^ I completely agree.
I also think that we can have clear picture and clear sound, and tell a story well. Aesthetics are part of it. But it seems that filmmakers have overcompensated. Why is there so much detail on superhero and Trek uniforms in recent films? Because this looks better on HD TVs.I guarantee you that this is the reason, but it's not a bad one, but I think there is so much emphasis on crystal clarity, and while that's important, it's also becoming gimmicky. I don't miss the heated debates me and buddies had when we were deciding to go to an HFR showing. It's ridiculous. 3-D is also ridiculous.. only rarely is it used effectively.
To be fair, have you ever seen old movie grade costumes up close? About 14 or 15 years ago I went to a Trek exhibition and among the exhibits were the red movie-era uniforms (Scotty's from the then fairly recent ST:GEN IIRC) and bloody hell did they look shabby. Not just wear and tear, but just barely stitched/pinned together and clearly made of not terribly high quality materials.
Now of course this is all for very practical reasons. Unlike "conventional" films you can't use anything off the rack so it all has to be made from scratch on a budget, they only need to last as long as they're filming and they only need to look as good or as detailed as the camera will pick up. So I can totally understand why they're a lot more careful about that kind of thing now HD is becoming the norm.
There are things you just can't get away with any more.
As for 3D, I personally have no problem with it in principle. It's just a tool like any other and what's important is how it's used. Now I've only ever seen two movies in 3D (Avatar & Tron Legacy) and I thought they were both well suited to the format and it was well executed as far as I could tell.
I think a lot of the ire thrown at 3D really just stems from the number of lazy uses of a new technology as nothing more that a gimmick to sucker audiences. Nothing new there, same thing happened when CG took off (and continues to this day) and way back when colour was the new thing there was a vocal number of Murnau fans who claimed that colour film was garish and denigrated the art form.
So while I don't think 3D has gotten anywhere near maturing and has a long way to go before the technology is suitable for mass exhibition, I think it's here to stray.
So no, I have no problem with 3D or CGI, just like I have no problem with black and white, stereo sound, silent movies and shadow puppets. It's all about the execution.