Or, to quote Jeff Green, a “fucking disgrace”:

You can bet your ass that most of the behind-the scenes “editorial” work that goes into the making of this show is the wheeling-and-dealing with the EAs and Ubisofts and Bethesdas and the like to get those exclusive trailers on the show. And the game publishers, still dazzled like the little children they are in the bigger universe of the entertainment industry, get seduced by the idea of being on TV, of the “glamor” and “prestige” of it all…And by running announcements like Bethesda’s new Elder Scrolls game (and, yep, I’m as excited as you guys are for it), they give themselves the veneer of importance simply be serving as the vehicle for a commercial. The publishers get their free ads, the awards show gets its exclusives: Everybody wins! Everybody, that is, except for the poor gamer, who may have naively turned on the show expecting to see something with a modicum of respect and sincerity for the industry it was supposedly saluting. I watched this show by myself and was still embarrassed, and was monitoring the remote control in case my wife or kid came down and saw me watching. And, yeah, I know exactly what that sounds like.

My screening for TRON Legacy is tonight, but a bunch of reviews have already hit the internet. The consensus is that it’s visually thrilling and emotionally empty. Very few reviews enjoyed it on a level deeper than that. Here are a few reviews that I enjoyed reading.

Katey Rich at Cinemablend says the movie is a sad metaphor for the phenomenon it’s describing:

In making his visually spectacular but emotionally bereft film about people trying to escape the digitized world they’ve created, first-time director Joseph Kosinski has somehow made a movie that’s a metaphor for itself, and full of handy advice for audience members who may be anxious to get out this glitzy, oppressive universe after just two hours inside. Cribbing its plot liberally, and incoherently, from sci-fi adventures of the past and treating its actors more like computer programs than human beings with independent thought, Tron: Legacy creates a computerized and dark world that’s intended to be terrifying, but falls so in love with its own digital trickery that it becomes the machine it supposedly rails against. It’s a good-looking machine, sure, but one that’s all clicking parts and no beating heart.

Jonathan Crocker from Total Film calls it a mixed bag, saying it’s “a film that awes and bores in frustratingly equal measure. Visually and musically, it’s a triumph. Dramatically, it needs some re-wiring.”

Anne Thompson is doubtful of the film’s long-term prospects, saying:

Even with late-inning tweaks from Pixar writers, the story is silly. And while Bridges, Garret Hedlund as his son, Olivia Wilde as his surrogate daughter, and Grid key players James Frain and Michael Sheen do their best to keep things lively, this movie is almost as inert as the first one (it looks so primitive now). But like the first Tron, which had a huge impact on Hollywood, this sequel (which is rumored to have cost more than $200 million) also pushes the frontiers of what’s possible. The movie delivers enough of a wow factor to pull in viewers. But I doubt that Disney has a super franchise on its hands.

Eric Kohn calls the film a “Spectacle of Nothingness” and has some good videos and accompanying links for his review. A highly recommended read:

I suppose “Tron: Legacy” contains enough of a cream filling to justify the hype, but there’s nothing surrounding the cream. The accusatory tone is a byproduct of its overall flimsiness. It works decently as entertainment for at least an hour or so because it distances viewers from the nonsensical plot. The sci-fi component mostly exists on an abstract level; forget about real science. The characters are enjoyably familiar archetypes and thoroughly acceptable on that purely superficial level. (Pixar’s writers supposedly doctored the screenplay, although it seems as though they gave up after the first act, which features the best scenes and fewest effects.) The quest isn’t nearly as problematic as the increasingly diminishing sense of humor that ultimately gives way to self-importance. “Perfection,” Flynn says at one point, “is unknowable.” Such pop philosophy worked in “The Matrix” precisely because the Wachowskis always lingered on the edge of parody, but in “Legacy,” Flynn unleashes his knowledge with a straight face. It’s impossible to take the movie seriously when everything flashy on the screen functions as a spectacle of nothingness.

 Look for my thought later, either here, at /Film, or on the /Filmcast.

The other day, the Wall Street Journal posted a leak of Verizon’s device sales. This leak was fairly unprecedented, in that it allowed for a very fine-grained analysis of how well Verizon is doing in the mobile space, especially compared to their very similar competitor (in size and reach), AT&T.

Mobile guru Horace Dediu has an interesting portrait of Verizon based on these figures. It’s of a company that’s flailing. Verizon has bet big on Android, hoping that it could be a beachfront in the war against Apple and the iOS. But it hasn’t worked out that way; based on the chart, most Android customers have been former Blackberry users. And while overall growth has occurred, it’s been eclipsed by the growth of the iPhone:

By 2009, Verizon was probably optimistic that they could head off AT&T (and Apple) at the pass. With the vast array of vendor Android roadmaps laid out in front of them they saw a way to stem the flood of defections. I think that optimism dissipated sometime this year and was replaced by a more dreadful prospect than what iPhone presented in 2007. It is perhaps coincidental that the rumors of a Verizon deal with Apple seem to have started in earnest right after August. It’s thin, circumstantial evidence, but the only evidence we have to corroborate the data above is that Verizon has been signaling more desperation. Reading further into the data, I would say Verizon faced these problems and decided that they had to throw in the towel. Apple may be the devil, but so could be Google. Apple was predictably evil. But Google? The devil you know is perhaps better than the one you can’t predict.

[For further Verizon-related reading check out Michael Mace’s post on what’s really wrong with Blackberry (via Daring Fireball)]

From Quora (via Slate) comes this fascinating first-hand account of a man who had an arterial problem that depleted his brain and nerves from much needed nutrients. The results prove that ignorance is, in fact, bliss:

[O]nce I got used to it and resigned myself, it was great. Even though I knew I had a worrying illness, I was happy as a pig in mud. I no longer had the arrogance of being frustrated with slow people, I abandoned many projects which reduced a lot of stress, I could enjoy films without knowing what would happen (my nickname before this used to be ‘comic book guy’ if you get the reference), and I became amazingly laid back and happy go lucky. I got on with people much better. I developed much more respect for one of my friends in particular who I always considered slow – it turned out he is much deeper than I thought, I just never had the patience to notice before. You could say I had more time to look around. The world just made more sense. The only negative, apart from struggling to perform at work, and having to write everything down, was that I no longer found sci-fi interesting – it just didn’t seem important. (I’m not joking, although it sounds like a cliché.)

IFC host Matt Singer joined the /Filmcast this week, for a fascinating discussion about Gareth Edwards’ Monsters. Afterwards, he wrote this great essay on the role of context in film criticism, an especially important issue in evaluating an ultra-low budget film like Monsters:

In the case of “Monsters,” I think our review of the film was fair. The film has strengths and weaknesses, and I don’t think the extraneous matters surrounding the former compel you to simply ignore the latter. You don’t need to see other Ford films to dig “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.” You might need to know about its production history to really love “Monsters” (if you don’t believe me, read the online comments from viewers who clearly didn”t know much about the movie outside its trailer and were disappointed by the film).

Couldn’t have said it better myself. All of Matt’s work is thought-provoking, and I love it when we get him on the show.

Those of you who read this blog know how big a fan I am of Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. For years, I have longed for a way to get content from The Daily Show onto my iPhone/iPad (without having to pay $2 per episode on iTunes). The Daily Show’s website is, unfortunately, laden with flash, making it inaccessible to my iDevices.

With the recent release of The Daily Show iPad/iPhone app ($1.99), I thought that this dream might be within reach. But while the app does give you access to clips from recent episodes, the app’s complete lack of organization make it useful for only the casual fan or passerby.

Here are some random observations about the Daily Show app:

– The tag cloud (pictured above) of Topics is a neat feature in concept. You can pinch-to-zoom and when you choose a topic, it gives you a bunch of segments relating to it. The problem is that there is no option to choose the topics that are the most recent (kind of an important option for a show called The DAILY Show). Plus, this screen takes forever to load.

– Whenever I go to The Daily Show’s website, I’m primarily looking to do one of two things (maybe three): 1) Watch last night’s episode in its entirety, and 2) Watch complete segments from last night’s episode [or 3) Go digging through the archives for some happy memories]. This app doesn’t allow me to do any of those things, instead opting for a “Quotes” section that gives you random, unorganized segments. There is no option to sort by date/chronology here either.

– On the positive side, the app looks great, and there’s a neet little “Tweets” window that lets you see recent Daily Show-related tweets, as well as tweets from the various correspondents. And the “Quotes” section of the app, for all its randomness, is elegant and colorful.

The Daily Show website is a pretty amazing creation. It contains a searchable, tagged, back catalog of pretty much every episode and segment ever created during Jon Stewart’s stint. I was hoping for something that might make SOME of that easily accessible, but this app did not fulfill that need, opting instead for a random grab-bag approach.

If you are jonesing for a fix of Daily Show and don’t have access to a computer, then The Daily Show app will meet your needs. But don’t expect anything close to what you’d normally get just by visiting thedailyshow.com.