"Batman Begins"

A quite respectable summer blockbuster, although perhaps a little lacking in inspiration when compared to Tim Burton's original in 1989.

Batman features the usual color-coding by the male actors' hair color. Christian Bale as the Dark Knight has dark hair. You can tell that Rutger Hauer as the chairman of Wayne Industries is going to turn out to be bad because he's blonde. Liam Neeson as Bruce Wayne's mentor in the ninja arts is in-between in hair color, so you can't tell for sure if he'll be good or bad.|

Morgan Freeman plays a computer nerd, making him the latest and perhaps least likely in a long line of black male computer nerds in movies (such as Ving Rhames in "Mission Impossible"). But at least that's better than Morgan Freeman playing a saintly janitor, because here he gets to use his wicked sense of humor. Michael Caine is also quite funny as Alfred the butler.

I hadn't realized why everybody was giving Tom Cruise such a hard time for publicly dating Katie Holmes, who plays a district attorney (I mean, other than the usual with Tom): she looks like she's 14. She is one creepy-looking little gal.

As for the usual with Tom -- is he gay or not? -- I have no idea. Most people over the age of 25 or so develop enough gaydar to be able to tell from all the little mannerisms that tend to distinguish a straight man from a gay man. I've never seen Cruise seem gay, but he is an excellent actor, and he has that amazing energy, which might allow him to play the role of a straight man 24/7. Further, he used to have the PR muscle to mold his image the way the old studios molded their contract stars' images, but a year ago he fired his very scary PR flack Pat Kingsley and appointed his sister to run his PR, and that family loyalty appears to be backfiring for him now.

As for rumors, normally I assume that where there's smoke, there is probably fire. The one big exception I've found, however, is that rumors that extremely handsome men are gay often don't pan out. A lot of them just turn out to be gay fantasies.

So, I'm totally agnostic on the question.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer