The ongoing resurgence in 3-D movies … it’s a gift and a curse. Or maybe just a curse. At least, that’s what I thought until seeing “Hugo” and its use of 3-D to make the movie more beautiful. We recorded this episode before “Hugo” racked up all kinds of Academy Award nominations, but the episode published almost immediately after. Funny thing, that.

• The RunPee.com and its app
• “The Last Airbender” and “Clash of the Titans” and their 3-D conversion backlash
• “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and its much better 3-D conversion
• “The Lion King” in 3-D, and the “Beauty and the Beast” re-release in 3-D that Holly and I have mixed feelings about
• The DLP TV rainbow effect and whether it’s related to the weird 3-D artifacts I also see
• “Meet the Robinsons,” which had maybe one 3-D trailer before the feature — compared to how many 3-D movie trailers there are now
• That whale movie with the trailer that made me and Holly cry buckets
• My surprise at realizing that I will go watch “Titanic” in 3-D
• My absolute forgetting that “Phantom  Menace” had a 3-D trailer before “Hugo”
• The Guardian’s film blog’s shot-by-shot review of “Titanic” in 3-D
• I said “obscure technology” instead of “obsolete technology”
• The ways of making 3-D images, which you can read about in “How 3-D Glasses Work,” and “How is digital 3-D different from old 3-D movies?” and “How the Nintendo 3DS Works“
• Whether “Jaws 3-D” is appropriate for children
• Toy Story Mania!
• Holly’s crush on Sacha Baron Cohen and “Sweeney Todd“
• The use of black and white and color in “Hugo” and “The Wizard of Oz”
• Film preservation and lost episodes of “Doctor Who”
• The other 3-D dilemma:  too many movies, not enough screens to play them
• The really exceptional performances of the children in “Hugo”
• Jon Favreau’s decision not to put “Cowboys and Aliens” in 3-D to preserve some of the foreboding aspects of not knowing how far away things are
• How “Hugo” reminds me of “A Very Long Engagement“
• The difference between “Hugo” and “Avatar” in their use of 3-D
• Roger Ebert’s “Why 3-D Doesn’t Work and Never Will, Case Closed“
• “Captain EO” which I have seen since then
• 3-D TV
• The same director did “Raging Bull” and “Hugo.” Can you believe it?
• Two pieces of listener mail! They are both corrections. One, the Studio Ghibli tour is really the Ghibli Museum tour. And two, the counterpart to Spacele Sprockets was Cogswell Cogs. Thanks, Purrdence in Perth and Nancy in Florida!

My research:

• “Titanic” in 3D: 9 Things Learned While Watching Early Footage with James Cameron
• Titanic 3D: Could it be an even bigger hit for James Cameron?
• Clash of the Titans: 3d Conversion Comes In for Heavy Criticism
• Roger Ebert’s “Why I hate 3D Movies and You Should Too”
• “The Lion King 3D”: What the Critics are Saying

Holly’s research:

• Here’s How 3-D is Ruining Movies
• Sony 3D digital projector lenses are ruining 2D movies
• Why 3D doesn’t work and never will. Case closed.
• Cinema’s real killer is 3D, not video on demand

Episode link: Now Available in 3-D