Tron

"Tron: Legacy" is as much legacy as Tron. You can feel the deep imprint left by the 1982 cult classic with every flip of a light disc, every zoom of a Lightcycle, every wrinkle-resistant smile on Jeff Bridges' computer-sanitized face. With a homage around every corner, heavy hangs the crown. As it was in the beginning, "Tron: Legacy" takes us into a glow-stick world inside computers where the games are lethal and the mind can get lost, albeit with new players, a new story line, a new director and nearly three decades of improved technology including all the whiz-bang-wow the latest 3-D has to offer.

A small slice of Audi's future recently began testing on U.S. roads around the country, but if you look too hard for these prototypes, they'll probably drive right under your nose. That's because rather than spend precious development dollars on a uniquely-designed body that's more science experiment than it is a practical application, Audi went and hid an all-electric drivetrain under the skin of its well-known A3 hatchback. Jeff Curry, the head of Audi's electric vehicle strategy in the U.S., brought one of the 17 A3 e-tron prototypes to Santa Monica this week for a few hours of driving.

Picture this: Elon Musk and Henrik Fisker -- impresarios of the electric Tesla Roadster and the soon-to-be, sort-of-electric Fisker Karma, respectively -- are running for their lives through a cave. Rolling behind them, gathering momentum, thundering ever closer, is an enormous boulder. "Look out, Henrik!" "Save yourself, Elon!" Cue the John Williams soundtrack. Can Elon get out of the cave in time? Will Henrik manage . . . Splat! Oh no! Look at the blood! There's rich guy everywhere!

The clean, crisp modern lines of "Tron" have been replaced by the chaotic, rose-colored acid trip of "Alice in Wonderland," but outside of an extensive cosmetic makeover, little has changed now that Disney California Adventure has rethemed its nightly dance party from ElecTRONica   to the Mad T Party. PHOTOS: Mad T Party at Disney California Adventure The shiny new look seems tailor-made for the short attention spans of the wall-to-wall under-25 crowd of mostly high school and college kids who have made the alcohol-infused and music-centric outdoor rave a wildly popular success at the Anaheim theme park.

Tron: Legacy Walt Disney, $29.99; Blu-ray, $39.99/$49.99 The 1982 sci-fi adventure "Tron" was a dry piece of computer geek philosophizing elevated by trippy special effects; the belated sequel "Tron: Legacy" is much the same. Jeff Bridges returns as idealistic computer-programmer Kevin Flynn, while Garrett Hedlund plays his son Sam, who gets sucked into the computer grid and finds himself drafted into gladiatorial games and rebelling against the system, just like his pop. The technological explanations are wonky and the "fight the power" plot is pat, but aside from the creepy de-aging effects used on Bridges, the visuals in "Tron: Legacy" pop like a psychedelic light show, and the Daft Punk score is appropriately futuristic.

Films by acknowledged masters of symbolism and surrealism like Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini are always ripe subjects for psychological interpretation. So it's no surprise that Bergman's "Wild Strawberries" and Fellini's "Satyricon" are included in a lecture series entitled "Psychoanalytic Investigation of the Creative Process in Film, Art, Literature and Music" being offered by the UCI Psychiatry Service.

Tucked away in one of Tokyo's most fashionable neighborhoods, a house thinks, senses and acts on its own. It can tell when to snap on the lights by sensing your body heat. It knows when to open the windows, air-condition the room and water the plants. It will flush the toilet, flip on the faucet and air-dry your hands, all without human help. If the phone rings, it mutes the stereo.

Jean Giraud, an enduring figure in European comics whose fantasy and sci-fi work — which he signed with his alias, Moebius — deeply influenced alien-world imagery throughout pop culture, has died. He was 73. Giraud died Friday night or Saturday morning after a battle with cancer, according to a statement from his publishing house, Dargaud, which went on to say the comics world had lost "one of its greatest masters. " In his native France, where for decades comics have attracted an older readership, Giraud is considered his country's most important figure in cartooning.

A nightly dance party created as a last-minute diversion to entertain idle hordes waiting for a wildly popular attraction at Disney California Adventure has turned into an ever-evolving mainstay that might just become an accidental institution. PHOTOS: Mad T Party at Disney California Adventure The new Mad T Party scheduled to debut this summer at the Anaheim theme park replaces ElecTRONica, which replaced Glow Fest, which was designed to give visitors something to do back in the summer of 2010 while waiting hours upon hours to watch the instant hit "World of Color" water show.

Disneyland Paris will celebrate its 20th anniversary with a new nighttime spectacular in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle and a revamped evening parade starting in April. The Disney Dreams show will feature castle projections, water screens, dancing fountains, pyrotechnic displays and laser effects that combine elements from the Magic, Memories, and You show at Florida's Magic Kingdom and World of Color at Disney California Adventure. PHOTOS: Disney Dreams water show at Disneyland Paris The new Disney Dreams nighttime spectacular at the French theme park will employ 30-foot-tall water screens in the moats in front of the castle that will serve as giant canvases for Disney animated scenes set to an original musical score.

Jean Giraud, an enduring figure in European comics whose fantasy and sci-fi work — which he signed with his alias, Moebius — deeply influenced alien-world imagery throughout pop culture, has died. He was 73. Giraud died Friday night or Saturday morning after a battle with cancer, according to a statement from his publishing house, Dargaud, which went on to say the comics world had lost "one of its greatest masters. " In his native France, where for decades comics have attracted an older readership, Giraud is considered his country's most important figure in cartooning.

Disneyland Paris will celebrate its 20th anniversary with a new nighttime spectacular in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle and a revamped evening parade starting in April. The Disney Dreams show will feature castle projections, water screens, dancing fountains, pyrotechnic displays and laser effects that combine elements from the Magic, Memories, and You show at Florida's Magic Kingdom and World of Color at Disney California Adventure. PHOTOS: Disney Dreams water show at Disneyland Paris The new Disney Dreams nighttime spectacular at the French theme park will employ 30-foot-tall water screens in the moats in front of the castle that will serve as giant canvases for Disney animated scenes set to an original musical score.

Tron: Legacy Walt Disney, $29.99; Blu-ray, $39.99/$49.99 The 1982 sci-fi adventure "Tron" was a dry piece of computer geek philosophizing elevated by trippy special effects; the belated sequel "Tron: Legacy" is much the same. Jeff Bridges returns as idealistic computer-programmer Kevin Flynn, while Garrett Hedlund plays his son Sam, who gets sucked into the computer grid and finds himself drafted into gladiatorial games and rebelling against the system, just like his pop. The technological explanations are wonky and the "fight the power" plot is pat, but aside from the creepy de-aging effects used on Bridges, the visuals in "Tron: Legacy" pop like a psychedelic light show, and the Daft Punk score is appropriately futuristic.

The list of 2010 best picture nominations didn't offer a whole lot of surprises this year; but elsewhere ? in other, perhaps less glamorous, below-the-line categories ? there are some, well, counterintuitive titles in the mix. The poorly reviewed "The Wolfman," directed by Joe Johnston, might not be the first picture that springs to mind as an Oscar contender. But the dark and hairy horror movie starring Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins won raves from academy voters for its achievement in makeup, executed by Oscar winner Rick Baker and Oscar nominee Dave Elsey.

If Hollywood had a leading-man factory, Garrett Hedlund would be forged from its golden-boy mold. It's the template that produces the kind of easy-on-the-eyes, blond-haired, blue-eyed actors like Robert Redford and Brad Pitt who seem genetically predestined for roles throwing footballs, wearing cowboy hats and curling the leading lady's toes. Hedlund has done all of that in his eight years in Los Angeles, but as far as Hollywood is concerned, he is just arriving. In the last month, he's starred in a Disney tent pole ( "Tron: Legacy")

The 2010 holidays brought big-budget action movies, 3-D family adventures and star-driven comedies, but the season's only undisputed hit is an old-fashioned, guns-blazing western. "True Grit" sold a studio-estimated $24.5-million worth of tickets in the U.S. and Canada on its second weekend, just short of the $26.3 million taken in by the more expensive and hyped "Little Fockers. " The last week was one of the most critical of the year at the box office, even though no new movies opened.

A Newt-tron bomb was dropped on Washington Nov. 8. The buildings were left standing, but the Democrats are gone! TRACY LOTZ Manhattan Beach

Played in the denouement to a gripping shootout between digital warriors on rocket-propelled hang-gliders, the musical passage "Adagio for Tron" arrives about two-thirds through the $170-million sci-fi thriller "Tron: Legacy" (which hit multiplexes Dec. 17). It's an elegiac movement recorded by a symphony orchestra that features desolate violins swelling around a barely there synthesizer pulse. Scoring aces such as Hans Zimmer ("The Dark Knight," "Pirates of the Caribbean") and John Williams (the "Star Wars" and " Harry Potter" franchises)