I did some shopping at Long Beach Town Center today and when I was out of range of the relentless Christmas music I could hear the festive sounds of gunfire from the the adjacent police firing range. Happy Holidays! Duck!

I remember those. I saw one at Target when they first came out, and pressed the "Try Me" button. My first thought was "Damn. Put this on my Christmas list!" (No, I didn't get one. :p)

It didn't just vibrate a little - it damn near shook my arm.

I hope that Electronica is not as lame as the weather guy from Good Morning America made it look this morning.

I would hate elecTRONica in the morning.

I think I will be sufficiently tronned out after seeing the movie tonite.

My negative Tron review has people hating me again (why can't I just relax and enjoy the stupidity! they cry). I miss that.

I find it interesting that Ebert gave it 3 stars and yet said things like "The plot...It's a catastrophe, short-changing the characters and befuddling the audience." Regarding the original Tron, he said "The plot was impenetrable, but so what?" Sounds like we need to see it in the theaters for the effects and let it go at that. I know that makes you nuts, Alex, but I'm sure I'd enjoy the action.

I don't remember if I ever saw the first one and I'm going to see this one for the shiny.

Yeah, I'd read his review but I never pay attention to his stars (I'm pretty sure he doesn't either as he's strongly on record as hating rating systems like that) so I was very surprised when I saw that RottenTomatoes has him down as a Fresh.

Other quotes from "positive" reviews:

Owen Lieberman: But TRON: Legacy turns out to be a little too much like one of those logy trapped-on-Planet X sci-fi movies from the 1950s

J. Hoberman: The notion of a tragically split persona might have been scripted to give the new movie a measure of emotional gravitas, but why bother with writing when Tron: Legacy is so intermittently stupendiferous in its 3-D sound-and-light show?

Variety: Visually light-years ahead of the 1982 original and yet strangely old-fashioned in the story department, "Tron: Legacy" plays like the world's most impressive screensaver

Amy Biancolli: And yet the sheer size of the thing works against it: The effects are absolutely spectacular, but they blow the goofy-cheesy quotient straight through the roof.

Damning with faint praise, for the most part.

Now, I'm not opposed to grand visual epics. But there are lots of grand visual epics that actual provide at least basic quality stories, decent acting, or an actual point of view. So I have no problem with "it's stupid" not being a disqualifier for enjoying a movie, I just don't ever understand it being offered as a reason to enjoy a movie. When a movie is going to go dumb, I think the onus on it is to entertain me despite that (as, for example, Avatar did) not for me to rachet down to its level.