Results tagged “hollywood”

Two men who went on a Hollywood-worthy crime spree Saturday night and Sunday morning are being sought in a carjacking, shooting, three robberies, and a high-speed police chase. Descriptions of the suspects have now been released—if this is you, please turn yourself in.

Hey, did you know it's snowing? School buses have already been cancelled for today, meaning that children will romp and play in the streets and sabotage snowplow drivers and Chevy Chase will duel with a rival meteorologist for some reason and the mayor will declare it to be the "funnest day ever."

Miss the fourth installation of YO! Remember the 90's?? As if! Unless you're totally clueless when it comes to comebacks, you know the nineties are the dopest thing since, like, the eighties. And if you don't, you oughta know.

Waves eroding the tip of the Toronto Islands. A project to keep it from eroding will cost around $14 million, thus reminding us all once again that attempting to combat the effects of Mother Nature is a horribly costly experience, as anybody who has ever bought a jar of Oil of Olay knows full well.

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...

When you think of literacy, chances are the first name that comes to mind isn't Slash. But the notoriously bad-assed guitarist from rock legends Guns n' Roses has recently come out with an autobiography detailing his many, many encounters with sex, drugs, and rock n' roll.

These days, everyone and their grandmother has a celebrity gossip blog. Perez Hilton became a millionaire by outing Lance Bass and defacing paparazzi photos, while TMZ.com (named for the Thirty Mile Zone surrounding Hollywood) came out of nowhere in 2005 and almost instantaneously became the top site to see celebrities behaving badly.

Torontoist is one of fourteen cities in the worldwide Gothamist network. Once a week, the editors of each site—from LAist to Londonist—compile some of their most interesting posts into a brief blurb. It's Elsewhere In The Ist-A-Verse, and it appears, across the network, every Sunday.

For decades, Toronto has been one of Hollywood's most versatile back lots. Along the way, every specialized branch of the multi-headed film and television biz has sprouted up in the city. Camera, electrical, post production, locations and ... plane crash and natural disaster recreations?

So, things are rapidly going to hell in Pakistan. Somewhere between one and two thousand people have been "detained" (i.e., dragged away) since Saturday and all private television stations shut down and the country is about ninety percent of the way to pure chaos, which, given that they have nuclear weapons, is bad. Of course, the White House managed to find the good in the situation, namely that Iraq could be as bad as Pakistan.

Torontoist is one of fourteen cities in the worldwide Gothamist network. Once a week, the editors of each site—from LAist to Londonist—compile some of their most interesting posts into a brief blurb. It's Elsewhere In The Ist-A-Verse, and it appears, across the network, every Sunday.

Toronto's extensive work on the silver screen reveals that, while we have the chameleonic ability to look like anywhere from New York City to Moscow, the disguise doesn't always hold up to scrutiny. Reel Toronto revels in digging up and displaying the films that attempt to mask, hide, or—in rare cases—proudly display our city.

Earlier this week, Toronto's film production industry introduced the Green-Screen alliance, which has the goal of increasing the eco-consciousness of productions shooting in and around the city. At a time when more and more producers, directors and actors are supporting environmental charities yet not applying their tax-deductible beliefs to their own industry, Green-Screen is taking a welcome step inside. A voluntary initiative that will help film shoots to reduce their carbon footprint at all levels of production, the alliance is making an effort to put Hollywood North a step ahead of the rest when it comes to sustainable standards.

The price of oil scaled new heights yesterday, climbing up over $80 US for the first time ever. That's good news if you're an oil company, but bad news if you're a regular folk who likes to go places, or do things, or eat stuff.

Photo by Blainekendall.com from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Today’s Reviews:

Last night, the seats of Harbourfront Centre's studio theatre were packed with a mix of middle-aged art aficionados and well-coiffed hip, young homos all dying to see Francesco Vezzoli give a lecture and screen his notorious Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal's Caligula. Vezzoli is an Italian artist known for his work in video and embroidery (yes, embroidery) who set the art world ablaze a couple of years ago with his re-imagining of the infamous, semi-pornographic swords and sandals schlock-fest that actually was written by Gore Vidal. Vezzoli's trailer for an imaginary remake features Vidal as himself, as well as a ridiculously A-list cast, including original Caligula star Helen Mirren, Milla Jovovich, Justine Bateman, Karen Black, Gerard Butler, Benicio Del Torro and Michelle Phillips of The Mamas and The Papas fame. The title role is played by both Vezzoli himself and Courtney Love and the costumes are designed by Donatella Versace.

It seems like ages ago that calling our fair city "Hollywood North" meant something. Blockbusters used to set up shop on a regular basis and you could stroll through the University of Toronto campus and see pylons, trucks, and signs for a film going by the rather odd name "Good Will Hunting."

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.

During the "Golden Age" of Hollywood, motion picture studios controlled every step of the production, distribution, and exhibition of movies in the United States. Then, in 1948, a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision ruled these practices anti-competitive and monopolistic, forcing the studios to divest themselves of the theatres they owned, and opening the market to foreign films, art films, and independent films—for the first time, movie houses that were not part of large chains were able to compete.

The city of Paris has recently been courting tourists from London, England with a new series of ads that look like this:

Yesterday, thousands of University of Toronto students took to the front campus to protest the University's policy of allowing graduating students to bring no more than two guests to their Convocation ceremony. Their attempt at revolution fell short, and the policy stands.

The Toronto International Film Festival madness began today with this year’s Canadian press conference—whereas last year we were unprepared for the experience, this year we were ready. We didn’t eat lunch, instead eating our fill of the finger food on offer. Result!

Cinematheque Ontario begins its Pedro Almódovar programme, Almódovar Meets Hollywood’s Golden Age, tomorrow and they’ve been kind enough to give us two pairs of tickets to the opening night, a double feature of Nicholas Ray’s 1954 bizzaro-western Johnny Guitar and Almódovar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, which pays homage to Johnny Guitar. The screenings begin at 6:30 p.m. at Jackman Hall, the AGO, 317 Dundas West, so if you can make it, to enter all you have to do is answer this simple question before 4 p.m. this Friday:

Would you want to read a book about the middle-aged agoraphobe son of a dead rock star whose life is transformed by a nine year old girl who wants to be a dog? Tish Cohen thinks you will, and Torontoist agrees. The Toronto native has just published her first novel, Town House, which she describes as an “urban anxiety tale”. There’s been a lot of buzz about it, not only in the musty halls of publishing but also in Hollywood, where the movie rights have already been picked up by Fox. Tish and her publishers are holding a free public launch party tonight at the Drake Hotel.

Look out! Here comes David Lynch, man!

This week we'd like to congratulate the -ist network's Mother Hen, Gothamist's Jen Chung, who found herself a recipient of Wired Magazine's Wired Rave Award. If that doesn't sound terribly exciting, keep in mind another recipient was J.K. Rowling. Yep, that's right, the -ist network and Harry Potter now have something in common. Go us.

OMG! This week sees the release of Kickin' It Old Skool, a Jamie Kennedy vehicle. He plays a breakdancer who awakes from a 20-year coma and something that Jamie Kennedy probably considers hilarity ensues. We here at Torontoist Towers are astounded at the idea that somebody greenlighted a film with Jamie Kennedy in it. Absoultely gob-smacked.

Useful human-computer interaction (HCI) interfaces haven't advanced too much since Xerox PARC experimented with the desktop-and-mouse motif, commercialized and made famous by Apple in the 1980s. Luckily, some brainiacs at The University of Toronto's Dynamic Graphics Project are helping Minority Report-style science fiction become a plausible reality.