4 Pop Culture Classics That Beat Their Replacements

Since the summer blockbuster season opened in early May, only two major films have held the per-screen title: The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, for a combined five weeks. Any other week, you had to go check out a Wes Anderson camp comedy (Moonrise Kingdom), a multi-story Woody Allen travel narrative (To Rome With Love), a Hurricane Katrina-based fantasy (Beasts Of The Southern Wild) or a right-leaning election-year documentary (Obama's America: 2016) to find the toughest ticket in town. Surprisingly enough, Americans still want to see movies not advertised on soda cans. That should come as a big relief to small, struggling theaters.  

Current: Yellow beer on tap
Classic: Old-school beers in casks and barrels  

Don't listen to your beer snob friends: Fizzy light lager still reigns supreme here in the states.  

Anheuser-Busch InBev(BUD) and MolsonCoors(TAP) alone still account for three out of every four beers sold in this country. Throw some Pabst into that equation and you're looking at roughly 80% of the U.S. beer market. That's formidable, but it's also dwindling away like a pitcher of foam from a shaken keg.  

The two megabrewers each lost 3% of their market share apiece last year as craft, regional and imported beers all gained ground. Craft beer grabbed 5.7% of all beer production last year and 9.1% of all revenue, according to the Brewers Association industry group. Imported beer sales also jumped 1% last year after a 5% leap in 2010.  

That combined growth means a lot more Corona(STZ) , Yuengling and Samuel Adams in local coolers, but it also means a whole lot of growth for beer styles and brewing and delivery methods once considered marginal among U.S. brewers. Samuel Adams maker Boston Beer(SAM) , for example, recently put some of its increased revenue into expanding its barrel rooms and small-batch brewing facilities in Boston. That's made it easier to brew wine bottle-sized servings of oak-aged, Belgian-style brews that ordinarily wouldn't find a home on the bottling line and to match the efforts of smaller brewers that have made wine-, whiskey- and bourbon-barrel aging key features in their beer portfolios.