Torontoist » TIFFlive

CBC Music’s First-Ever Festival Will Be a CanCon Love-In

Chris Dart — Tue, 21 May 2013 17:30:30 +0000

The CBCMusic.ca Festival will feature Sloan, Kathleen Edwards, Of Monsters and Men, and roving appearances by Jian Gomeshi and Matt Galloway.

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.

The Barber of Seville is Not the Sharpest Shave

Carly Maga — Tue, 21 May 2013 15:30:32 +0000

A reworked version of Beaumarchais' play makes for an uneven production, on now at Soulpepper Theatre.

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.

LIVE —6:51 PM

David Topping — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 22:51:00 +0000

Photo by Christopher Drost/Torontoist.

We made it. You made it. Photographer George Pimentel, pictured here on the Roy Thomson Hall red carpet as it was being put away on Saturday night, made it. Go look at our choices for the best and worst things at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Heck, go look at all of our coverage of TIFF 2010. And we’ll see you next year. DAVID TOPPING

Want more TIFF 2010? Torontoist’s complete coverage of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival is all right here.

LIVE — 3:40 PM

David Topping — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 19:39:51 +0000

In addition to name-dropping Honest Ed’s and just being generally handsome, Sam Worthington proved himself on Saturday night to also be one of the nicest guys on any red carpet at any venue at this year’s TIFF. Proof:

Photos by Christopher Drost/Torontoist.

Worthington worked the whole line of autograph-seekers, “top to bottom,” says Torontoist photographer Christopher Drost, who’s been in the press pit at a good two dozen red carpets—and hadn’t seen anything else like it at this year’s festival. DAVID TOPPING

Want more TIFF 2010? Torontoist’s complete coverage of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival is all right here.

TIFF Review Roundup: Day 11

John Semley — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 14:45:00 +0000

This year, TIFF added an extra bonus day to the festival, just to give us all a chance to catch up on films you might have missed. So instead of doing our usual review recap, here are a few films we really liked that are screening on Sunday. Gotta Catch ‘em all! Athina Rachel Tsangari’s ATTENBERG (), which we like more and more the more we think about it, screens at noon at the Varsity 8. Michael Winterbottom’s hilarious Coogan/Brydon road movie The Trip () screens for the last time at 3 p.m. at the Ryerson. (Word is there are plans to break the film down into a TV mini-series, so this may well prove your last chance to see The Trip in its feature-length form.) Tsui Hark’s pleasant surprising wuxia epic Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame () screens today at 4 p.m. at the AMC 4, while at 6:15 p.m. Takahsi Miike’s bloody samurai epic 13 Assassins () unspools at the Scotiabank 1. There’s also Sylvain Chomet’s touching, beautifully animated The Illusionist, at 6:30 p.m. at the TIFF Bell Lightbox 2.

Sunday also offers a chance to catch two of the only four films we assigned perfect five-star ratings. Catch Kelly Reichardt’s magnificent Meek’s Cutoff () at 3 p.m. at the AMC 6, and Daniel Cockburn’s wildly intelligent debut You Are Here () at 4:15 p.m. at the AMC 10. And in case you missed it, we recently reviewed vampire flick Stake Land (), which screens today, but which you could probably stand to miss.

LIVE — 9:12 PM

David Topping — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 01:12:00 +0000

Sam Worthington earlier on in TIFF. Photo by peter j mason from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Sam Worthington ♥ Honest Ed’s, and so we ♥ Sam Worthington. When the Aussie actor was asked on tonight’s red carpet—for Last Night, the second of two films he’s in that screened at this year’s TIFF—where he went shopping today, and if he liked it, you might’ve expected him to name some ritzy Yorkville shop. Instead, he said: “that store… Honest Ed’s?… Yeah, now that place is fucking cool.” DAVID TOPPING

Want more TIFF 2010? Torontoist’s complete coverage of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival is all right here.

TIFF Review Roundup: Day Ten

David Topping — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 14:35:42 +0000

As TIFF wraps up, our reviews are too, but the last stragglers include some of the very best of this year’s festival. There’s 13 Assassins (), the climax of which is an unbelievably good forty-five minute fight scene; there’s Bunraku () is “pure, unadulterated fun”; and there’s Essential Killing (), which sees Vincent Gallo give an “astounding” performance as an Afghan militant. More TIFF here.

LIVE — 7:40 PM

David Topping — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 23:40:42 +0000

Photographer Pete Morawski has spent a lot of this year’s TIFF outside the InterContinental Hotel on Bloor Street West. Here are a few of his most intimate-feeling shots of the celebrities who braved the crowds there:

You can see even more in his Flickr set. DAVID TOPPING

Want more TIFF 2010? Torontoist’s complete coverage of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival is all right here.

TIFF Review Roundup: Day Nine

David Topping — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 13:09:00 +0000

Caves! Mountains! Ultra-violence! Today in TIFF reviewry: Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams () is “one of the best uses of the [3-D] medium to date”; Danny Boyle’s pass-out-inducing 127 Hours () is lazy, superficial, and entirely missable; and Kim Ji-Woon’s I Saw The Devil () is a remarkable—and remarkably violent—thriller, and only our third five-star film at the festival to date.

LIVE — 6:22 PM

David Topping — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 22:21:47 +0000

Looks like Joaquin Phoenix gotcha, suckers! Casey Affleck, director of Phoenix doc I’m Still Here (which screened at TIFF), has come clean to the New York Times. The film is a fake: part of an elaborate hoax on the part of Phoenix to stage the disintegration of a celebrity before the eyes of a slack-jawed TMZ-obsessed public. Even the Phoenix family home video footage in the opening scenes was faked. Affleck also called I’m Still Here the performance of Phoenix’s career. We told you so. JOHN SEMLEY

Want more TIFF 2010? Torontoist’s complete coverage of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival is all right here.

LIVE — 12:37 PM

David Topping — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 16:37:35 +0000

And if you hadn’t heard already, the long-shot Bruce Springsteen appearance at the Horseshoe on Wednesday night was not to be: he was back at home in New Jersey last night. DAVID TOPPING

Want more TIFF 2010? Torontoist’s complete coverage of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival is all right here.

LIVE — 12:00 PM

David Topping — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Roger Ebert likes us! He really likes us. (Not our chain stores, mind you.) The Chicago Sun-Times reviewer and Twitter fanatic is in town for TIFF, and in between his usual tweets about film and the Tea Party and the horrifyingly steep Scotiabank Theatre elevator, he took a few characters to reflect on the city that he’s made a week-and-a-half-long stopover in.

Want more TIFF 2010? Torontoist’s complete coverage of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival is all right here.