One of the many reasons I always prefer seeing movies in movie theaters is to watch the coming attractions. The other night at the megaplex, the trailers they showed were as fast and big and loud and action-packed as ever. Somehow, though, at the end of the 10 minutes of appetizers, I felt stimulated, as usual, but vaguely dissatisfied.

And I think I understand why.

We've all just spent a year seeing big special effects movie after big special effects movie, from The Hulk to Terminator 3 to the two sequels to the Matrix, in which existence itself is depicted as one big special effect, And now I was watching trailers for Scooby Doo 2, with its cartoonish people and digital talking dog; for Hugh Jackman as Van Helsing, a 19th century battler against digitally enhanced flying vampire; and Brad Pitt as Achilles leading regiments of computer-generated Greek troops into Troy.

I think I what I experienced was an overdose of computer-generated special effects. I'm serious, and I'm being literal. It was as if I had binged, visually, on a pint of fat-free, aspartame-flavored ice cream, or drank a whole six-pack of diet soda at once. To my eyes, all those pixel-based flying monsters and zillion-man armies were like Olestra my sensory and cognitive systems -- tasty enough for a moment, before they passed right through.

Is it possible that my reaction is not simply that of a suddenly fuddy-duddy, neo-luddite freak? That we are reaching a stage in film when digital effects have become a serious glut, way[ital] too much of a good thing? That we will start reacting instinctively against all those gigabytes of synthetic reality on the movie screen?

it's not that I oppose CG on principle. A few of my favorite movies of the last few years have been effects extravaganzas. It's a more visceral thing: it did suddenly feel that night in the theater as if some kind of tipping point of excess had been reached.

A few days later, corroboration of my hunch appeared in the New York Times.

According to an article, CG budgets for movies have grown by a thousand percent in the last decade or so, to as much as $50 million dollars per movie.Nor, as I had not fully realized, is the CG addiction imited to obvious “effects pictures” like Pirates of the Caribbean. According to the Times, most [ital] big studio pictures now spend millions apiece on digital effects, not to concoct vast battles between Orcs and elves, or between 19th century ships in the Pacific, but to prettify and clean up ordinary scenes in ordinary movies, the equivalent of Photoshop retouching at a cost many orders of maginitude greater.

In the article, Stefen Fangmeier, one of Hollywood’s most accomplished effects wizards, who has more business than he can handle, admitted even he’s a little grossed out by the promiscuous overuse of CG by filmmakers today.

Will the trend diminish? I suppose it's possible, if other people begin feeling that they’re gorging on more and more miraculous imagery but not ever really ever feeling full. Maybe. But at the Academy Awards this Sunday, let’s just see which movie wins the Oscar for Best Picture. Will it be an example of bare-bones old-school moviemaking like Lost in Translation or Mystic River…. or Master and Commander or Lord of the Rings, movies that could not exist without computerized special effects.

I’m betting on the computers.

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