As goes America...

America is in the midst of vast demographic and cultural sea changes. Hispanics are beginning to flex their muscles and are realizing with 15% of the country's population, they can set agendas and push things through with or without the support of others. Asian Americans are waking up to the fact that they make up as much of the country as Jews do, so why shouldn't they have as much influence.

And immigrants and their children of all stripes are looking around and seeing that in many parts of the country, the immigrant experience is now the majority experience--and the ever-shrinking minority are those people who speak just one language, avoid 'spicy' food and use words like 'exotic.'

As always in times of great change, there's a backlash--read last gasp--from the dying, previously-dominant faction of society that doesn't want to or can't adjust to a new world. Hence, all the yelling and ugliness you hear from the Christian right and their ilk, as they desperately try to freeze time and turn the clock back.

It won't work; too few of them, and they're losing strength every day. Plus, it's a better world that's being born.

One area where it's made manifest is movies. There are so many more interesting films being made and being shown in the U.S. today than even just ten years ago. It's not all due to demographic change, of course. But the broader factors shaping the revolution in the movie industry--such as technological change that makes it easier for a broader number of people to make films, the splintering of distribution channels--all feed greater diversity.

And of course all these factors are impacting not just the movies, but music, books, politics, journalism etc. It's universal--the broad trend of human history is it's getting easier for more people, and different types of people, to make their voices heard.

Going back to movies, scan the list of films starting with A released in 1996 and their stars:

Absolute Power, Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman
Addicted to Love, Meg Ryan, Matthew Broderick
Afterglow, Nick Nolte, Julie Christie
Air Force One, Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman
Albino Alligator, Matt Dillon, Faye Dunaway
Alien Resurrection, Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder
Alive and Kicking, Jason Flemyng, Antony Sher
All Over Me, Alison Folland, Tara Subkoff
American Buffalo, Dustin Hoffman, Dennis Franz
American Strays, Jennifer Tilly, Eric Roberts
An American Werewolf in Paris, Tom Everett Scott, Julie Delpy
Amistad, Morgan Freeman, Nigel Hawthorne
Anaconda, Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube
Anastasia, Meg Ryan, John Cusack
Angel Baby, John Lynch, Jacqueline McKenzie
As Good as It Gets, Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt
The Assignment, Aidan Quinn, Donald Sutherland
The Associate, Whoopi Goldberg, Dianne Wiest
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Mike Myers, Elizabeth Hurley

Out of 38 actors, 34 are white. 90%... at a time when demographically, whites made up no more than 70% of the population.

Here's a comparable list for 2005:

Appleseed, Ai Kobayashi, Jûrôta Kosugi
Assault on Precinct 13, Ethan Hawke, Laurence Fishburne
Are We There Yet?, Ice Cube, Nia Long
Alone in the Dark, Christian Slater, Stephen Dorff
Assisted Living, Michael Bonsignore, Maggie Riley
Alexandra's Project, Gary Sweet, Helen Buday
The Amityville Horror, Ryan Reynolds, Jimmy Bennett
A Lot Like Love, Ashton Kutcher, Amanda Peet
The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D, David Arquette, Kristin Davis
Aeon Flux, Charlize Theron, Marton Csokas
A Hole in My Heart, Thorsten Flinck, Sanna Bråding
A Wake in Providence, Vincent Pagano, Victoria Rowell
A League of Ordinary Gentlemen, Wayne Webb, Pete Weber
Après Vous, Daniel Auteuil, José Garcia
A State of Mind, Pak Hyon Sun, Kim Song Yun
Asylum, Ian McKellen, Natasha Richardson
A Sound of Thunder, Edward Burns, Ben Kingsley
A History of Violence, Viggo Mortensen, Ed Harris
The Aryan Couple, Caroline Carver, Kenny Doughty

The first thing that jumps out at the you is the diversity of titles--so much less mainstream, so much more interesting. The film descriptions are much less white bread, and even the white actors are less the same old, same old. Of the 38 actors, 31 are white--or, 82%. Which isn't great, but is closer to their actual 65% of the population.

Further, just paging through the Times' listing of upcoming summer films, it struck me how many interesting movies are right around the corner. This is some of what I'm looking forward to:

"CROSSING THE BRIDGE: THE SOUND OF ISTANBUL" Fatih Akin, the German actor and filmmaker who had a critical hit with "Head-On," made this documentary about the many musical styles of Istanbul.

"A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION" Robert Altman rounds up an all-star cast for a fictional look behind the scenes at the final broadcast of Garrison Keillor's public radio program. With Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Kline, Lindsay Lohan, Virginia Madsen, John C. Reilly, Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin.

"THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT" An American (Lucas Black) moves to Tokyo, where he discovers a dangerous new form of street racing, involving lightweight cars with slick tires designed to fishtail all over the road. The director, Justin Lin, has a couple of good indies in his past — "Shopping for Fangs" (1997) and "Better Luck Tomorrow" (2002).

"LOWER CITY (CIDADE BAIXA)" A prostitute (Alice Braga) comes between two best friends (Lázaro Ramos and Wagner Moura) who operate a cargo boat off the coast of Bahia. Produced by Walter Salles ("Central Station"), this is the first film directed by the screenwriter Sérgio Machado ("Madame Sata").

"THE GREAT NEW WONDERFUL" A disparate group of New Yorkers — played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, Olympia Dukakis, Jim Gaffigan, Tony Shalhoub, Tom McCarthy and Naseeruddin Shah — look for meaning in their lives in the year following 9/11. Danny Leiner directs.

"THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO" Part drama, part documentary — the story of three British Muslims held for two years at the American prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross directed.

"THE MOTEL" A Chinese-American boy, unhappy with his lot as a room cleaner at his parents' dilapidated motel, learns about life from an older Korean man (Sung Kang) who moves in. Michael Kang directed.

"PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST" Part 2 of the successful movie franchise generated by a theme park attraction; can we look forward to "Tilt-a-Whirl: The Movie"? Most of the original cast is back — Johnny Depp as the reluctant swashbuckler Capt. Jack Sparrow, Orlando Bloom as his straight-arrow rival, Keira Knightley as the governor's stylish daughter, and Geoffrey Rush as the other pirate in town, Captain Barbarossa. The director, again, is Gore Verbinski. Next year, yep, Part 3.

"THE FORSAKEN LAND" Winner of the Camera d'Or for best first or second feature at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, Vimukthi Jayasundara's film is a plotless look at life in Sri Lanka.

"FAKERS" A forger (Matthew Rhys) tries to sell copies of the same drawing to five different London galleries within an hour. Richard Janes directed; with Kate Ashfield.

"FRATRICIDE" The hard life of Turkish and Kurdish immigrant teenagers in Germany, captured in a fiction film by Yilmaz Arslan.

"IDLEWILD" The members of Outkast, André Benjamin and Antwan Andre Patton, star as musicians working the Southern speakeasy circuit in the early 1930's. Bryan Barber wrote and directed.

IFC Films photo of Zoë Weizenbaum in "Twelve and Holding" from the Times.

Palm Pictures photo of Alice Braga in "Lower City" from the Times.