Attention residents of the tri-city area: much of the cast of SCTV is reuniting for a single live performance in Toronto on Monday, May 5 at 8 p.m. The occasion is a benefit for the Alumni Fund for Second City cast and crew facing financial or health difficulties. It's bound to be difficult for the talented troupe—Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, and Dave Thomas will all be there—to live......

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, to conclude our series, we look at the next immediate steps for rep cinema. Photo by Flashfonic. The story of rep cinema in Toronto is......

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......

Hello, and welcome to another installment of everyone’s favourite film column in which the writer makes up their opinions on the weeks films largely based on what trailers they’ve seen on TV. This week we didn’t watch much (busy watching our IT Crowd Series 2 and Metalocalypse DVDs) so the only one which managed to break our consciousness was the three seconds or so we caught of a trailer for In Bruges, a Belgium-set......

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......

The arrival of Toronto Life in the mailbox each month is something to look forward to, except for one thing: the ridiculous payload of advertising that comes with it. Now, we understand that magazines generally lose money on subscriptions, and Toronto Life's $24 annual fee is worth every penny, but we think that Toronto Life is starting to look more like Toronto Life Square. Subscription card "blow-ins" and heavy-stock ad inserts are extremely unpopular......

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......

Scandinavian Airlines says that they will permanently ground their fleet of Canadian-made Bombardier Q400 turboprops following three accidents involving problems with landing gear. In response, Bombardier will no longer market the plane as the Q400 Skid. The Dalai Lama is in Ottawa, where he will spend three days meeting with Tibetan exiles and politicians. The world's cutest religious leader said during a speech that war is obsolete, noting, "We all come from our mother's......

Canadians can no longer access Demonoid.com, the world's second-most popular BitTorrent tracker. According to a statement on Demonoid's website, legal action treatened by the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) has forced them to block connections from Canada. This can only be seen as a major victory for the CRIA. Thanks to them, it is no longer possible to download pirated music off the internet...unless, of course, you happen to live outside of Canada, or you......

The Toronto Star recently started wrapping its front section in ads, à la Metro (except the fold only extends halfway across the front page). Today's was a stark entreaty: "Don't buy an SUV." Okay, an environmental message, huh? We can live with our paper being wrapped in dispatches from the Suzuki Foundation. Then we unfolded it: "(Until you've seen the [brand and model].)" Beyond that, it's a pretty standard SUV ad, except one and......

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! No Logo—June 10, 7 p.m. The God Delusion—June 10, 8:30 p.m. & June 12, 7 p.m. War on Science—June 11, 7 p.m. Darwin's Nightmare—June 11, 8:30 p.m. Sharia in......

Noble Parasites, the show closing Passe Muraille's 06/07 season, has the distinction not only of being the last play of the theatre's 39th season, but also of being the last play produced by the theatre under the leadership of longtime artistic director Layne Coleman. It was recently announced that Tarragon Associate Artistic Director Andy McKim will be taking over from Layne beginning next season. Happily for Layne, he is ending his term at Passe......

“Use more…waste less!” That’s the motto of the new barter-community web site known as SwitchPlanet. SwitchPlanet is now open to the public as a beta version (which might explain why the interface is a little less than intuitive). The site facilitates trading DVDs, CDs and video games with an online community of people who create lists of the items they want and the items they wish they had. The currency of SwitchPlanet is known......

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......

Call it cultural tourism, voyeurism, a geek fest, call it what you will. But when we heard that I Maid Cafe—a Cosplay restaurant—had opened up in Scarborough last December, we knew we would be taking the trip to Kennedy and Finch very soon. For those who don’t delight in Japanese pop culture, “cosplay” is short for costume play. It started with kids getting dressed up as their favourite anime characters, which, if you’ve ever been......

Microsoft put up an ice house in Dundas Square yesterday to promote the launch of Windows Vista. WARNING: Only click through to the article if you have never read a "tee hee I don't know shit about computers but I sure like to play Minesweeper, does Windows Vista have Minesweeper on it?" type of article and are interested in a fresh experience, complete with - yes - a reference to HAL from 2001: A......

We're experimenting with a new daily photo posting. Each weekday morning, we'll pick a recent image from the Torontoist Flickr Pool and feature it here on the site. It's our way to give the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention they deserve! We intentionally left this photo by Robannz (Marc Robin) out of the weekly roundup so we could feature it here in The Daily Photoist. There's great textures and colours here --......

Everyone's reporting on the explosion of a house in Mississauga. The owner of the house somehow escaped injury and the other person who was hurt was a neighbour out for a jog. The house was up for sale. Police and firefighters are investigating the explosion. Police break up a huge DVD counterfitting ring in Scarborough. Seized were over $400,000 worth of DVDs and 140 burners. Police estimate that the counterfitters could have netted $17 million......

Funny thing happened after reading about Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel's acclaimed best-selling memoir that recounts her experiences with depression: I tried buying it. A trip to Indigo produced nothing, and the in-store computers revealed that no location in the city had a copy. That’s right: nothing at any Indigo, Chapters, Coles, or World’s Biggest Book Store. What’s odder than the fact that a book translated into 20 different languages isn’t readily available at any of......

Now that we're in the final days of the Festival Cinemas remaining open, the Bloor Cinema took the opportunity to offer some interesting programming: the 1965 cult-classic "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" and Michael Winterbottom’s “9 Songs”. Their scheduling was a welcome change from the second-run films that have characterized the Festival chain for some time. On last Wednesday, the Bloor screened “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” The black and white cult-classic would have been a fine......

Torontoist heard through the grapevine that three Festival Cinemas were going to be closing down. The rumour was confirmed by the Star this morning. The Fox, the Royal and the Revue will be closed by June according to their story. With the Uptown being torn down and the fate of the Metro up in the air Toronto's old-time movie houses are more threatened than a baby seal in Newfoundland. (too soon?) We agree that it......

Torontoist thinks love letters are a little too schmaltzy and saccharine for our taste, give us a good breakup letter any day of the week. So we were thrilled when someone tipped us off to e-closure. These local boys solicited a bunch of breakup letters last summer and have added 48 different breakups on their site. They're always looking for more and will keep things anonymous if you're worried about any future partners finding......

It's been nearly a week since the Oscars, so the question is, have you supported those poor souls in Hollywood by going to the cinema yet? Don't you understand that by watching a DVD you're probably supporting terrorism, or something, and just not getting the film experience you deserve? Yes, you'd be a right idiot to watch films on anything but the big screen. Which might beg the question why they now rush DVDs out......

Saturday gave us two questions. What is bylaw enforcement? And why does it wear jeans and drive a pick-up? While other cops get fancy uniforms, bylaw officers dress in a style that can at best be deemed rent-a-cop chic. Certain numbers of them began Saturday in a pick-up truck at the top of Spadina, and spent the afternoon proceeding in a southerly fashion, upturning tables of bootlegged DVDs and tossing the pirated wares into their......

Forget no-assembly-required toy whistles and Dinky cars: classic cereals don’t want to have fun anymore. Currently enjoying prime placement in the local Canadian grocery aisle, boxes of Special K include not only cereal from the eccentric Dr. Kellogg (whose sanitarium in Michigan made for a tepid film), but also one of three 30-minute instructional Stott Pilates DVDs by Toronto’s own stretch and tone guru Moira Merrithew (née Stott). The promotional blitz is an endless loop......

We can’t all be humanitarian celebs, donating US$1M to the Red Cross’s good work (Sandra Bullock) or warbling on a fundraising single (Boy George, Cliff Richard et al.). Enter Nathalie-Roze Fischer, go-getting local columnist (and chief glamazon of her accessories fempire). With a little help from designers-about-town, she’s organized a massive designer jumble sale taking place this Saturday at Bellefair United Church (2002 Queen St. East in the Beaches, across from Kew Gardens), 10am -......