident during the past few years, the tone of the new programs has been exceptionally downbeat, and viewerships have dropped rapidly after the first couple of weeks when viewers sampled the new shows.
Continue reading "New TV Series Continue Precipitous Decline" »
Everything's Gone Green, as the New Order song has it. As you may know, NBC TV has gone green this week, stacking its lineup with allegedly eco-friendly messages, plotlines, and other empty gestures.
This is just part of a general cultural trend toward accepting the premise of the global warming alarmists and their preferred policy of vastly increasing government control over our lives and forcibly returning wealthy modern societies to the supposedly ideal conditions of the 1830s—a society on which they poured undisguised contempt untiil the eco-bug hit.
Continue reading "NBC Goes Green" »
Big-name and -money advertisers have hitherto been reluctant to put much money into web advertising, but that trend is reversing fast, according to eMarketer, a leading advertisement tracker.
In 2006 the top 100 advertisers cut their spending on TV, radio, and print by $230 million and raised their online ad spending by $558 million—an increase of approximately 17 percent.
Continue reading "Advertisers Moving to Internet—and Fast" »
American Gangster, the story of a 1970s crime lord (played by Denzel Washington) and the unattractive but indomitable police detective who pursues him (Russell Crowe), pulled in an impressive $46.3 million at the U.S. box office in its opening weekend. It finished first in the audience race, over Bee Movie, which earned $39.1 million in its first weekend.
Continue reading "American Gangster, Bee Movie Open Big; Anti-Bush Films Continue Free-Fall" »
The Hollywood writers went on strike as planned at 12:01 a.m. EST today. Writers Guild of America union leaders have told members that picketing is compulsory and that the writers must turn over all unfinished manuscripts to the union so that they will not work on them in secret.
Evidently the union has yet to hear of computer files, xerox machines, or carbon paper.
The first programs to halt production will be the late-night talk shows, which will go into reruns tonight, because writers will be unavailable to write the fabulous topical jokes that are so important to these programs' appeal. Sitcoms will be the next to fall, as writers will not be available on set to punch up the scripts with additional sex humor.
The Writers Guild of America—the union representing oppressed professional screenwriters—has announced that its members will to go on strike against the studios, production companies, and networks that employ them. A vote by the WGA board this morning is expected to implement the decision. The strike will begin on Sunday or Monday.
In the meantime, negotiations will continue, and an agreement is still possible.
Some 3,000 of the union's 12,000 members attended a meeting yesterday to discuss the issue. A week ago the membership had authorized a strike, with 90 percent supporting it and only 10 percent opposing.
Continue reading "Hollywood Writers to Strike" »
The horror-suspense movie Saw IV handily won the weekend's movie box office competition, selling $32 million worth of tickets. The appeal of the series depends on the ingenious ways in which a serial killer dispatches his victims. In short, it is basically decadent but rather compelling, as it delivers what the audiences are expecting, in unexpected ways.
The Steve Carell comedy Dan in Real Life, from Disney's Touchstone imprint, came in second, at $12.1 million. The rest of the top five were, in order, 30 Days of Night (which experienced a two-thirds drop from its opening weekend the week before), The Game Plan, and Why Did I Get Married?
Depressing, antiwar Oscar pursuers did poorly. Michael Clayton came in sixth, with $5 million, and Rendition ran eleventh, bringing in just $2.3 mil.
Continue reading "Oscar Hopefuls in Box Office Freefall" »
CBS has cancelled Viva Laughlin after just two episodes, in response to very low audience numbers. The series, as noted earlier on this site, was a strange and thoroughly awkward combination of drama, mystery, and musical sequences.
It's a pity that the producers decided to retain the musical sequence gimmick from the British show on which the series was based, Viva Blackpool, because the story material was decent and certainly workable, and the positive portrayal of an entrepreneur at the center of the show was a very good development.
The new horror movie Thirty Days of Night led the weekend U.S. movie box office—and garnered four times as large an audience as the political thriller Rendition, in both films' first week of release.
