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“Catvertising” Swipes at the Internet

How Toronto ad agency John St. attracted international attention with a YouTube advertising spoof.

The savviest theorists of our modern media age have suggested that the internet is, in fact, made of cats. Toronto-based advertising agency John St. has taken this idea one step further: “Catvertising,” the firm’s YouTube parody of overeager marketing strategists, hit the tubes on November 10 and has already received attention from international media outlets, [...]

Mike Tompkins, Mouth-Made Man

Mike Tompkins’ latest a capella cover, Rihanna’s “Only Girl,” featuring Shad. Another year (month? day?), another YouTube celebrity is born. Mike Tompkins is having his turn; ever since the twenty-three-year-old Ilderton, Ontario–raised, Toronto-based artist started uploading his elaborate a capella covers of huge pop hits like Miley Cyrus’s “Party In the USA” and Katy Perry’s [...]

The Full Text of the “Officer Bubbles” Statement of Claim

UPDATED An apparent copy of the statement of claim filed by the attorneys of Adam Josephs (better known to the internet as “Officer Bubbles”) has surfaced online. If you read just one thirty-page legal document today, let this be it. Last week, the media found out that Josephs, a Toronto police officer, was suing YouTube [...]

NFB and YouTube Do the Cannes Cannes

Word association time! When you think of the Cannes Film Festival, happening now on the sunny French Riviera, which of the following pops into your head: a) prestigious awards like the coveted Palme d’Or, b) celebrity-studded red-carpet events, or c) insightful online comments like “go suck a dick” and “LMFAO”? Granted, options “a” and “b” [...]

Roger’s Miscommunications

If you’ve ever been watching television and immediately jumped to back up the DVR lest your eyes had deceived you (a certain Super Bowl halftime performance perhaps?), yesterday’s broadcast of Sportsnet’s Hockey Central may have been one of those moments. Reporting from a Flames vs. Blackhawks game in Chicago yesterday, Sportsnet’s Roger Millions suddently entered [...]

Orchestral Manoeuvres on the ‘Net

At first blush, the idea of YouTube becoming a patron of classical music seems a tad counterintuitive. To those versed in its most popular content, the world’s dominant video streaming site is known as the domain of the brief, the crass, and the weird, with a meme or two thrown in for good measure (not [...]

Saving Toronto’s TV Heritage, One Tape at a Time

Have you ever passed by a yard sale, glimpsed a box full of unwanted VHS tapes, and wondered who in the world would want to lug home a pile of grainy CityTV bootlegs from 1987? As it turns out, the answer is Ed Conroy, a Scarborough television buff and editor with kids’ monthly The Magazine. [...]

Urban Planner: August 8, 2008

FESTIVAL: Toronto’s annual Taste of the Danforth festival returns tonight and runs until Sunday. Along with the usual smorgasbord of excellent Greek food come expected crowds of over 500,000, and a healthy serving of ambivalence. Danforth Avenue from Broadview Avenue to Jones Avenue, 6 p.m., FREE. INTERNET: Inspired by last year’s mass YouTube community gathering [...]

Avi Lewis’s America

According to the Inside the CBC blog and the National Post, Toronto’s favourite boyish-looking provocateur, Avi Lewis, is back on the airwaves with his newest show, Frontline: USA. The show promises to “strip away the spin and highlight real issues such as poverty, violence, race, health, and immigration” in America. Considering that Lewis is involved [...]

U.S. Dems Slam NAFTA, Flaherty Vs. Miller, Hope There’s A Big Changing Table At Queen’s Park

Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman has caused a furor with his comment that he’d be willing to test-drive an adult diaper to see if being left in soiled diapers for hours on end is really all that bad. Critics say he isn’t taking the issue of sub-standard care in nursing homes seriously, which seems a [...]

Flaherty Needs New Shoes, Criminal Needs Punch In Face, Alberta Needs Eco-Perspective

Federal finance minister Jim Flaherty emphasized that today’s budget will be “frugal” in anticipation of an economic slowdown in the coming year. To demonstrate the concept in symbolic terms, Flaherty had an old pair of shoes resoled instead of buying the pair of new shoes traditionally associated with budgets. Flaherty also announced that he’s saving [...]

Rep Cinema Revival: Bonus Features

Every day this week, Torontoist is exploring the future of repertory cinema in Toronto. We spoke to the theatre managers of four major rep cinemas to hear if rep cinema is dying, what it’s like to exist in a YouTube society, and what original programming has them most excited. Today, to conclude our series, we [...]