Say what you will about Tom Cruise, his movies are usually pretty entertaining. Most recently, we enjoyed the latest in the Mission Impossible franchise and are actually looking forward to more.

Next up for Cruise is the sci-fi action extravaganza Oblivion. In the film Cruise plays one of the last humans on earth after an alien war devastates the planet. After rescuing a beautiful stranger from a downed spacecraft, he stumbles upon survivors of the war who paint a much different picture of Earth’s past. . . and its future.

The film is directed by by Tron: Legacy‘s Joseph Kosinski and also stars Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko, Melissa Leo, Zoe Bell and Andrea Riseborough. Look for it to arrive on April 19th.

Check out the new trailer after the break.

Welcome to another edition of On the Radar where we delve into all corners of the entertainment, tech and geek Internets for news, views and whatnot that may have escaped our regular coverage during the week. Let is know if we missed something interesting.

Let’s get started!

• Supercut of the week: Every time Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet call out “Jack!” and “Kate!” in 1994’s Titanic. Hint: it’s more than you think.

• Got a free afternoon or 6? Try to hunt down and watch all 50 of the most insane B-Movies out there. Surprisingly, most of them are already on Instant Netflix.

• If you love reading/writing scripts, then you probably don’t have the money for an iPad. If you did, you’d want the FDX Reader, the first-ever script reader for Apple’s tablet.

• We may have written up something about this in the past, but this fan film about Wolverine Vs. The Hand is pretty spot-on. If only Hugh Jackman wasn’t too busy fighting robots, he could work on a script like this.

• Fox’s Family Guy is tired of being that hot girl who you won’t date. They’re now marketing to fight for an Emmy, of which they currently have none.

This week on The Flickcast Chris and Matt are joined by Joseph Dilworth of Pop Culture Zoo and, of course, hilarity and informative discussion ensues. During the show all manner of new and recurring topics are discussed, dissected and otherwise examined.

Some of those topics include Emerald City Comic Con, Tron Legacy and potential sequels, Star Trek old and new, the Wolverine sequel without Darren Aronofsky, the renewal of Community and Fringe‘s rating slump, casting for various films including Kevin Costner as Pa Kent in Superman, X-Men First Class, Martin Scorsese’s The Dark Night and a whole lot more. And again this week, no Charlie Sheen. You’re welcome.

Of course, your hosts and guest also made some picks this week including Joseph’s dual picks of the movie Sourcecode and the new comic Vampirella, Matt’s pick of the movie Rubber and Chris’ pick of the new movie Limitless, featuring Bradley Cooper and Robert DeNiro.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook and MySpace or via email.

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This may be the biggest year for the Academy Awards, as some major Hollywood players are going up against some fresh newcomers. Eyeballs everywhere will be glued to ABC on Sunday, February 27th at 8PM E/5PM P when the awards show goes live. But before that, we decided to do some picking of our own with the staff’s predictions for each award.

For a full list of the nominees, check out our previous article on the subject. Now, on to the predictions.

Best Picture

Shannon Hood-The Social Network. It had early and consistent momentum all year, and the Academy appears to be trying to shake up their stodgy image. This would be the perfect film to put their money where their mouth is.

Matt Raub – True Grit. Not only are the Coens a regular in the “I Have an Oscar” club, but this testament to classic western films is definitely one for record books, between its all-star cast and gritty (no pun intended) visual style, this one definitely deserves the golden statue.

Chris Ullrich – True Grit. Even though this was a pretty great year for movies and there are many excellent choices in this category, True Grit stands on its own as my pick. As an example of pure movie storytelling, this Coen Brothers masterpiece excels on every level and delivers a pure entertainment experience you will want to revisit many more times in the future.

Cortney Zamm – The Social Network. There’s a lot of great films in this category, some of them from my favorite directors and starring my favorite people. But the one that combined all of the essential elements of filmmaking into a truly gorgeous, compelling, and memorable film was The Social Network.

It’s very rare for a film to hit the number one spot at the box office several weeks after its release, but that is exactly what the Coen Brothers’ True Grit accomplished this weekend. The film finally shook the monkey (Little Fockers) off its back for a clear shot at the number one slot.

Grit made about $15 M over the weekend, and because it was a god-awful weekend at the box office, that was good enough for a first place finish.  Business was down almost 30% from last weekend. Entertainment Weekly reports that it could be the worst January weekend since 2000!

The good news is that the Coen Brothers just surpassed the $100M milestone for the very first time.  This is the first film they have made that has made it to into the club, so to speak.  Good for them. True Grit will surely continue to succeed in theaters, particularly if the film receives any Oscar nominations.

True Grit and Little Fockers dropped off little from their opening weekend attendance, but in the end those Fockers reigned supreme. The movie managed to make about $26.3 Million in its second week of release. That’s a 15% drop, which sounds impressive, but its cumulative ($103 Million) can’t touch its predecessors (Meet the Fockers) total of $162 Millon in the same time frame.

A bit more impressive was the 1% drop of True Grit, which came in at number two with $24.5 Million. If you are a Coen Brothers fan (or even a staunch indie supporter) you should find this quite exciting.  After two short weeks, True Grit has grossed over $86 million, officially making it the highest grossing movie for the directing duo.

Box Office Mojo reports that True Grit is the best attended Western since 1993, when Tombstone graced the screen.

No Country for Old Men (2007) made just upward of $74 Million during its entire theatrical run, and that included an Oscar “bump” at the box office.  True Grit seems a lock to surpass $100 Million during its run.  The film had a (relatively) modest budget of about $38 Million, so it will be a success story.

It seems like even the terrible reviews couldn’t keep families away from seeing the third (and hopefully final) film in the Meet The Parents trilogy. Even our own Nat Almirall gave it a pretty scathing review, but that wouldn’t stop legions of families to pile into theaters over the weekend.

The movie pulled in just over $34 million over the weekend, adding up to $48.3 million since it opened last Wednesday. This is the fourth biggest Christmas Day opening in recent history, behind last year’s epic holiday weekend of both Sherlock Holmes and Avatar, and this film’s predecessor, Meet the Fockers.

Aside from the number 1 spot, True Grit pulled in $25.6 million this weekend, topping it off at $36.8 milion since it’s opening last Wednesday. Word is that this film could be up there as a major Oscar contender, so expect there to be a resurgence in interest after this weekend.

Tron: Legacy grabs the third spot, still holding strong with $20 million, adding up to roughly $88 million since it’s December 17th opening. Chronicles of Narnia still proves to be a monster overseas, pulling in over $128 million internationally and upwards of $200 million worldwide.

Taking place following the events of the Tron: Betrayal graphic novel and before those of the newly released Tron: Legacy, Tron: Evolution adds another chapter to the Tron saga. Tron: Evolution does so by taking elements from other well established franchises and puts them together in a package that while not completely enthralling to play through looks and sounds amazing and gives fans of the Tron franchise added life to some of their favorite characters.

Gameplay:

The core gameplay of Tron: Evolution consists of four basic parts. Platforming, hand to hand combat, light cycles and light tanks. The game actually goes out of its way to keep all four parts separated from each other in single player mode. The platforming is heavily parkour style roaming throughout the city. This includes lots of wall running and launching players over chasms similar to that of the 2008 Prince of Persia. Unlike Prince of Persia, the controls are just loose enough that often the Monitor doesn’t make the jump exactly the right way which leads to repeated deaths overcoming the same simple obstacle. This leads to what should be simple sections to become frustrating.

Combat is a beast all of its own. While there is occassionally a section of platforming where one opponent appears, they are easily dispatched. Most combat takes place in closed off arenas where the Monitor must take on a few waves of enemies, attempting to derezz them using his light disc or capoeira inspired hand to hand combat. For the most part, hand to hand combat doesn’t come in to play as players spend much of their time deflecting their opponents’ light discs from all angles or avoiding unblockable attacks.

Players are granted a series of differently powered discs as they upgrade (level up) which can be used to exploit various weaknesses of different opponents. This comes to be one of the biggest weaknesses of Tron: Evolution as the art style, while beautiful, doesn’t aid in telling apart different opponents. Most look identical and as a result, in the heat of battle, it is nearly impossible to tell them apart and plan an strategy to exploit their very specific weaknesses other than repeated deaths of trial and error.

The Light Cycles and Light Tank sections of single player feel more like added fan service than an integral part of the game. The Tank sections are slow moving and lack excitement or opponent AI. The Light Cycle sections feel like mini obstacle races with little to offer in terms of defining moments for the gameplay.

Yes folks, it’s that time again. Time for another exciting episode of your favorite podcast The Flickcast.

This week on the show Chris and Matt talk all things horror movies as well as other topics such as Tron Legacy, True Grit, holiday gifts and a whole lot more. Plus, as they always do, the boys made some more picks this week. However, we’re not going to tell you what they are, you’re just going to have to listen to find out.

No, not really. They are: Matt’s pick of the BBC series Hustle and the horror classic Poltergeist 3 and Chris’ pick of The Town, directed by and starring Ben Affleck and Die Hard featuring Bruce Willis and Snape himself, Alan Rickman.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook and MySpace or via email.

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Tron Legacy did manage to take a commanding lead at the box office this weekend, but its final numbers were not high enough to warrant the title of blockbuster. The $170 Million follow-up to Disney’s 1982 movie made a solid $43.6 Million at the box office.

Box Office Mojo reports that almost 82% of that total was from 3D screenings. Fortunately, audiences seemed to like the movie more than the critics, giving it a B+ score on CinemaScore.

Compare that total to last year’s must see event movie  Avatar, which made $77 Million on the same weekend last year. Avatar went on to make almost $750M domestically.

Yogi Bear came in at a distant second place with $16.7 Million.  That’s rather ho-hum for a family friendly movie.  Perhaps some parents took heed of the rather dismal reviews.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader added another $12.4 Million to its total, which now stands at $42.7 Million after two weeks, far below its $155 Million price tag.  The Fighter expanded wide into 2,500 theaters this weekend, and pulled in $12.2 Million.  With all the Oscar buzz around this movie, it should easily surpass its modest $25 Million budget during its theatrical run.

Welcome to this week’s On the Radar where we delve into all corners of the entertainment, tech and geek Internets for news, views and whatnot that may have escaped our regular coverage this week. Let is know if we missed something interesting. Let’s get started!

• We knew somebody would bitch. A conservative group of “people” have declared war on the Thor film for casting Idris Elba as a Norse God.

• ‘Tis the season . . . to adapt the classic Bed Intruder YouTube sensation into a Christmas Carol. Blame the mohawk-sporting conductor!

• Anybody who uses Google Docs knows how awesome it can be, but here‘s an amazing animation using the online tool just to prove that fact.

• In honor of Tron: Legacy hitting theaters this weekend, Playboy payed homage with their own Tron themed adult photos. Thankfully, they skipped any nudity with a Bruce Boxleitner look alike.

• Love The Walking Dead? Well, you’re going to want to catch our very own Matt Raub as he hosts a weekly recap show discussing AMC’s hit. Flickcast Editor Chris Ullrich even stops by for a visit!

• We’ve seen images, but now the first video of the Tim Burton Superman Lives costume test has hit the web. Thank Zod this film never got made.

• In honor of the holidays, here’s a list of the top non-traditional Christmas movies.

• Plus, how about a list of the top Christmas action movies? We love lists, why not? Yippie-Kay-Yay Santa!

• It’s official: George Lucas doesn’t give a shit anymore. Why? Because in the new Star Wars: Force Unleashed II game you can kill Han Solo and Chewbacca. Dammit George, why?

• List for list’s sake: The top 10 films of 2010 that made WAY more money than they deserved.

• Finally, because we love it so, here’s that alternate ending to the new Yogi Bear movie we told you about before. Yes, it’s definitely worth a look.

Note: This review may contain spoilers. You have been warned.

I have a caveat.  It’s nearly impossible for me to write about Tron Legacy (directed by Joseph Kosinski) without the veil of nostalgia clouding my eyes.  I was nine years old when the original Tron came out and a few years later my brother watched it on constant rotation at our house.

I have very fond memories of Tron that are directly tied to my siblings – and I happen to love how the animation looks even after two decades – so it is difficult for me to be objective in regards to it’s predecessor.

We are introduced to Sam Flynn as a young boy.  His father, Flynn (played by a digitally re-constructed, be-mulleted, 1982-era Jeff Bridges…more on that later), is tucking him in for the night and telling him about Tron and the digital universe known as The Grid…he tells it kind of like a bed-time story, but it’s much creepier (see Digital Bridges, Uncanny Valley).

Sam’s room is full of Tron video game paraphernalia – action figures, posters, etc. – and when Kevin says goodnight to leave for work, it is apparent that the boy desperately wants more his father’s attention.