After last month’s inaugural open-mic-esque short film program at the Revue was so chock-a-block full of awesome, Tim Bourgette and co. wasted no time looking ahead to a sequel. Thus, Drop Your Shorts 2 (electric boogaloo) opens for submissions this Sunday. Toronto filmmakers, no matter their level of radness/awfulness/professionalism/lack thereof, are invited to throw down whatever artsy weirdness they have on back catalog for a public screening/execution on March 6. Films can be any genre......

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......

Today we celebrate Ontario's first ever Family Day. Banks and government offices are closed, but many malls and stores are open for last-minute Family Day shopping. As reported by the Sun, the Fraser Institute released its 2008 rankings of Ontario elementary schools, with most schools in the GTA faring reasonably well. If you have stupid kids, you can use the report to find a lousy school to send them to so people won't blame......

Is 1996 retro yet? Probably not, but that doesn't mean Toronto isn't way overdue for some good, old-fashioned ska-punk sounds courtesy of Less Than Jake, who are playing a free show this Saturday (January 19) at 8:00 p.m. at The Sound Academy (aka. The Docks). They make us all nostalgic for the old days...you know, hanging out in dirty parking lots with skateboards and big puffy shoes, dreaming about when your first chair trombone......

It's Boxing Day! Go spend money! If you don't, Canada's economy will suffer and it will all be your fault! You probably don't even own all the seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD yet, do you? You slacker. Turkey explains how well its airstrikes in Kurdish Iraq have worked. Short answer: they worked really well, unless you count regional destabilization and the potential for all-out war in the Middle East as a minus,......

Sarah Polley is having a kickass month as her debut directorial feature, Away From Her, racks up the accolades. On Sunday, the Los Angeles film critics gave Polley a New Generation Award for up-and-coming directors. Then, on Monday, the New York film critics felt Away From Her was 2007's Best First Film. In addition, earlier this month Polley was named one of the "50 Smartest People in Hollywood" by Entertainment Weekly. She's the youngest......

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. Among the reasons for the closure, as given by owners Scott Gilbert and Bre Walt, were the high overhead costs, a lack of private rentals in the coming months, and the recent postering crackdown that stuck them with a $1500 fine. Not fun times for a......

Last Wednesday, legendary Canadian music retailer Pindoff Record Sales sold off their 72-store Music World chain. Two days later, the new owners filed for bankruptcy protection and and will likely lay off 648 employees by the end of January. And so it goes. According to court documents, Music World plans an "orderly wind down," including closing stores and liquidating inventory. The retailer has been in dire straits for years, propped up by the Toronto-based......

On Sunday afternoon, over 150 independent publishers, writers, artists and bloggers from across the continent will pack Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel for Canzine, Canada’s largest celebration of small press publishing and alternative culture. The affair is organized by Broken Pencil, a quarterly magazine devoted to mobilizing the scattered community of small-circulation art. This year, to coincide with the release of its Horror Issue and, well, Halloween in general, the theme is Indie Horror. That means the......

Slightly different beginning to our Film Friday today, because we’d like to highlight the fact that our favourite film in ages, Reprise (pictured above), was released on DVD this week. We really feel it should have been given the same kind of cinematic release it’s getting right now in the UK, rather than an astonishingly bare-bones DVD transfer with burned-in subtitles, but what are you going to do? You really have to see it......

It’s always strange to write a Film Friday column in the week before the Toronto International Film Festival, since by this point it’s hard to think about anything else. We’ll be previewing the festival on Monday, so be sure to check back if you can’t think of anything else, either. In the meantime, have you had a chance to enter our Canadian Retrospective contest? You could win one Canadian Retrospective ticket package containing tickets......

The Real Toronto's hook is relatively simple. Filmed in the summer of 2005 by a now-24-year-old Russian immigrant nicknamed Madd Russian, it aims to show that "Toronto, known to most as a world class city has another side to it. This movie shows the reality of living in housing projects and some of the most run down areas in the city. This footage includes interviews with gang members, drug dealers and some of the......

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......

Enormous DVD piracy bust in Missisauga. Investigators believe it was making over twenty million dollars a year. This is a huge blow to professional movie piracy in Canada. (Well, at least to that one piracy ring. Other movie pirates probably don't care. And in fact are kind of happy about the loss of competition.) Of course, this is not so much the case to people who just want to pirate movies for their own use,......

Amidst the swirl of sensationalism surrounding the death of a "caretaker" at the Brentwood home of actor Ving Rhames last week, many Torontonians were unaware that the victim, 40-year-old Jacob Adams, was a local actor and screenwriter. "If hard work was enough to make it in Hollywood, then Jacob should have been a superstar," says friend and acting colleague Janice Edwards. "My last Jacob sighting was just outside Albert's on St. Clair West. He was......

While the Bicycles filled the Tranzac’s main space with their own glorious indie-rock racket (and a forty-five minute "interactive gaming session" of their new DVD board game!), this Friday found an even weirder sort of noise-making taking place inside the little glassed-in room just beside the venue’s main entrance. Leading the weirdness factor inside the cozy space was Gravity Wave, probably the only sort-of-rap-cum-pop group in the city to possess a twelve-year-old hype man. Seriously,......

It's not entirely clear how or when R. Kelly's hip-hop opera "Trapped in the Closet" became a Zeitgeist. Part music video, part soap opera, it—while verging on self-parody throughout—has spawned parodies by everyone from South Park (which used it to make fun of Tom Cruise and John Travolta, among others) to Weird Al (who used it to make fun of fast food. Oh Weird Al!). What is clear is why it's been embraced by seemingly......

Torontoist has been saying for years that City Council provides better bang for your buck than any other piece of live entertainment in this city. At absolutely no cost (unless you count, you know, taxes), you can attend this extravaganza that combines the spectacle and epic scale of a mega-musical with the manic energy of a really good Fringe show. Each run lasts two consecutive days a month but is often held over to......

Our other Pride DVD giveaway is still underway with lots of entries, but we've got two more Pride-related prize packs to give out—one for the gay boys (or the girls who love them) and one for the gay girls (or the boys who love them). Read-on to see what's in the booty chest this time, courtesy of Defiant Entertainment.......

We love giving away free stuff, and since it's Pride Week, why not go with a theme? Thanks to our friends at Morningstar Entertainment, we've got two Pride-related DVD prize packs to give away. Here's what's included in each: A story of two school pals ostracized by their friends and family, The Two of Us was once the most controversial film ever produced by the BBC. Causing an political uproar when first aired in......

Do you love this city? Of course you do! And here's your chance to profess your undying love to the world. Elevator Films, the people who brought you the Hot Doc hit Let's All Hate Toronto, are holding a contest called "Let's All Love Toronto." They are asking you—yes, you—to share photos and videos of why it is that you love this fair city of ours. Does riding the subway warm your heart? Put......

With the Images Festival and Hot Docs just around the corner, AGYU has another event to add to your undoubtedly awesome viewing calendar. Hot…New…Video…Art is a one-evening screening that will focus on Canadian and International experiments in short film and, appropriately, video art. Featured artists include Gwenael Belanger, Nadine Bariteau, Lesley Loksi Chan, Joe Hambleton, David Han, Miriam Heller-Sahlgren, Jesika Joy, Scott Kildall, Alison S.M. Kobayashi, Su-Ying Lee, Julie Lequin, Otto Mogren, Rasmus Albertsen Ottosen,......

Hey fan boys and girls! Are you still gushing over comic book legend Stan Lee’s cameo on last Monday's episode of Heroes (pictured left)? Well get ready to get giddy again. Lee will be appearing at an autograph session this afternoon at HMV (5:30 – 6:30 at 272 Queen St. W.). The 85-year-old Lee is in town to promote the launch of his new DVD, Stan Lee Presents Mosaic. As perhaps the world's most widely......

All right, time to face reality: Valentine's Day is 2 days away, and you're still single. Dateless. Planless. You got nothin'. You've perused Torontoist's list of fun, naughty Valentine's events, but you're really not into going to any of them alone. You're figuring you just won't leave the house on Wednesday. You hate Valentine's Day even when you're not single: who wants to be surrounded by nauseatingly cute couples fawning over each other? Blech!......

At approximately 8:38 am yesterday, Toronto-based director Deepa Mehta (above) and producer David Hamilton learned that they were Academy Award nominees for Best Foreign Language Film for their work on Water. They learned of their nomination like most of us did, watching Salma Hayek announcing a list of names live on CNN. “They announce the nominees in alphabetical order, and when they got to the fifth name without announcing Volver, we thought we were......

We don't know about you, but it's friggin cold out there. Well, not for some of you. It seems as though places that are supposed to be cold are warm and places that are supposed to be warm are cold. Or maybe that's just us. Either way, we're freezing. Austinist said goodbye to their co-editor (sell-out) and played rumor monger on the SXSW lineup. And when dozens of dead birds littered downtown Austin, it's Big......

Dear Drivers, We know that the weather is totally crappy outside, visibility is low, your brakes don't work as well and you're annoyed about your shiny car getting all wet. But please, drive carefully out there. This list compiled by Joe over at Biking Toronto tells me that many of you aren't thinking straight when you're operating heavy machinery, and that's not a good thing. How else can we explain two hit-and-runs on the......

What do you think of Vice Magazine, readers? Do you like it or hate it? We here at Torontoist really like Vice Magazine. Sure, it might be equal parts irritating and excellent, offensive and thought-provoking, but that, if anything is what makes it good. Along those lines, they’ve got some interesting stuff in the works, not least Vice Broadcasting Systems, an internet TV channel coming sometime in early 2007. They're perhaps testing the water, but......

If you haven't heard of Kenny vs. Spenny, stick this in your pipe and smoke it: after only two seasons, the show is the largest selling format series in Canadian history. DVD sales are through the roof. The show or licensed versions of it play in almost twenty countries, from Turkey to Iceland to Colombia. Kenny Hotz and Spencer Rice have intensely dedicated followings, including fans like Matt Stone and Trey Parker of South......

Friday, we caught the 9:15 pm show of Mutual Appreciation at the Bloor Cinema. Shot in grainy black and white, we follow the story of Alan, a musician who's just relocated to New York from Boston. He's finding his way in a new city with the help of his old friend Lawrence and Lawrence's girlfriend Ellie. Alan's band has broken up, he's got a gig to play, and he needs to find a drummer.......