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Cinematheque Ontario usually has the monopoly on canonical cinematic summer fare in Toronto, as they spend two or three months unspooling a few dozen of the most famous films ever made. But this year the Bloor Cinema is giving them a run for their money, with an equally ambitious?yet markedly different?program of the greatest films of all time. Among the movies playing in 35 mm prints this July: Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Monty Python's Life of Brian, Brazil, A Clockwork Orange, Goldfinger, Dr. No, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, The Spy Who Loved Me, Dr. Strangelove, Barton Fink, 12 Monkeys, Harold and Maude, E.T., Blade Runner, Amélie, City of Lost Children, Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, Independence Day, Jurassic Park, Labyrinth, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid To Ask, Vivre sa vie, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Jules et Jim, Vertigo, Taxi Driver, and The Shining. Although you can pick out a few thematic threads (Lynch, Bond, etc.), it's really just a Good Movie Festival.
On top of these are worthy second-runners like Son of Rambow, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Speed Racer, Flight of the Red Balloon, Young People Fucking, Indiana Jones and the KotCS, and The Edge of Heaven. Perhaps most thrilling of all, though, is the first Toronto run of Stuck, the based-on-a-true-story horror comedy that was easily one of the best Midnight Madness movies we saw at TIFF last year.
The downside? As of last Tuesday, all of the prices have gone up by a dollar, with members' matinee tickets now at $5 and evening tickets now at $6. Which keeps it the cheapest theatre in the city (skirting pretty close to Cinematheque's member, student, and senior price of $6.50), but is still quite a bump, considering that all past increases have been in increments of 50¢. While we suppose it's worth an extra dollar to keep such a wonderful establishment in operation, we also hope that the quality of the presentation will increase accordingly; in other words, there's really no longer any excuse for the inconsistently-focused projection or the fact that the new sound system, installed over a year ago, has yet to be properly calibrated, such that dialogue is sometimes difficult to make out.
Photo of the Bloor lobby by Jonathan Goldsbie.
Dinner in the Sky?in which American Express, as a kick-off to Summerlicious, foots the bill to suspend groups of twenty-two cardholders and lucky members of the media and public thirty-five metres over Dundas Square while they all eat?is done its stint in Toronto as of a few hours ago; the team is off to Montréal next.
Torontoist was among the last to go up today, and we were served what was termed High Tea. (The food was pretty good, but not nearly as good as the pun.) BlogTO already has a great run-down of the experience, Sam Javanrouh of Daily Dose of Imagery has plenty of great photos, and Rannie Turingan has a few great videos. We, then, find ourselves in the rather unusual spot of not having very much to add, other than to assuage some potential jealousy: those who weren't among the few hundred people able to make it up over the event's two-day run shouldn't feel quite so bad. The whole thing, while fun, is not quite as fun as it sounds: being strapped into chairs that face in?and rotate only a little to each side?and having a large translucent roof just overhead made the whole thing noticeably less exciting and far less scenic. (What we could see of Dundas Square from thirty-five metres up, though, is no prettier than it is from the ground.)
Then again, "exciting" may be the exact wrong mindset to frame the experience: while the area is no nicer-looking with a bird's-eye-view, it's far less overwhelming. That's Dundas Square for ya?it takes a crane, a multi-ton rig, extensive seatbelts, twenty-one strangers with cameras, a half-dozen waiters and attendants, a hundred or so feet, and a deep-pocketed corporate sponsor to be able to relax and enjoy a tranquil snack on a weekday afternoon outside the Eaton's Centre.
Photo by David Topping. More are here.
Two Toronto police officers, along with three correctional officers and a real estate agent among others, were arrested yesterday for producing and distributing marijuana during a takedown of 63 grow ops across the GTA. Torontoist has made a principled decision not to make jokes about police malfeasance, mainly because our real names are printed at the bottom of each post.
Remember that time you were shopping and had to go to the bathroom really bad, and the store manager said "Sorry, we don't have a washroom here," and you almost peed your pants but just barely made it home in time? Howard Moscoe heard about that and is determined to enforce the requirement for retailers to provide public washroom space in the city.
It looks like Ontario's economy is suffering so much that we're on the brink of a recession, following a dip in the GDP of 0.3%. On the bright side, this is only terrible news for Ontarians who know what "GDP" stands for. Wait?that's everyone.
The Province is petitioning Ottawa to allow Las Vegas-style, single-game sportsbook betting in Ontario's casinos in order to boost revenues, and also possibly to add to the number of problem gamblers who are suing Ontario's casinos for $3.5 billion for making it too easy for them to gamble. The good news is if everyone gets their way, the gamblers will be able to put their $3.5 billion on the Lakers to beat the spread.
Finally, Toronto funnyman Seán Cullen totally rocked it last night on Last Comic Standing, where he advanced to the Hollywood stage. Let this be a lesson to you kids: it's always worthwhile to write songs about porn, no matter what your grandparents say.
Photo by Iguana Jo.
On Monday?s edition of Stars & Dogs, BNN personality Kim Parlee wondered if TD Canada Trust?s use of attractive and muscular models armed only with water guns, green briefs, and temporary tattoos of the bank?s logo, was too risqué for the Canadian institution. (Blogs show a mix of support and jeers for the marketing tactic.) It?s an interesting question: where should a company with a market cap of over $51 billion draw the line on decency? Nudity, as with all things, depends on the context.
Pride is essentially a large block party set during a hot, sunny June weekend that has a dress code equal to that of a beach. In addition to Hardline and Trojan, large corporations Motorola, Rogers (in the form of subsidiary Fido), and Proctor and Gamble (for its brand Crest) were trying to get a piece of the action with their own models in skimpy attire. It?s the culture of Pride: at the rodeo, a cowboy hat with a pair of blue jeans is the cultural uniform, and at Pride, it?s sunglasses, briefs, and alternating between smiles and pouts. From a business sense, TD Canada Trust had smartly gauged its target audience and reached out to it successfully: even NOW?s Susan G. Cole gave props for the eye candy.
Another sign that TD Canada Trust hadn?t overstepped any boundaries: the stock market. The Monday after Pride, shares of TD Canada Trust were up over a percent compared to their peers', which were negative or flat for the day. Sure, Pride probably didn?t boost TD Canada Trust on the TSX, but it didn?t hurt the bank either. Obviously, investors are worried about other things than the patrons of Pride getting a kick out of half-naked gym bunnies.
It could have been worse: TD Canada Trust could have pretended that Pride was like any other festival and had volunteers in dreary cotton-blend tees and jeans handing out brochures, whitewashing Pride so that it was no different from a county fair or a business convention. This wasn't TD Canada Trust's first year using the scantily-clad models; let?s hope it wasn't the last either.
Photo by Daily Misery from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
It's the fourth of July weekend, and as a result Canada joins its southern neighbours in having very little new of note in cinemas?it's probably why Hancock, for example, started screening early. Although it's entirely possible that that was just a desperate attempt to avoid poor reviews doing too much damage. They're not quite as bad as we thought they might be, but the praise is very faint, with, for example, The Star's Peter Howell just about mustering the will to call it "worth seeing" but noting it is "rough around the edges."
And we're not sure we can muster the will to talk about the rest of this week's new releases, as they're a very unexciting bunch. Brick Lane, based on a book; Savage Grace, based on a book and a true story; and, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, based on a book and, er, a line of dolls.
Of course, that means we can just talk about Wall*E again instead. We've seen it now, and it's every bit as lovely (and dangerous for your heart) as we guessed it would be last week, so you should go and see that. We can't think of any reason not to!
Oh, okay, you might have seen it by now. Well, in that case, you're out of luck if you were hoping for any interesting film festivals (there aren't any; though the Toronto International Film Festival Group has announced some of the films they'll be showing at TIFF08, so you can pore over that), but you can be buoyed by the fact that Cinematheque Ontario begin their fantastic Summer In Japan selection this week. It starts a little obviously (Rashomon tonight at 7:00 p.m.) but there's a screening of one of Kurosawa's other masterpieces Stray Dog on Wednesday (7:00 p.m.) It starts getting really good next week, with a screening of our favourite Kurosawa, Ikiru, on the 16th, and then there's a screening of Seijun Suzuki's mindblowing Tokyo Drifter on the 19th?especially unmissable, we think.
And, as Jonathan Goldsbie noted earlier this week, the Bloor is having an incredible month of screenings?why, tonight you could go and see Brazil on the big screen at 7:00 p.m. The early Wall*E trailers used the theme from Brazil (which at the time we thought was a bit of a cheap way to "steal" some emotion; thankfully the movie never needs to resort to that sort of thing), and that gives us a nice circular link to end the column on.
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Artist Unknown and BOOKS
AT GLEN BAILLIEPHOTO BY SOPWITH
Sky Gilbert's Ladylike, a new one-act play written specifically for Canada's favourite trans woman, Nina Arsenault, comes to us by way of a well-received run in Hamilton. The play?in which Arsenault's character mostly addresses the audience (and occasionally her boyfriend, played by Wes Berger) on subjects like her family history, her many cosmetic surgery procedures, and ideas about gender construction?probably seemed pretty audacious and daring for Hamilton, but it's interesting to see how a downtown Toronto audience reacts to the subject matter. Although the story is fictional, the character is obviously modelled after Arsenault, giving her the opportunity to pretty much be herself on stage. At various times she challenges the bourgeois sensibilities of the audience, calling them middle class and demanding that they not judge her... which is a kind of judgment itself.
The queer-positive, the trans-savvy and the sexual diversity studies majors probably aren't going to hear much new or revelatory in this show, but the intended audience is the less-informed layperson, and that's fair enough. As for the play itself, the real gem of the show is Arsenault. Sky Gilbert is a famous writer, but that doesn't mean he's always a good one, and his meandering script is repetitive and lacking in structure. In addition, the forced interactions with the boyfriend character are chemistry-free and fall flat. But whenever Arsenault gets an opportunity to just talk to the audience and share her experience, she commits to such a present, generous performance that it's impossible not to like this intelligent, articulate, and surprisingly gentle person.
Ladylike plays this evening at the Fringe Club at 6:00 p.m.
Other interesting shows tonight include:
Free Range, a play about a "sassy hypochondriac" who falls in love with her tapeworm, Warren, written and performed by the hilarious Emily Pearlman. You can catch it at 6:30 p.m. at the Passe Muraille Backspace. Mr. Fox is a new collaboration between Greg Landucci and Fringe wunderkind TJ Dawe, who brought us last year's hit Dishpig. This new show, about the world of professional mascotting, plays at 5:30 p.m. tonight at the Factory Studio. Finally, if that's not quite enough Dawe for you, you could check out his own one-man show Totem Figures at the Glen Morris Theatre at 9:30 p.m. We weren't wild about last year's Maxim & Cosmo, but his plays are generally pretty awesome.
Photo by Stephan Gregoire.
Rami Tabello of IllegalSigns.ca has teamed up with the New York?based Anti-Advertising Agency to create IllegalBillboards.org. According to Tabello's announcement, "the idea is to set up a blank web site, which can now be used by New York-based activists to keep track of research into illegal billboards and scrutiny of Department of Buildings enforcement." Tabello has already started taking a look at illegal ads in New York City over the past few weeks.
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Past is Prologue
BY TOMMS