Black And White

Starring: Eddie Kaye Thomas, Robert Downey Jr Director: James Toback Original UK Premiere: 1999 Dvd Release: 26th March, 2001 Number Of Discs: 1 Format: Anamorphic, PAL, Widescreen, Region 2 Encoding Subtitled In: Arabic, Bulgarian, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Swedish, Turkish Dubbed In: French

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James Tobacks Black & White, a portrait of white & black culture mixing it up on the streets of Manhattan, is like two films colliding. In the centre of the swirl are a group of upper-class white teens who appropriate hip-hop culture to rebel against their affluent lifestyle, & a posse of gangstas & drug dealers who are themselves trying to get off the streets & into the business culture through their music. Ageing indie filmmaker Toback has long shown an interest in character contradictions & quirks. Here the dynamic works: the two groups are genuinely curious about one another & mix with a cautious but untroubled ease. Less successful is the contrived drama that orbits this cultural mix but never quite meshes, such as Ben Stiller as a self-loathing New York cop who blackmails college basketball star Allan Houston into betraying his boyhood buddy turned street criminal.

Toback spices his Altmanesque style of restless camera work & impressionistic intercutting with attitude, nervous energy, & in-your-face sex. Theres an interesting story to be told here, but the provocative cultural mix gets lost in the self-conscious melodrama & only periodically roars to life, notably in the edgy, unpredictable scenes with Mike Tyson . Also featured are rapper Raekwon, supermodel Claudia Schiffer, Brooke Shields, & Robert Downey Jr.

Eddie Kaye Thomas is an American film actor who rose to prominence in 1999 as Paul Shit Break Finch in American Pie, which spawned two sequels & a direct-to-video spin-off. Thomas acting career began long before that, though, winning his first stage role at age seven. Thomas has appeared onstage in productions of Four Baboons Adoring the Sun in 1992 & The Diary of Anne Frank in 1997. He had graduated from New Yorks Professional Childrens High School as was already a season veteran of the Broadway stage. Eddie made his onscreen debut in an episode of Law & Order in 1996 & landed a role in an independent movie called Illtown. Carrie 2 along with James Toback s controversial motion picture Black & White in which Thomas co-starred with Robert Downey, Jr. & Jared Leto. Since American Pie, Eddie has starred in the series Off Centre with John Cho, played the title role in Canadian shock-comic Tom Green s Freddy Got Fingered & continues stage work. He starred once more with John Cho as Jewish character Rosenberg in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle opposite David Krumholtz.

Editors Choice: Taboo, American Pie 2, Black And White, View DVDology

Robert Downey Jr. is an American actor. Born in New York City, he is the son of director Robert Downey Sr. Having appeared in several small film roles from an early age, at 20 he joined the cast of Saturday Night Live, but only appeared there for one season. He went on to star in The Pick-up Artist in 1987. The same year, he portrayed the drug-addicted rich boy in Less Than Zero, a role which came close to his later public life. In 1992 Downey starred as Charlie Chaplin in Chaplin, a role which garnered him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. His other films include Only You, Natural Born Killers & lead role as a seventeenth-century doctor in Restoration, a film adaptation of Rose Tremain s novel of the same name. In 2000, he became an acclaimed regular on the television series Ally McBeal, but was fired after a drug-related arrest in April 2001. Downey has had a public battle with drug addiction throughout his adult life. He has been in & out of prison & rehab centers several times. On November 23, 2004, he released his debut musical album The Futurist on Sony Classical. Posters Of Gothika

Editors Choice: Gothika, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Singing Detective, Only You, Black And White, Chaplin, Air America, Chances Are, View DVDology

James Toback is a screenwriter & film director. He was a Harvard graduate who intended to become a novelist, but turned to journalism. Given an assignment for an article on football star Jim Brown, he instead wrote the 1971 book Jim about the man. His first screenplay was the semi-autobiographical The Gambler, drawing on his experiences as a college professor & a compulsive gambler. Toback entered the realm of directing with the 1978 film Fingers, for which he also wrote the screenplay. Viewers & critics of the 1980s were not kind to Tobacks films — Love & Money & The Pick-Up Artist. His comeback in the 1990s started with the documentary The Big Bang, which he followed up with Bugsy, Two Girls & a Guy, Black & White & Harvard Man. Toback, born into a well-to-do family, was married to Consuelo Sarah Churchill Vanderbilt Russell, the granddaughter of the tenth Duke of Marlborough. James Toback at the Internet Movie Database.

Editors Choice: Harvard Man, Black And White, View DVDology

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