It’s entirely possible that an early work by the next Atom Egoyan or David Cronenberg will screen on Wednesday night at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. With the 2013 Student Film Showcase featuring the best from post-secondary schools around the country and the Jump Cuts Young Filmmakers Showcase kicking off the evening with Toronto-area high-school students’ films, the night will be a coming-out party for a new crop of talent. Judging by the polished creativity of some of the entries, it’s safe to say that young people are more prepared than ever to start telling stories on film from an early age.

According to CBC’s Chris Boyce, the goal of this weekend’s CBCMusic.ca Festival is twofold. First and foremost, the CBC wants to celebrate Canadian music. Second, it wants to celebrate CBC Music, the broadcaster’s online music service, which launched a little over a year ago.

In 1996, Theatre Columbus premiered playwright Michael O’Brien’s “freely adapted” take on the famous Beaumarchais play The Barber of Seville, which was written in 1775. O’Brien’s version mixed in music from the 1816 opera of the same name by Gioachino Rossini, as well as original tunes by composer John Millard. The adaptation also propelled the story forward a couple centuries, with pop culture references galore. With Theatre Columbus co-founder Leah Cherniak at the helm, the musical ended the season with six Dora Award nominations (it won three) and plenty of critical acclaim.

Seventeen years later, Soulpepper Theatre is remounting this zany reimagination of The Barber of Seville, updated once again by O’Brien, Millard, and Cherniak. But, for some reason—the change in decade, or company, or sense of humour—whatever had made the original so magical, has faded, save for a few key performances.

This is one of those tricky moves to spot, because the filmmakers actually made some effort to disguise the fact they weren’t shooting in New York the whole time. Also, it’s been ten years since the shoot so some of the locations are just plain gone.
Take these various bar scenes. We admit it’s tough to be sure on any of them but this grungier location seems to be Stoopy’s Bar on Dundas, also used in The Ref.

Here’s another bar! It’s undergone a major reno since new owners took over but we know they shot scenes at The Paddock and the equally renovated Gladstone Hotel. So, we suspect this is the latter’s historic Melody Bar…

…and this is the former.

This hippie-dippy bar, which looks a bit Austin Powers-ish, is easier to spot. If you can’t see it in the above shot…

…you can see in this one that it’s definitely The Opera House.

As you can tell from that bit, the film moves a lot between 1969 and 1999. This scene takes place in 1969 so the retro diner just gets to kinda be itself. The scene was shot at “The Goof,” the Garden Gate diner, also out on Queen East.

The neighbourhood in which Dennis Quaid and family live is way across town, in Bloor West Village.

This 1999 police station set was built at the Hearn Generating Station. Effectively mothballed since the mid-’80s, it still cuts a fine figure on the Beach skyline and provides a nice playground for urban explorers.

Oh, and we’re throwing this shot in because—hey!—it’s a young Michael Cera!