there was never any debate as to whether people "choose" to be black, as opposed to the debate over gay.

You'd be surprised. Certainly nothing on the scale of homosexuality, but there are huge racial identity kerfuffles.

No need to defer to my interpretation. Chris Claremont (wrote a bunch fo the comics) has said much the same.

I'm not trying to take away the gay interpretation--just that I don't think it's a gay movie any more than it'd be a black movie if you changed nothing but the race of the director.

I think The comics were dealing with a racial metaphor but Singer felt it as a gay metaphor and chose the events of the film to go more to that place. The whole bit of the family wanting to keep it a secret and being disgusted directly maps to gay experience and I know Singer was interested because of that and wanted the films to address that.

Writers of the comic have cited both race and sexual orientation as the mapping. I guess I didn't see enough different from the comics to shift it in one direction or the other. Magneto is no less Malcolm X for having been directed by a gay guy.

If Bryan Singer had been a black gay man, would that have made this discussion more difficult, or less?

And of course, I think there are a lot of disability metaphors in the X-Men films as well. We're a shock to our parents, too, after all.

I'm not sure what you mean by "difficult," Sean.

Just that everybody seemed to be a little possessive of how the X-films mapped to self-identity. I may have read too much into things.

Eh, not really. I mean, I noted the parallels as they were happening, but I don't regard either of the Singer X flicks as Important Gay Films like, say, Philadelphia or anything.

I was probably reading too much into things. I mean, I can understand getting possessive about the X-peeps and what they mean to people personally. They can have that effect.

Just got back from Ratatouille at the El Cap, which was a blast. The movie was very sweet and funny. Brad Bird hit another home run with this one. The man can do no wrong, it seems.

I just watched Seven Samurai. And, er, I think this is another case of loving what a classic movie influenced more than the original influence. I couldn't tell half the characters apart or remember their names, and I was never really emotionally involved. It was if Kurosawa didn't do any extra work to engage the viewer. I expected a lot more from the fight scenes; I could barely tell what was happening or who was dying. And they weren't even that cool. It looked like they were just banging on each other with sticks.

I didn't hate it or anything, but it didn't leave me with an overwhelming impression to recommend other people watch it.