Catching an afternoon screening of Iron Man last weekend, the questionably denigrating representations of Afghani villains bugged me less than the bizarre cultural references in the trailers preceding it -- especially when it came to accents. Three previews in a row contained characters speaking intentionally mangled English, a fact all the more recognizable because all of them were played by well-known actors. You Don't Mess With Zohan showed Adam Sandler as a tough Israeli hair stylist. The Love Guru preview found Mike Myers blabbering on with South Asian inflections. Rounding things out in perhaps the most innocuous case, Cate Blanchett popped up as a Communist baddie in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Are these gross caricatures or fair play?

We've touched on this issue before, but it looks like each month the trend gets a little stronger. There's edgy and there's a line: Borat may or may not send the wrong message, but the character's faux Kazakh accent tells you a lot about the way Americans tend to judge foreigners on the basis of their less-than-perfect English. The specific nature of the satire gives Cohen's performance an underlying purpose -- unlike, say, Love Guru, which seems more like a chance to ignorantly marvel at Myers' ability to turn Indians into a continuous punchline. Recently, a few Hindu groups launched protests against the film. This could mark uncharted terrain for Myers, who did not, as far as I know, get lambasted by any hippies after the first Austin Powers.

It's a fairly rare and always interesting phenomenon when a filmmaker releases two films in the same year. John Ford made three in 1939, Stagecoach, Young Mr. Lincoln and Drums Along the Mohawk. Alfred Hitchcock released two in 1941, the thriller Suspicion and the romantic comedy Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Howard Hawks had a one-two punch in 1952 with his Western adventure The Big Sky and a screwball comedy Monkey Business. And in 2002, director Phillip Noyce impressed critics everywhere with two politically-tinged dramas, Rabbit-Proof Fence and The Quiet American. But in these and other cases, one can always see the connection, if nothing else a particular sensibility or personality in each work.

I'm hard pressed to think of two more different films than Steven Soderbergh's Bubble and The Good German, released at the far opposite ends of 2006. The shot-on-video Bubble seemed to push the edges of the future of cinema with its astonishing deep-focus cinematography, its impressive working-class settings and its captivating characters (played by amateur actors). Additionally, the film tried a new stunt, being almost simultaneously released in theaters and on DVD. Whereas The Good German gets its inspiration entirely from the past, presented in luminous black-and-white film, set in post-World War II Berlin and featuring good old-fashioned movie stars.

It's a little strange to hear one of the pioneers of independent film long for the old days of the studio system. In a recent New York Times article, Stephen Soderbergh talks about how and why he recreated the golden age of film making with his new pic The Good German.

Soderbergh decided to run his production using techniques of classic Hollywood film making. The attention to detail included dialog recorded with boom mics rather than modern body microphones, using period lenses, less camera movement and fuller frames. It all added up to a film that has gone way beyond homage and has transformed into a full-fledged reproduction. Soderbergh's inspiration for the film was Casablanca director Michael Curtiz, "I often think I would have been so happy to be Michael Curtiz, making a couple of movies a year of all different kinds, working with the best technicians. I would have been in heaven, just going in to work every day."

The classic studio system was a mix of art and mass production -- they didn't call it the Dream Factory for nothing. It did, however, give filmmakers the chance to make all kinds of films. Well, Soderbergh might not have the safety net of the old system, but he seems to be doing all right in finding a variety of projects for himself. Coming up for Soderbergh is Guerrilla, a biography of Che Guevara (2008) and, of course, the next installment in the Ocean's series, Ocean's Thirteen. The Good German opens December 15.