For the next few days in the Port Lands, under a canopy of power lines and cement plant scaffolding, the parking lot of the T&T Supermarket will be transformed into a pop-up Asian-style night market. There, as the event's website puts it, "East and West meet under a moonlit summer night sky, the breeze of barbecuing pork and beef wafts in the wind, mingling with the sizzling aroma of vegetables dropped in hot oil, steaming bamboo baskets sitting on almost every stall invite hungry crowds to sample a bite of hot dumplings, spicy chicken or oyster pancakes." Sure.

Photo by Uncle Lynx from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. Almost as quickly as it arrived, Luminato is soon to be gone: the 10 day festival closes this weekend. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the various performances and installations yet, here is a cheat sheet with some of our faves… Sargasso Photo [...]

With Luminato’s first weekend now behind us, we’ve got a better sense of how this year’s festival is shaping up. As with previous years, at times the eclecticism feels like it might risk veering off into incoherence (though this has been improving), and as is inevitable with a large, multi-faceted festival, there is a mix [...]

Participants in one of Improv Everywhere’s previous MP3 Experiments take part in an all-out balloon war. Luminato is about to embark on its fifth year, and like any respectable five-year-old’s birthday party, this year’s all-encompassing arts festival is chock full of magicians, good eats, and music. There’s even an afternoon concert with They Might Be [...]

Still from Mary Lou. Nothing marks the beginning of spring like Passover, and the Toronto Jewish Film Festival. Now in its nineteenth year, the TJFF has become not only one of the largest “ethnic” festivals in the city, but it has also eclipsed this sub-genre category, becoming a full fledged festival of its own right. [...]

A meal at Vegetarian Haven. Photo by Mariyah from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. If another municipality decided to woo our fair city of Toronto, then Montreal or some other pal would probably advise them that the way to our heart is through our collective stomach. Every year, Hogtown’s hungriest come out in full force to [...]

It's the night that hipsters love to hate and suburban tourists hate to love, and while we certainly enjoyed griping about Nuit Blanche's many villainous shortcomings, there's also a lot to celebrate about the annual contemporary art event.

Nathan Phillips Square, earlier this fall. Photo by Benson Kua from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. The forty-two-million-dollar revitalization of Nathan Phillips Square is scheduled to be completed in 2012, at which point the Square will be a better (or at least a more newly renovated) public space than it has ever been before. In the [...]

Janis Kelly as Régine Saint Laurent, the mysterious soprano of Prima Donna. Photo by Antony Crook. We know what you’re thinking—June is so gloomy! No birds are chirping, the patios are bare, and streets are devoid of rollerbladers and bikes soaking in the summer sun. If only there were some way we could let more [...]

So, we know we were all abuzz about summer festivals just this morning, but time is tickin’ along, and everyone’s just so busy that we thought we’d skip right ahead to autumn. This morning organizers unveiled Nuit Blanche 2009, at a suit- and camera-happy press conference at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Keen readers will [...]

Photo by swilton from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. Another year’s Luminato has come and now gone, raising the question of just how brightly this new(ish) festival’s star is shining. Fairly strongly, it turns out. Though this year’s instalment was, like its predecessors, something of a mixed bag, the ambitious, thoughtful, and whimsical outweighed the ill-conceived [...]

Photo by wvs from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. Summer festival season is about to begin in earnest, and kicking things off is that multi-disciplinary, multi-location, multi-day extravaganza known as Luminato. With everything from nine-hour theatrical epics to a giant red ball popping up where you may least expect it, Luminato is again sure to draw [...]