2012: A Year in No Movies

Looking over the list of films coming out in 2012, the fact that there's only one film I'd really like to see and a smattering of others that I'd be willing to see either speaks to it being a particularly weak year for film, or I've just gotten to a point in my life where I just can't work up the enthusiasm for much of anything diverting.  Let alone some movie.

The aforementioned film that I'd actually like to see is (no surprise, here) The Avengers, although I don't have the raging nerd hard-on for it that the 12-year-old Marvel Comics fan in me would have under other circumstances.  I'm sure it will be very fun, don't get me wrong, but the fact that Yesenia is looking forward to it more than I am says something about the way my interests - or is it interest, singular? - have changed.

But it's also highly possible that it's just a band slate of films, this year.  Even this Summer's Pixar film, Brave, seems like kind of a drag.  Now, I know that I'm still a hardcore animation fan - Yesenia and I have rewatched a few Disney movies from the 40's and the 90's over the last month, and if anything, I've my my love of the art form renewed.  But it's a love of the lost art of the hand-animated feature.  Even more specifically, the love of the Disney film, a very specific mix of music, drama and character acting that no-one else has ever been able to duplicate - even Pixar.

And as incredible (no pun intended) as Pixar's run has been, I've just worn out of enthusiasm for computer animation.  It's everywhere.  Computers themselves are everywhere.  Again, if you told the 12-year-old Tron fan in me that I'd eventually just be exhausted by omnipresent CGI, he'd be dumbfounded.  I was at one point probably only third behind George Lucas and James Cameron in my fervor for the new worlds that computer graphics could explore.  But what those two gentlemen have proven is that the best tools for exploration are only as good as the people planning the expeditions, as it were.  And, let's face it, what CGI has ultimately done, rather than freeing up filmmakers to tell the stories they always wanted to tell (as the line goes), is to make every single goddamn film look the same.  And who could be enthusiastic for that?

D.