Results tagged “corrections”

Phil Pick does not enjoy being called a villain. Wait, which Toronto publication was it that described him that way, again? Oh, right. It was us.

             

Well, it's over. We came, we saw, we didn't wait in line once (thanks, priority pass). But before we throw up our tattered white flags and rejoin society, it’s nigh time for some sort of festival wrap-up to prove we were actually there and weren't just telling you what to do. So here is a smattering of reviews and photos from our handsome reporters who we set loose into the night every night for however many nights it's been. Marvel as we run down our most memorable shows (thankfully limited to maybe one-quarter of what we saw) in hopes of helping you relive the magic. Or at least helping you fake like you were there if any of your cooler friends ask.

FILM: Has digital killed film? Definitely not, says the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers (LIFT) with tonight’s screening of nine beautiful stop-motion, 16mm films. Afterward, two of the filmmakers, Jonathan Amitav and Chris Gehman, speak about the challenges and rewards of working with film. This event is the first part of a six-part series entitled Strategies of the Medium, supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and running until Spring 2010. Cinecycle (129 Spadina Avenue), 7 p.m., $8, $5 for members.

Renting in Toronto is already a trying experience, what with landlords charging outrageous rents for their "bright, sunny" basement apartments. But renters with furry companions face another hassle: apartment ads that boldly state "No pets," and landlords who won't rent to someone with a pet.

ART: Communication | Environment, part of Luminato, features a series of eye-popping installations with the common theme of contemporary communications. Among them is David Rokeby’s installation at the Allen Lambert Galleria, which features sixty-four spheres suspended along the atrium in the form of a modified sine wave (the basic structure of wireless communication). Allen Lambert Galleria (181 Bay Street), all day, FREE.

We are all geeks now. It's seen in the massive popularity of the Star Trek reboot, in the adoption of instant messaging and Twitter (descended from the chat rooms and IRC channels we forever associate with old-school modem sounds), and in the way people soup up laptops or accessorize iPods. The gravitational pull of the social web is so strong it seems every and any company has dived in, racking up Twitter and Facebook accounts, hoping to capture a few seconds of attention span from the overstimulated millenials. The banks—often the most careful corporations in Canada about use of their image and brand—are no exception and have dived into the Wild Wild West of Web 2.0. Scotiabank, CIBC, RBC, TD, and ING Direct, for example, have all joined Twitter, the rapidly growing micro-blogging site.

Can a commercial printer invoke religion in order to refuse services?

The Dufferin Jog—that railway underpass at Dufferin and Queen—has long been considered a public art icon in Toronto. It's just that the public art it's displayed has been graffiti and paste-ups rather than municipally chosen sculpture.

This weekend, the Toronto Reference Library’s bespectacled old ladies of Saturday morning cartoon fame were replaced with another near-sighted crowd. Trading cat’s eye glasses for black horn rims, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival crowd, several thousand strong, dominated at least the first two floors of the behemoth library.

POLITICS: Toronto City Hall is hosting a town hall meeting tonight about the Beautifulcity.ca initiative, which would implement stricter billboard bylaws, and fees. The proposal, which will be voted on in a few weeks' time, will not only give a 53% increase to the current annual municipal funding for artists and art institutions, but will also provide, annually, three hundred thousand dollars for each of the thirteen identified "priority neighbourhoods" and one hundred thousand dollars for each of the city's forty-four wards, as well as the ability to hire "seventeen dedicated staff to enforce the new billboard bylaw, create a public inventory, direct removals, and collect fines," according to organizer Devon Ostrom. For more information on how to get involved, check out the Facebook event, and keep your eyes on Torontoist this week for further coverage. Toronto City Hall (100 Queen Street West, Council Chambers), 6:30–9 p.m., FREE.

When a band gets their start not by releasing their own material, but by remixing Toronto favourites such as The D'Urbervilles, Gentlemen Reg, and the Rural Alberta Advantage, the weight of expectation can be heavy. Borders, out today on Pheromone Recordings, is the debut full-length for Toronto/Guelph spaz quintet Green Go where indie rock meets electronica in the dark, and fight (dance?) to the death.

The TTC has announced that staff is recommending Bombardier—over Siemens—to manufacture more than two hundred new low-floor light rail vehicles, due to roll out across Toronto's existing streetcar network starting in 2012 (for "passenger service," after a prototype arrives in 2011), at a cost of $1.22 billion.

Both the Globe and Star picked up and ran with yesterday's story about Virgin Radio's subway suicide ad; here's the Star's article, and here's the Globe's. From them, we learn that Astral Media Radio programming director Pat Holliday, upon seeing early mock-ups of the ads, said that "we were all laughing like crazy because we just thought they were so funny"; that TTC Chair Adam Giambrone is saying the TTC should review its policies for commercial still photography; and that the Star somehow managed to completely avoid mentioning either Torontoist or writer Jonathan Goldsbie in their article, saying instead that "The Toronto Public Space Committee," which Goldsbie is a member of but wasn't acting on behalf of, "didn't find the poster so amusing and alerted TTC chair Adam Giambrone, who agreed they were 'in poor taste'." And, oh yeah—the Globe helpfully restated one of the most important parts of our story yesterday, one of the biggest reasons the ads were so dubious: "Astral [Media], which holds the city's massive street furniture contract and administers all advertising on transit shelters, also owns Virgin Radio." Whoopsy daisy.

According to Anand Agarawala, computer interfaces “don’t go as deep or [aren’t] as emotionally engaging as they possibly could be.” To some, this statement may seem far-fetched and unrealistic—but ask users of Apple products how they feel about their iPhones and MacBooks, and you won’t have difficulty finding some who profess a love for these gadgets.

Last Thursday night, a lucky few who thoughtfully pre-ordered Metric’s new album filed into a secret show on Queen Street West to get an early taste of what they invested their dollars in. The event's details, aimed to promote the April 7 release of their latest album Fantasies, was kept under wraps until hours before doors opened, but the late notice didn’t prevent the house from filling up with around 150 fans who were willing to cancel their evening plans. The deceptively named Great Hall was actually quite small for the figurative size of the band, but perfect to set the cool, secret vibe of the exclusive show.

When was the last time you heard about Africa's development troubles? Not too long before the global economic disaster hit, the issue had finally permeated the mainstream media, which increased aid to the continent; since then, wealthy nations and the Western media have re-focused on their own problems. But it should come as no surprise that Africa's struggles have persisted—and in some cases deteriorated even further. Of these, access to medicines remains a prominent dilemma: Canada took a lead role in finding a solution to this debacle earlier this decade, but our work ultimately proved futile because the legislation we passed (Bill C-9, now known as Canada's Access to Medicines Regime or CAMR) was much too limiting. Following the tabling of Bill S-232 in the Senate this past Tuesday, though, that may no longer be the case.

The Queen Street West Heritage Conservation District came into force back in September 2007, preserving a 1.5 kilometre stretch of Queen Street between University Avenue and Bathurst Street. According to a study conducted for the City's Heritage Preservation Services, the proposal was not intended to restrict development, rather to ensure that any future changes would complement the overall historic character of the area, “which results in part from a continuous street wall, defined by the cumulative character of building scale, mass, height, and proportion.”

With the two-hour series finale of the epic, bar-raising reboot of Battlestar Galactica airing this Friday, what could be better than checking it out in high definition on the silver screen, surrounded by a dedicated audience of T.O.'s geek elite? Or better yet, doing so while contributing a little something to a good cause, fully secure in your anything-but-Cylon humanity?

View Torontoist's 2010 Toronto map (1.9 MB .PDF)

Today was not a good internet day for soon-to-be-former National Post technology reporter (and fleeting Torontoist contributor from way back when) David George-Cosh. In the opening shot in a brief but intense public fight on Twitter, one summarized nicely on MediaStyle, product marketer April Dunford earlier this afternoon called out an at-that-point-unnamed journalist: "Reporter to me 'When the media calls you, you jump, OK!?' Why, when you called me and I’m not selling? Newspapers will get what they deserve." George-Cosh was a touch displeased, outing himself as the "reporter," and telling Dunford "hey april - fuck you. seriously. fuck you" as she tried to calm him down.

Can Mel really have purchased all six thousand tickets? That's seemingly the only explanation for how the New Zealand folk-rock parody duo Flight of the Conchords can have so quickly sold out both of their upcoming Toronto concerts, despite the handicap of only having one fan. A large number of the tickets for the April 21 and 22 shows, both at Massey Hall, were snatched up through an online pre-sale to members of the band's web-based fan club at the beginning of this month, and the remainder were snatched up within hours of when they went on sale publicly last Friday. All in all, it's getting harder and harder to refer to band members Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement as "cult favourites."

You’ve got to hand it to a woman who can look at footage of herself from the mid-1980s and unabashedly proclaim: “Yeah, I guess I was pretty hot.”

Store makeovers don’t always have negative outcomes. According to the Danforth East Community Association (DECA), successful projects can even revive and re-energize a desolate community.

HOLIDAYS: Christmas season wouldn’t be complete without a look at the seasonal window display of the Bay. The Bay calls this year’s theme “Enchanted Forest.” They’ve brought back last year’s animated Santa window, referring to it as an “encore presentation.” We’ll call it "used," but even Santa can be forgiven for being on a budget this year. The Bay Queen Street (176 Yonge Street), any time, FREE.

You'd be forgiven for seeing nothing but charcoal skies on the holiday shopping horizon, but you also wouldn't be looking quite industriously enough. But, don't fear; that's why we're here! The past week has brought joy to our spendthrift hearts, with creative retail outlets, more like niche markets than stores, popping up all over the place. Looking to spend like it's 2007? Scope out the trio of cool new addresses atop our shopping list.

Sometimes you have to spell out what would seem to be self-evident. This sign on the door of a store on Spadina Avenue just north of Oxford Street once again raises the question of whether the automated public washrooms Toronto is reportedly getting beginning next year, as part of Astral Media’s advertising-driven "street furniture" plan, will be anywhere near enough. The follow-up question has to be: even if there was a pay-toilet right on the corner, would the pisser and/or puker bother fumbling for a loonie to gain access or save the money and go ahead and defile the doorway, anyway?

Each week, Torontoist examines the upcoming TV listings and makes note of programs that are entertaining, informative, and of quality. Or, alternately, none of those. The result: Televisualist.

FILM: For the ninth year in a row, the imagineNATIVE film festival will feature videos and films by indigenous artists, alongside exhibitions and workshops voicing stories of survival and identity. You may have noticed their Indian Jane posters around—the festival's annual marketing campaigns cleverly deconstruct Hollywood stereotypes of natives (we've been informed that the awesome scene in Temple of Doom where the guy gets his heart ripped out didn't actually happen...sigh). Various locations, runs October 15–19. Tickets start at $7.

Every Saturday morning, Historicist looks back at the events, places, and characters—good and bad—that have shaped Toronto into the city we know today.

MUSIC: Torontonian electro-soul group Pants and Tie are celebrating the release of their new single, "Washing Machine," with a party tonight at Sneaky Dee's. The single, mixed by Dale Morningstar, will be available on both CD and vinyl at the show. Pants and Tie will be performing (obviously), accompanied by musical sets from the Pink Noise and Slow Hand Motem, and a DJ set from DVAS. Sneaky Dee's (431 College Street), 9 p.m., $5.