In his book "Retromania," music critic Simon Reynolds makes the case that pop music/rock has gone distressingly meta, feeding on its accumulated history at the expense of any further forward evolution musically. It's a bold argument — and well worth a read — but one could probably make the same case against cinema as well.
Just look at this year's Oscars: You had "Hugo," about 1900s special-effects pioneer Georges Melies; "The Artist," an overt homage to silent-era cinema and packed with knowing movie references; and "My Week With Marilyn," in which Michelle Williams plays one of Hollywood's most iconic leading ladies, Marilyn Monroe.
These nominations may reflect the Academy's general old-fogey-ism (a recent L.A. Times article stated the median age of Academy voters as 62), but it might also lie in the fact that Hollywood loves nothing so much as basking in its old glory.