Don’t stop learning this summer

 Guess who has two thumbs, doesn’t know how to make visual gags work in print and typically hates summer movie preview week? This guy.

But like the seasons that are about to change, so does everything else, including once bitter wannabe movie critics and overworked student entertainment publication editors.
 
Coincidentally, this is my last column as the WEEKEND editor. I’ll do the whole Jay Leno thing and pretend like I’m leaving even though my column will still be coming back next fall — or you could just check out my website at cinecismonline.com/wordpress.

I thought about leaving you all with some closing thoughts on the ensuing crop of summer movies, a summer in which Hollywood broke the all-time record of sequels released in a calendar year, where franchises have been remade, rebooted and rebranded and where superheroes are just a stone’s throw away. I can’t figure out why there is a “Pirates” movie with only Johnny Depp or why there’s a “Cars” movie without Paul Newman or why the trailer for “Larry Crowne,” starring, written and directed by Tom Hanks, looks like nothing more than a thousand other overrated romantic comedies circa 1995.

Believe me, I’d love to be able to answer those questions. 

Rather than fake it now and attempt to answer those questions in the same way I’ve done in several columns before, I’ll concede that there are a lot of interesting films being released this summer. “The Tree of Life,” “Hesher,” “Crazy, Stupid, Love.” and “Super 8” are all things I’m genuinely excited for, and my favorite movie of the summer is bound to be one I haven’t even heard of yet.

But in the time I’ve spent writing 32 columns and putting out 30 issues of WEEKEND, I’ve grown as a critic, an editor and a fan. 

For instance, I’m amazed at the number of bands I’ve discovered and grown to love in just the last five months since we put out our 2010 Best of the Year lists. 

I have to wonder, how many more lists did I look at, how many more directors did I seek out, and how many more classic and foreign films did I add to my Netflix instant queue in just this short time?

People talk about college as a time of discovery. They refer to it as the time and place to try new things, eat new foods, go new places and meet new people. But no one ever says, “Go watch the Antonioni series at the IU Cinema this week!”

And why don’t they say that? If it is true that the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know, then it is also true that the more movies you see, the more you realize you have to see. 

With each column I’ve written, I’ve seen more and more movies, and I’ve learned something new about myself after I finish writing each one of them. I don’t want to harp on 2011’s summer movies any more than I need to because I want to keep learning. 
Because there’s bound to be something “Transformers 3” can teach me.