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 bellwether of rep cinemas: Bloor Cinema. Photo by Smaku. Audiences at the Bloor Cinema have fallen in love with zombies; a......

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 model used by Cinematheque Ontario. Cinematheque Ontario, the screening program run by the Toronto International Film Festival Group, is not a......

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! Photos by Jonathan Goldsbie. When Festival Cinemas flopped in 2006, the......

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 rebirth of the Revue Cinema and its focus on the Roncesvalles community. Photo of Revue Cinema reopening by Mike Charbonneau. Nobody......

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 fall of Festival Cinemas, which sparked fears that rep cinema would disappear from the city. In 2006, the future of repertory......

Do you fear that just one night of Spice won't suffice? Did you sleep in when tickets went on sale the first time... then again, and again, and again once more? If you wannabe at the concert and can't make it, or are in need of a Posh place to see and be seen, drop by 400 Roncesvalles Avenue this weekend for a matinée version of the next best thing: Spice World Extravaganza. The......

Hello readers! If you were lucky enough to win tickets to the screening of There Will Be Blood last night you will have already made your mind up about the film (well, we hope), but we’re going to subject you to our opinion of it anyway. Quite good, wasn’t it? Contrary to a lot of things we’ve heard, it did seem to be identifiably a Paul Thomas Anderson film (strong performances, non-traditional story arc,......

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains of 2007––the people, places, and things that we've either fallen head over heels in love with or developed uncontrollable rage towards over the past twelve months. Get your dose, starting Boxing Day and running into the new year, three times a day––sunrise, noon, and sunset. When the Festival Cinemas chain was shut down last year by supervillains The McQuillain Kids (after inheriting the business......

We’re going to take a break from our usual Torontoist style in this post because the passing of John Harkness, the film critic for Now magazine since its inception in 1981, is something that has particular importance for me. As the writer of Torontoist's weekly “Film Friday” column, which, as you know, very often quotes the reviews from local critics, I have probably quoted John Harkness more than anyone. There’s a funny story in this,......

Andy Warhol's Factory parties were the ultimate hot spot for an elite cabal of celebrities, radicals, drag queens and porn stars. There has never been a better place to rock out while on an amphetamine high amid mass-produced silkscreen paintings and a fleet of floating silver balloons. Now, just replace Warhol's notorious gang of New York vagabonds with a bunch of over-stimulated children, and you have the idea behind Bunch's next edition of their popular......

Photo by Jeremy Farmer from Flickr. It’s an end of an era as the popular indie night Easy Tiger shuts it down on Friday after a 14 month-run. A hipster haven, Easy Tiger is responsible for introducing hundreds of people to the booze can downstairs of College Street Diner that is Tiger Bar. Midland’s finest, Born Ruffians (pictured), will take the stage and the Easy Tiger DJs will spin the tunes. Expect plenty of......

The Toronto One Minute Film & Video Festival turns five tomorrow. Not to be lumped in with our typical neverending, city-spanning, celebrity-scoping, press-pass flossing film fests, this one usually comes and goes gracefully before anyone even knows it exists. Sixty films, 60 seconds each, played back-to-back at the Bloor Cinema. You couldn’t get bored if you tried. Founded in 2003 as the result of a dare among friends and former-filmmakers in Toronto, the idea is......

This what a bioterrorist looks like, according to the FBI. Dr. Steven Kurtz (right) is a Professor of Art at SUNY Buffalo and member of Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), an art and theatre collective co-founded by Kurtz and his late wife, Hope. In May 2004, the Kurtzes were preparing a piece called Free Range Grains, which allowed participants to test food for the presence of genetically modified organisms, when Hope died of heart failure......

Five days of Pan-Asian cinema in the city kicks off tomorrow night, as the Reel Asian International Film Festival celebrates its eleventh annual incarnation. Bloor Cinema will present the Opening Night Gala film, Finishing the Game, at 7 p.m., followed by a Q&A session with lead actor Roger Fan and producer Julie Asato. Added bonus: local comedy troupe Asiansploitation will perform beforehand on the red carpet. This year's festival is poised to impress. And......

If there’s one thing Torontoist likes to do, it’s moan about stuff, but on the face of it, that Palme d’Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days receiving a theatrical release here is something that should be received without complaint. After all, journalists have praised the film, including Norm Wilner at Metro, who calls the film "marvellous filmmaking." But really, it just gives us a chance to moan about the lack of......

The Royal St. George's College "Focus on the Environment" speaker series continues with David Suzuki at the Bloor Cinema on Monday night. This year's series kicked off in September with Jane Goodall and continues through the rest of the school year with guest speakers ranging from writer Roy MacGregor to polar explorer Geoff Green. In contrast, the only guest speakers we remember from our high school years were actuaries and federal civil servants telling......

Photo by christine mullen photography from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. For horrific undead humans who are sustained only by feeding on our flesh, zombies are surprisingly well-liked. Witness, for instance, Sunday's fifth annual Toronto Zombie Walk, which took zombies on an hour-and-a-half-long lurch from Trinity-Bellwoods up to the Bloor Cinema for the After Dark Film Festival. Braver souls than us were there to take photos, and, as usual, some great shots were submitted to......

With the final film line-up announced and special guests already booking flights to Toronto (legendary horror dude Uwe Boll! Direct from Germany!), the acclaimed Toronto After Dark Film Festival is set to play out its second year. Starting tomorrow night through to the 25th, the Bloor Cinema will play host to over 50 new independent and international horror/sci-fi/fantasy/action/animation and generally offbeat works from across North America, Europe and Asia. Aside from director Boll, who......

Darryl’s Hard Liquor and Porn Film Festival (covered by Amanda Buckiewicz earlier this week) is at the Bloor Cinema this Saturday, October 13 at 8 p.m, but if you’re a person of milder tastes (soft liquor and corn?) this week’s festivals of interest include the Toronto Latin Film Festival, the Macedonian Film Festival, the DNA Film Festival (it’s a busy week for festivals!), and the ImagiNATIVE Film Festival, which continues to win us over......

Chances are, if you're like us, your first experience with pornography was a mix of titillation, curiousity, and shame. Maybe it's still that way, but at least for one weekend you can be free from shame if you join fellow pervs at the Hard Liquor And Porn Film Festival. Eight years ago, Darryl Gold threw a party and invited guests to bring booze and their favourite porn scene. When one party-goer decided to bring......

The Revue cinema is due to reopen its doors on October 4th, and if you’ve been waiting for the chance to buy tickets for the opening night, they’re now on sale at She Said Boom (393 Roncesvalles Avenue) at $20 for the film and the after-party or $10 for just the party at the Lithuanian Hall (1573 Bloor Street West). The opening night film is secret, but it was selected by an online poll,......

It’s the final day of the festival, which is always rather maudlin one—although for those of us who try to cover it, the festival is largely a far too hectic, busy period of time, once things start to slow down the sudden lack of pressure is terribly deflating. Never mind—we’ll have some wrap up coverage for you next week. Tonight’s closing gala is Emotional Arithmetic, reviewed by Jonathan Goldsbie at the very beginning of......

No Film Friday again today, as we’re still too busy with the festival A few of the films that played at the festival are out already, with Neil Jordan’s The Brave One, David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises and Julie Taymor's Across the Universe all on general release. Not even new release Mr. Woodcock escapes a connection—it’s directed by Craig Gillespie, director of festival film Lars and the Real Girl. Today’s Reviews: The Tracey Fragments Though......

Today’s Contest: For your chance to win one pair of tickets to Saturday’s screening of Just Like Home, directed by Lone Scherfig (Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself) at 11:00 p.m. at the Cumberland 3, email us your name at contests@torontoist.com. Winners will be randomly selected and notified by tomorrow morning with ticket pick-up information. This is our last contest and it’s one of the last films of the festival, so if you haven’t taken......

Today’s Contest: For your chance to win one of three pairs of tickets to tomorrow’s screening of Reclaim Your Brain, starring Run Lola Run’s Moritz Bleibtreu (at 12:30 p.m. at the Scotiabank 2) email us your name at contests@torontoist.com. Winners will be randomly selected and notified by the morning of the screening with ticket pick-up information. Today’s Reviews: No Country For Old Men BY DANU MANDLSOHN The villain is Javier Bardem, looking like a......

After much patient waiting (and after $74,000 in donations), the Revue Film Society announced tonight that the Revue Cinema will re-open its doors on Thursday, October 4, 2007. Instead of having a set screening lined up, the Society is asking fans to vote for what the first film ought to be on their website, until September 19. You can choose between Some Like It Hot!, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Touch of......

Today’s Reviews: Juno BY MATHEW KUMAR It sounds unfair to hold directors who are the children of directors to a higher standard than other new filmmakers—but is it really? There is such a wealth of connections and expertise within a phone’s reach that it’s utterly disappointing when someone like Jason Reitman just poops out the latest in Hollywood’s line of safe, fake “indie” films that have absolutely nothing indie about them. Juno MacGuff, a......

Today’s Reviews: You, The Living One of the most critically acclaimed films of the festival so far, You, The Living (pictured above), is a very warm look at the hopes and dreams of the misfit inhabitants of a Swedish apartment complex, told through a series of vignettes. From Roy Andersson (Songs from the Second Floor), the warmth isn’t just towards the characters—it coats each shot like a fog. The film unfortunately places its funniest......

Today's Review: The Orphanage BY DANU MANDLSOHN With Guillermo del Toro’s name attached to a film about undead children at a haunted Spanish orphanage, you might think it would it be scary. Muy bien. Although the Pan’s Labyrinth auteur is merely the producer on this one, debut director Juan Antonio Bayona strikes gold, cherry-picking from modern gothic classics like The Sixth Sense and The Others. He knows that true horror comes from the unseen,......

Though Brad Pitt might be sitting this one out, the Toronto After Dark Film Festival just unveiled the first seven of fourteen feature premieres for their critically acclaimed horror/fantasy fest. Now entering its second year, the current lineup includes (wait for it) David Arquette's horror film debut as writer/director, The Tripper (starring Paul Reubens, Jason Mewes, Lukas Haas, etc). As if that wasn't a sufficient enough reason to grab tickets, other flicks include the......