During the summer, some suburban mall parking lots across Toronto become temporary, G-rated entertainment centres as circuses appear literally overnight. Foremost among these are Shrine circuses, which are similar in some ways to a caravan of quirky relatives who show up summer after summer, seemingly unannounced, in enormous camper trailers. For reasons purely nostalgic, they are always welcomed back—as long as they promise to sleep in the driveway.

If there’s something that all critics know, it’s that it’s great fun to rip apart something that’s incredibly bad. Especially if you know the person who made it deserves it. So as a result there’s a regular bounty of great criticism thrown at Roland Emmerich’s 10,000 B.C. The guy has foisted some of the worst, [...]

Since January 2006, quirky black-and-white brushstroke illustrations have graced the back page of the The New York Times Magazine. The work is that of Toronto-based designer and OCAD teacher Bob Hambly, who just completed his 500th illustration—a bus—for the prestigious Sunday newspaper supplement. “Even after twelve years, I still get that little pang in my [...]

Today’s release on Xbox Live Arcade is Trigger Heart Exelica, an originally Japan-only Dreamcast “bullet hell” vertically scrolling shooter, and if that sentence doesn’t make any sense to you whatsoever, that’s totally fine. You see, we’re actually here to mention last week’s Xbox Live Arcade release, N+. It’s based on N, the freeware game sensation [...]

The Spice Girls are done––Geri Halliwell stuck the final nail in their room-for-five coffin last week when she told reporters that a tour like the one they’re on now “probably won’t happen ever again.” Which means that the concert on February 26 in Toronto will be the band’s last ever, maybe! While Baby and Sporty [...]

Hello, and welcome to another installment of everyone’s favourite film column in which the writer makes up their opinions on the weeks films largely based on what trailers they’ve seen on TV. This week we didn’t watch much (busy watching our IT Crowd Series 2 and Metalocalypse DVDs) so the only one which managed to [...]

Two men who went on a Hollywood-worthy crime spree Saturday night and Sunday morning are being sought in a carjacking, shooting, three robberies, and a high-speed police chase. Descriptions of the suspects have now been released—if this is you, please turn yourself in. What do you give the province that has everything? That’s what Alberta [...]

It’s wild outside, huh? So wild that it allows us to segue into talking about Strange Wilderness first, for some reason. It surprises us that the last Happy Madison film that we saw was (the quite sweet, really) 50 First Dates. Strange Wilderness is only of interest to us because it has quite possibly the [...]

So, who else remembers that Rambo III was about Rambo going to Afghanistan to help the Taliban, huh? We do (and apparently the Sun’s Jim Slotek does too). It’s rather a shame that Sylvester Stallone hasn’t seen fit to continue from that point and deal with the consequences of the conflict, instead jumping straight to [...]

The saga of John Ferguson, Jr. is mercifully over: the beleaguered General Manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs, who’s been a whipping boy for the team’s misfortunes ever since his appointment in 2003, has been fired. Say what you will about Ferguson (and if you’re a Leaf fan then you probably have): the way he’s [...]

Moving insect legs! A dazzling shimmer wall! Faux beach, part deux! Waterfront Toronto has selected three proposals for the redevelopment of the Jarvis Street slip area, which currently features a dumpy, underutilized parking lot and not much else. Already part of the greater Waterfront Revitalization Plan, Lower Jarvis and Queen’s Quay will soon be home [...]

Though there are only three new films on release this week, it would be unfair to bemoan the shortage when one film, Persepolis, is of a high enough quality that it might as well be the only film released. During TIFF 2007 Christopher Bird handed it a 5/5 and called it “a masterwork in every [...]