Results tagged “brunswicktheatre”

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, we look at the renovated Fox Theatre and its battle! against! the! killer! dvds!

Torontoist is sad to report that the Annex's doc-driven underdog moviehouse, the Brunswick Theatre, is closing up shop (tonight!) before even being able to celebrate its first birthday.

It’s funny that we mentioned in our introduction last week, because it’s showing tonight at 11:30 p.m. at the Bloor. It’s been a while, in our memory, since the last time it showed, which would imply that the fans in Toronto aren't as rabid as elsewhere, but we’d still recommend that you don't head along unless you’re very familiar with the film. Who knows what could happen.

Tomorrow night, scores of arts collectives and community groups will be putting on impressive exhibits, performances, and workshops as part of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche. The Toronto Public Space Committee thought it would be neat to do something, too, but guess which word in the event title made the TPSC uncomfortable.

When it premiered at TIFF last year, Radiant City, ostensibly a documentary about urban sprawl, stirred up a bit of controversy. Its portrayal of the soul-rotting effects of the suburban environment on one aggressively average family was met with a variety of bemused reactions, some positive, others less so. (End of Suburbia this wasn't.) Torontoist's Mathew Kumar, for example, savaged it in his spoiler-happy review. But three months later a panel of "filmmakers, festival programmers, journalists, and industry professionals" decreed it one of the ten best Canadian films of the year. And when it opened in New York last May, even the hard-to-please Village Voice seemed to like it, deeming it "enlightening and disturbingly funny."

Last week, because we were completely distracted by Dock in a Box, we didn’t mention our sadness at the loss of both Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni. We also couldn’t think of a Director bad enough to lament the continued existence of in the same breath.

If today’s column title gets Rachel Sweet’s Hairspray stuck in your head for the rest of the day, good! Because then we’ll have made our point that the version of Hairspray hitting this weekend isn’t as good as the John Waters original. Though the music not being as good is only part of it. There’s also the inherent irony about making a musical in which one of the central themes is integration through a shared love of largely-African American music that features only music written by a couple of white dudes. Hell, the irony of just making a musical about that. Musicals are basically the whitest form of entertainment we can imagine.

The good people at Brunswick Theatre are hosting another week of free film screenings! Return their love and boost attendance by coming out to see one (or a few) of the following films:

Unfortunately, Brunswick Theatre cancelled its weeklong screening of Barbara Hammer films and accompanying art exhibit due to lack of attendance. (Only one person attended last Saturday evening. How disappointing.) So in its place, the cinema will show free films for the rest of the week!

2007_05_11_Pirate.jpgThis week, the biggest news in movies is that Warner Bros. has decided to stop all advance promotional screenings of its films in Canada, in attempt to stem the flow of pirated movies from Canada. Yo ho ho! Unfortunately, they’ve likely decided that Canada is a hotbed of disgusting movie pirates on some pretty wonky data. Though apparently there’s no law against recording movies in a theatre onto a camcorder in Canada, which is kind of crazy.

Look out! Here comes David Lynch, man!

2007_04_20_bravestory.jpgSo there we were, all ready to write another post previewing the final weekend of the Sprockets International Film Festival for Children, when we realised that the film we wanted to bring everyone’s attention to, When the Show Tent Came To My Town, had already had all of its showings! Darn. So though we aren’t going to do a full review of the film, we’d just like to note that When the Show Tent Came To My Town is an absolutely brilliant Japanese-language film that deals with school bullying and friendships in an intelligent and moving way, and that if you get a chance to see it (even if you don’t have any kids) you should. It’s great.

So, although we’ve only just spent a whole post gushing about Sprockets, we can’t really forget about the other excellent stuff that’s going on this week. The Images Film Festival closes this weekend, and we’ve been told Live Images 4: Quasar, tonight at the Music Gallery (197 John) at 9:30 p.m. is the hot ticket, as it features “an army of modified 16mm projectors and a quadraphonic sound system to envelop the audience in a pulsating array of light and sound particles.” Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, IMAX!

Going to see all three films in Nicolas Winding Refn's Pusher Trilogy, one after another in one night, is one of this Torontoist’s most treasured cinema memories, and although we did it at 2005’s Toronto International Film Festival, anyone who missed that chance can now do it at the Brunswick Theatre (296 Brunswick Avenue) tonight and tomorrow night starting 7 p.m. It’s $10 for one film or $15 for the lot, so obviously you should see all three.

A few blocks east of Bloor and Bathurst, on the south side of Bloor St. and around Future Bakery, there’s an inconspicuous door facing Brunswick Ave. on the side of the building. Probably only studios or something upstairs, right? Not so on the second floor. Here is housed Toronto’s newest cinema, Brunswick Theatre.

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