I’ve written three or four times about Mike Binder‘s Black and White, a racially-tinged drama in which a hard-drinking, well-off, basically fair-minded L.A. attorney and grandfather, played by Kevin Costner, goes eyeball to eyeball against his African-American in-laws in a custody battle for his granddaughter. And that’s too brief a description about what this film really gets into. Everyone puts on their tiptoe shoes when any kind of racial subject comes up in any context, but not Black and White. It plays it mild and sad and blunt and angry. It’s a lot more candid and straight-from-the-shoulder than you might expect.

Jillian Estell, Kevin Costner in Mike Binder’s Black and White.

I saw Black and White last July with a bit of initial skepticism and concern, and I came out surprised and impressed. It doesn’t placate or soothe but it’s not snarly or inflammatory either. It just talks straight and open about…well, more than just racial matters. It takes a hard look at responsibility and parenting and racial identity and who’s really feeling what, and if you ask me it offers one of the frankest discussions about the black-white racial chasm since Barack Obama‘s Philadelphia speech about Reverend Wright, and before that Spike Lee‘s Do The Right Thing. I mean it. I really think it’s on that level.

I also think it delivers Costner’s best performance since The Upside of Anger and before that Field of Dreams. Really. His Dreams guy was about economic anxiety and dads and hope and reaching out and melting down. His Black and White guy, an angry-ass widower who drinks like a fish throughout the entire film and yet may not be an actual alcoholic, is about caring and who-gives-a-shit? fatigue and rage at a drug-using son-in-law and a compulsion to just spill out his blunt, take-it-or-leave-it feelings, especially during a big court-testimony scene at the end.

9:15 pm: It is gratifying to report that the TIFF media guys have decided to upgrade my TIFF press pass to priority level…many thanks, deply appreciated. Earlier: To my slight surprise the TIFF media guys gave me a grunt-level press pass this morning. I’ve been enjoying the benefits of a priority pass (a pass with a capital P on the bottom) for many years here, and I guess I’ve gotten used to it. A TIFF priority press pass isn’t quite the same honor as having a pink-with-yellow-pastille pass at the Cannes Film Festival or an all-access, no-waiting market badge at Sundance, but a TIFF priority pass means you get to wait in shorter lines at the Scotiabank, and sometimes it can mean the difference between seeing a hot film and being shut out.

What does this Men, Women and Children poster indicate about the content of the film? We all understand that the marketing for a film and the film itself exist in two separate realms, but presumably the poster was approved by director Jason Reitman and colleagues. To me it’s saying the obvious, which is that no one in the film (which Paramount will open on 10.3) is paying attention to genuine human interaction except for the young couple.

“Pessoa used to say that literature was the most agreeable way to ignore life. You think he would’ve felt the same way about your iPhone?” — a line spoken by Edward Norton‘s Matt Shiner character in a 2012 draft of Alejandro G. Inarritu‘s Birdman.

If you’re at all familiar with this site you know I hold HBO’s The Wire in the highest regard. I believe that anyone who has failed to see even one of the 60 episodes broadcast between ’00 and ’08 has to answer for that. I also feel that anyone who fails to express sufficient enthusiasm for the series has an enzyme deficiency of some kind. But I’m honestly confused about the remastered-aspect-ratio brouhaha that erupted a couple of days ago. An HBO marathon of all 60 Wire episodes in a remastered high-def formt begins on Thursday, September 4th, but some are alarmed about the remastering process. It is feared in some quarters that the Wire‘s original aspect ratio (i.e., the show was originally broadcast in a standard boxy 4:3) has been cleavered on the tops and bottoms to render a 16 x 9 high-def version. Others believe that the show was originally shot at 1.85 and that the sides were cleavered in order to present the show at 4:3 between ’00 and ’08. I honestly don’t know the answer.