[Crazy Jetty]

@Snow
I agree with you about anime. To be honest, I feel that caucasions end up working better for the most part as most live action adaptation anime.
Sailor Moon, Sailor Venus, Sailor Jupiter... I don't think they would work well at all played by asian actresses. Sailor Mars definately needs a japanese actress, and Sailor Mercury could actually work either way (She could actually even work with an african acress)
With Ah! My Goddess, it's pretty obvious that Belldandy and Skuld are intended to be European/nordic in appearance, with Urd being half caucasian, half african, with most (if not all) other characters intending to be japanese.
But of course, Ah! My Goddess is one of the few series that's handled very realistically when it comes to races. (Fujishima doesn't even use unrealistic hair tones, save for Urd. And pure white hair isn't *that* outrageous).

I will say about Pokemon... the producers behind the anime, and the game makers understand they have a global audience, and I appreciate how hard they work to make sure they don't offend anyone. Japanese really don't find as much problem with stereotyping, especially for humor, and they tend not to care as much about political correctness as other areas in the world. But the Pokemon people tend to go out of their way to make sure it's as inoffensive, and openminded as possible. (The Pokemon Jynx was intended to poke fun at an extreme fasion trend amongst japanese teenaged girls, but when they realized americans interperated it as "Black face" they quickly changed Jynx' basic look). And in the games and anime, they've long included "Ambiguously brown" characters that could be interperated as a number of races. And coming to now, with Black and White, they have characters specifically intended to be african decent. (Iris, gym leader in the games and main character in the anime, as well as another gym leader who plays a much bigger role than most gym leaders in the past in the game)

Also, congratulations, you are the first person I've ever met who defenced TLA movie, in any form!
I agree I feel people gripe on the race issue way too much. My brother even gets angry that it "Here comes the white man to liberate everyone!" Which I don't get that impression at all.
I don't even feel the movie is *that* bad from a story telling standpoint. I just feel it's way too short, and way too condensed. It honestly needed to be treated *more* like LotR, and had at least another hour added to it. With that extra hour, the events they had could have been paced better, with greater focus on characterurization.
It also needed to have more of the trademark Avatar humor. (Especially from Sokka and Uncle)
Another thing it gets unfairly attacked for, is the "mispronunciation" of names. Especially by people who really don't get that it's the cartoon that's mispronouncing the names. Shyamalon is such a stickler for detail, and puts so much thought into the things he does, he's going to make sure the names are pronounced correctly. And he did.

All in all, I think had he been given another hour to decompress his movie, it would have flowed so much better. At the very least, I'd hoped for an extended director's cut edition for DVD, that included the Kyoshi Warrior scenes he filmed.