There's so much going on across the Ist-a-Verse that it's almost impossible to keep track these days. Fortunately, we do it so you don't have to! Londonist took a walk through Oliver Twist's London, thanks to a gorgeous map layer for Google Earth. They also caught up with modern-day fictional London, with the Fantastic Four and 28 Weeks Later. It was a week of insanity over at DCist. They started the week off with......

Toronto-based Oli Goldsmith has embarked on a project both daunting and bizarre, but surely to the delight of pop culture afficionados: he's creating a thousand portraits of...Borat? Yep, Borat. A senior designer at the CBC, former Artist in Residence at the Drake Hotel and creator of Our Lady Peace's Spritual Machines album art, Goldsmith has now set his sights on the infamous character created by Sacha Baron Cohen. The artist spoke with Torontoist about......

Torontonians were once again woefully unprepared for the first major snowfall of the season. 500 traffic accidents in one day, people. Do we really want everybody else making fun of us again, like that time Mel Lastman called in the Army to help out after a snowfall? It's winter. It comes every year. Just because we've had a freakishly warm winter thus far is no excuse for complacency! At the Golden Globes, Dreamgirls becomes......

Jagshemash! Borat is a hit. It's getting rave reviews, grossing millions, and definitely the most quotable thing we've seen in ages. But Borat seems to have missed most of the -ist cities, and we were all wondering how the film would have been different if he'd made his way around the world on the -ist tour. In Shanghai, Borat would be observing Inane Learnings of Penis Photos for Make Benefit Glorious Flat World of......

David Miller was reelected Mayor of Toronto with almost 57 per cent of the vote. Voter turnout increased to 41.1 per cent. Full election results for all wards are available on the Toronto website. Miller used his acceptance speech to make his promises clear. Rather than use the new City of Toronto Act to add new taxes, Miller will be asking for 1 cent of the sales tax generated by Toronto from the provincial and......

Absolutely no one can think of an interesting way to introduce Bobcat Goldthwait’s return to feature direction, (after 1992’s Shakes the Clown) Sleeping Dogs Lie, because by the very nature of the film you’re forced to kind of explain that it’s about a woman sucking off a dog but really it’s a complex film about relationships. Anyway, now that’s over, we can say that we didn’t get a chance to see it at TIFF but......

Only fifty years left for sea fish. Unless, of course, we do something wacky and start serious conservation efforts immediately. For those interested in eating ecologically responsible seafood, here is help. Former Pizza Pizza head arrested for income tax evasion. He apparently "forgot" to pay over $650,000 in income taxes. A federal report says the Toronto Port Authority is just fine and recommends expansion of the island airport. In case you missed it: Toronto......

Could Garth Turner become the first Green MP in the House of Commons? It’s not as unlikely as you may think. In related news, a CTV-Globe and Mail poll finds that Canadians would be willing to pay an energy tax if the funds went towards reducing greenhouse gases In one of the weirdest cases in recent memory, the woman accused of hiding a baby in the freezer says the child never existed. Ex Heather......

As fall settles in and another calendar page gets turned, thoughts turn from bbq's and vacations to holidays and the realization that '06 is coming to an end. With all that going on, with change in the air, we wonder what is it that made that makes the -ists ponder? Phillyist is concerned that the war on Trans fats could affect it's beloved cheese steak sandwiches, something for which we should all be concerned.......

What, it's over? Filmmakers, fans, industry people and most of all bloggers are in shock that this year's TIFF is coming to an end. Vickie over at Moviepie Musings has even given it a name Post Festival Sickness. I hate PFS. And, if it really is PFS, it’s not even waiting until after my final screening to kick in this year. Evil! I am fighting its onset tooth and nail, dosing myself with plenty of......

We start today's late roundup with the Dixie Chicks or the Dixie Chicks documentary to be exact. GreenCine daily goes on at length about Shut Up and Sing, the doc about the backlash the country trio faced after making anti-Bush comments. And we can't seem to shake Borat. Time's Richard Corliss seems to have fallen under the Kazakh's spell and gushes about the film. The Hollywood Reporter blog points out that Borat doesn't actually speak......

It's not quite an uprising more like a small complaint but an important one nonetheless. "Why are there no Q and A's at the Elgin theatre," Jeremy Barker at Popped Culture asks? "We’ve already accosted two film fest directors this week to ask what was up. Noah Cowan, co-director of the festival, explained that while “we understand that interaction is integral to the festival experience, emptying the theatre is a logistical nightmare....But is it really......

Masters 12:00pm – The Wind That Shakes the Barley (Visa Screening Room (Elgin) 9:00pm – Rescue Dawn (Ryerson Theatre) Discovery 12:30pm – King and the Clown (Paramount 1) – See our review. 6:00pm – The Art of Crying (Paramount 3) 8:15pm – Reprise (Varsity 2) – See our review. Gala 12:45pm – Penelope (Ryerson Theatre) 1:30pm – The White Planet (Roy Thompson Hall) 9:30pm – Babel (Roy Thompson Hall) Real to Reel 3:00pm – Manufactured......

A busy day for Torontoist yesterday, though no parties; though the Star! TV Shmooze was taking place. We didn’t hear any gossip about it, but it did rain. So we imagine the gossip would be something like… Famous celebrities got a bit wet. Torontoist instead felt the hot tickets of the night were the screening of Guy Maddin’s Brand Upon the Brain, which featured members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, foley artists, a narrator and......

If the creators of Borat knew just how much buzz they'd get from Thursday night's projector malfunction they'd probably have taken a club to the machine themselves. So here we are 24 hours later and finally through a whole screening of Borat. We're telling you now. Don't go see Borat because a couple of months after this film hits widespread release it'll insinuate itself into the cultural zeitgeist faster than a Kazakh prostitute (the cleanest......

There are literally dozens of blogs covering the Festival this year, and while most of them are personal sites listing what movies they could or couldn't get into, a few stand out. Torontoist will do his best to roundup the blogosphere's TIFF coverage. Everyone, and we mean everyone is talking about Borat but there are other films playing at this festival don't you know? Kenneth Branagh and Stephen Fry's adaptation of Mozart's the Magic Flute......

Photo courtesy of John Shearer/WireImage for Toronto International Film Festival Two Torontoist contributors, Rob Shostak and Mathew Kumar, covered last night's absolutely ridiculous evening at the Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan screening. Borat arrived to much fanfare on top of a wagon pulled by sluggish and reluctant 'Kazakhstani' women. And that was only the beginning. Shostak was inside the theatre, and has all the juicy details (Technical......

Well, with day one done and dusted, this morning perhaps many people will still be sleeping off the opening night party, but for others (not least the staff and volunteers) it been another early morning to get the festival up and running. This is the first full day of the festival and as such it’s heavy with films to join the rush queue for. Let’s see what we’d give that honor to. Visions 11:15am –......

We've finished up our TIFF Preview, so today we begin our daily coverage of the festival, beginning with this, our picks for the first day. Or as we should perhaps say, the first night, because the festival doesn’t really kick off until this evening, other than one screening (Kenneth Branagh’s The Magic Flute, sneaking in early). It’s rather odd that the opening Gala isn’t literally the first film, but we guess that’s the way it......