I’ve previously touched upon the predominance of mixed-ethnic relationships in this summer’s The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, and in Mirrors, Paula Patton and Kiefer Sutherland play a married couple, with nary a word about their relationship.

This goes beyond any sort of stunt casting, obviously, and it’s no lazy, shrugging toss-off, either, since the pairing then necessitates the casting of two two mixed-race kids, shared by the actors’ characters. I don’t know if this can be called a bonafide trend, really, but there’s something interesting in it — especially in a genre picture like Mirrors, which conceivably could face commercial prospect blow-back from the uncultured slice of the horror base. It’s not like that’s a multi-million dollar difference in gross or anything, but you can bet it flipped a switch or two at the executive level, because these are the types of things that get discussed when studio movies are green-lit. Regardless, the winds they are a-changin’, that’s for sure; younger generations both see and care (which is to say, less) about race in radically different ways than their parents. Heck, this helps explain a large part of Barack Obama‘s appeal to young voters, ages 18 to 30.