Monthly Archives: February 2010

Feb042010

First Look at Jeff Bridges in Tron: Legacy

Everybody’s probably seen this by now, but just in case, here’s something that’s had the online fanboys buzzing for a couple days, namely a glimpse of Jeff Bridges in the upcoming sequel to TRON:

tron-legacy_flynn.jpg

As usual, click for the full-size treatment.

Disney released this image Tuesday, possibly hoping to take advantage of Bridges’ Oscar nomination for Crazy Heart to start building some hype for Tron: Legacy. As my Loyal Readers can probably imagine, given my usual feelings about reimaginings, revisitings, and other such tampering with the pop-cultural landmarks of my youth, I am deeply ambivalent about this project. TRON holds a big place in my heart, and I always worry that returning to a much-loved universe will somehow lessen the original. (I’m sure you can think of plenty of high-profile examples of this phenomenon if you just put your minds to it.) Plus there’s also the question of why a sequel to a nicely self-contained story, and why now, after so much time — 28 years — has passed? If it’s just to apply some updated special effects to a familiar landscape, then I’m not interested. I’m probably one of the few Gen-X nerds on the planet who didn’t find himself drooling and making incoherent pleasure-sounds after seeing that teaser trailer that debuted at ComicCon a couple years ago. And the rumored storyline — that Legacy will be a sort of science-fiction Apocalypse Now, with Bridges’ character Kevin Flynn in the Col. Kurtz role, i.e., the macguffin at the end of another character’s quest — doesn’t do much for me, either.

Still…. I have to admit it made me smile to see The Dude wearing that glowing Frisbee on his back again. The fact that Bridges is involved gives me some hope that there might be something worthwhile about this movie, because he’s not the sort who takes on a job just to earn a mortgage payment. Also, I see on IMDB that Bruce Boxleitner, who played the title role in the original film, is on board as well. Granted, both men’s screentime may not amount to anything more than glorified cameos, especially if the Apocalypse Now scenario is for real, but as I said in defense of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, it may be enough for me just to see what a couple of my old friends — Flynn and Tron — have been up to since I last encountered them.

Tron: Legacy is set to premiere in December. This pic is popping up all over; for the record, I first saw it here.

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Feb042010

Proofreader Humor

Another busy cycle at the office, with frustratingly little time or energy left over for blogging. Or much of anything else, for that matter. Grrrrrr. No matter how old I get, I don’t think I’ll ever manage to resign myself to the wildly uneven ratio of hours consumed by my day job versus how much time I’m able to spend on my “real life.”

Be that as it may, I have to quickly share something I ran across this afternoon. For some bizarre reason, my most heated professional disputes tend to revolve around the lowly comma. Who knew such a tiny little squiggle of ink could provoke such great passion in people? The serial comma, in particular, seems to make creative directors, account managers, clients, and legal teams absolutely crazy. For the record, I’m a fan of the serial. It banishes ambiguity to the dark, frigid hell where it belongs, and anyway the AP Style is obsolete, as far as I’m concerned. It consists largely of shortcuts that were conceived back in the days when metal type was set by hand, and character counts and column width actually mattered. Now that creating more space on a page is as easy as shrinking the font size or shifting a graphic around on a screen, why continue using an imperfect technique that invites misreading?

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made this argument, usually to no avail. But now I’ve got one that’s even better, one that simply cannot be countered… commas save lives. Observe:

Commas Save Lives

Yep, nuthin’ more to be said after that…
(Source, via.)

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