Revue Video on the Danforth—one of Toronto's last great independent video stores—shut down earlier this month after two decades of providing Riverdalians with access to the best and most obscure foreign, indie, and documentary films. Apparently tired of answering questions about whether the store would re-open, and certainly bitter about something—maybe the Shoppers Drug Mart soon to open across the street—the store owners left a note on the front door about their future intentions,......

Photo by Jeff Croft. Since The Beastie Boys dropped an album last year, their resident DJ Mix Master Mike has had some time to fill. The turntablism legend and three-time winner of the DMC World DJ Championships will be spinning a set at This is London on Wednesday night. Undoubtedly, he will bust out a crazy scratching display like this one from his appearance at Republik last September. Indie-electro dance nights are a dime......

We don’t tend to post too often about video games here at Torontoist, what with basically the entire rest of the internet being devoted to it (well, that and anthropomorphic Star Trek slash fiction), but we do like to make special note when some pleasant news of local interest comes up, such as Toronto as a Half Life mod or the Toronto Indie Game Jam (Which we, er, forgot to mention this year. Our......

They’ve got Hank’s seal of approval, so you know they’re at least half-way decent. Since receiving some "big-ups" on Henry Rollins’ show on L.A.’s Indie 103.1, The Harold Wartooth’s grunge-y star has been rising, with support coming in from the likes of CBC’s seminal Definitely Not the Opera and UK-based Catacomb Records. With a solitary self-titled EP under their belts, the band have demonstrated a propensity for writing Fun House-era Stooges-style riffs and burying them......

In June, 200 media professionals, producers, activists and academics packed into a Bathurst Street studio for a party celebrating the launch of a new English-language global news and documentary network, The Real News. If building an international news network from scratch doesn’t sound mind-boggling-ly ambitious to you, consider this: Real News CEO Paul Jay is promising to accomplish this feat without corporate, government or advertising dollars. This makes The Real News the world’s first......

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......

Today Apple offered us a refresh of their entire iPod line, making us want to blindly toss our money at the company once again. One Torontonian, however, is getting some coin thrown her way—big time. Indie darling Leslie Feist has found her track "1234" at the core of the new worldwide iPod nano television spot. Even better, Apple is touting the device's new ability to play video, and prominently features the "1234" clip, directed......

Toronto’s DIY fashionistas, independent designers, eclectic personalities and thrift store scavengers get a chance to flaunt the city’s indie fashion credentials this Wednesday at the Cadillac Lounge. The latest issue of Broken Pencil, dedicated to the aesthetics, culture and history of indie chic (and haircuts!), just arrived in stores. To mark the launch, the arts magazine will be hosting an all out celebration of indie style, including its first ever Indie Style Fashion Contest. Party-goers......

Indie popsters Stars will be shooting a new video in Toronto tomorrow and Thursday and they want you to be in it. If you missed the Joel Plaskett shoot we told you about earlier this year, you've got another shot at your 15 minutes of fame (or at least becoming known among your acquaintances as "the one who was in a music video"). Aspiring extras should send photos and contact info to extras@blinkpictures.com for......

Queen West West hosts the Parkdale Arts and Crafts Festival this weekend, July 14 and 15 from 12 p.m. to 7 p.m. daily. Organized by the Parkdale/Liberty Economic Development Corporation (PLEDC), the festival is intended to "promote and celebrate the diversity of arts and culture in Parkdale." We're mostly going for the beer garden and knitted finger puppets. If toothpick bird feeders and resin jewelry aren't your thing, there is live music going on......

This week, the biggest news in movies is that Warner Bros. has decided to stop all advance promotional screenings of its films in Canada, in attempt to stem the flow of pirated movies from Canada. Yo ho ho! Unfortunately, they’ve likely decided that Canada is a hotbed of disgusting movie pirates on some pretty wonky data. Though apparently there’s no law against recording movies in a theatre onto a camcorder in Canada, which is kind......

Even though the Toronto Indie Pop Festival became the Over The Top Festival a long time ago, Thursday night's show at the Whippersnapper Gallery would have fit in easily with the former name. With three bands on the bill, it was a short blast of sweet songs that got the fest off to a good start. The first act on the bill was local four-piece Great Bloomers who quickly impressed the small crowd with a......

The Over The Top Festival starts today—the real one, not the CFL event. The next four evenings will find bands, films and dance performances filling various downtown venues. Having originated in 2002 as the "Toronto Indie Pop Festival," past festivals have line-ups have included Grizzly Bear and Amy Milan. The 2007 line-up continues in this vein, most notably bringing singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston, subject of the documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston. The full schedule......

Years spent on the Indie Rock scene should be measured in dog years: if a band manages to maintain its original line up for an entire trip around the sun, it should count as seven. Toronto’s Talladega has featured many members over the years, but the original core-duo of Stewart Whitehead (ex-Grace Babies) and Sean Bettam (ex-Chicklet) guides its flight path with endurance. Tonight, with new members Mark Buffone and Dave Cyr, they launch their......

Australian 70's-arena-rock-inspired Wolfmother created some buzz last week when they were in town for a soldout show at the Kool Haus, as well as a brief performance at the Indie Awards. We're a little late reporting on it (blame CMW), but last Tuesday's show was nothing short of a marathon set, if we've ever seen one. Frontman Andrew Stockdale took to the stage sporting full facial hair and his trademark giant afro, and along with......

Torontoist caught-up with Dave Azzolini and Jess Grassia of The Golden Dogs recently. Having finished a radio interview, they were rushing to pick up the rest of the band and proceed to The Docks for 2007 Indie Awards. Torontoist interviewed them in their van as all this happened—because such is Canadian Music Week. (And apparently we enjoy bands and their vans.) The Golden Dogs play Horseshoe Tavern tonight at 12 p.m. Tickets are $8 at......

Tonight begins the running around from venue to venue, as Canadian Music Week starts it's second day. The Indie Awards last night at The Docks were... interesting, but now the real fun starts. As such, here is our second installment of CMW previews to help you plan your Friday evening. If you missed the first preview, you can check it out here Tickets can be purchased in limited numbers for each showcase, or you can......

It's that time -- Canadian Music Week has finally arrived and is taking over just about every decent music venue in the city for the next four days, starting tonight with the Indie Awards at The Docks. Planning on checking some shows out, but can't make heads or tails of the overwhelming number of bands playing? We're here to help. We've scoured the list of over 500 bands to seek out some of the shows......

It's finally here - the week of festival hell insanity. Got your wristbands and earplugs ready? Canadian Music Week kicks off on Wednesday with the Indie Awards at The Docks, and Thursday to Saturday will have you running around town trying to catch as many acts as possible. Wristbands are $35, or you can purchase (limited) tickets at the door to most shows. Not your thing this year? There's also the Pitter Patter Festival......

On the way to the sold-out Bunch Family Salon at The Arts and Letters Club last Saturday, my eight year old son looks into the window of our subway car and sees an alternate universe; it's just us, but backwards. After he asks me to call him by his inverse reality name, "ttenraG," he ponders how my name would sound. Turns out that even in other worlds, my name is "moM." The Bunch Salon......

Let's just get this over with right off the bat -- Arcade Fire have announced their Toronto show dates. Hurrah! They'll be at Massey Hall on May 15 & 16, and tickets go on sale on Feb. 23rd. Predicted time to sell out? 1 minute 49 seconds. If you have no luck with those, the next closest location is Montreal on May 12 & 13. In other big concert news, unless you've been living......

It seems pretty appropriate that we just had Groundhog Day, given that we're feeling a little bit like Bill Murray looking at the concert listings this week. Not only is there very little going on, but most of the bands who are playing seem to be here every week (Apostle of Hustle, The Tragically Hip, Hostage Life, Friendly Rich). Thus, we have nothing left to say about them! So if you've already seen these......

A few weeks ago Kensington Market's Neu+ral Lounge announced on Stillepost that they were looking for djs and party organizers to take over their Saturday night slot. Organizers of Eat Your Greens, a Britpop, Mod and Soul night, have decided to leave the venue for the El Mocambo, and will be doing so starting February 10. Last weekend Neu+ral announced that the new Saturday night will be called Kensington Station, and will be hosted......

This Monday night, January 22, head down to the Gladstone Hotel and join Broken Pencil Magazine founding editor and publisher (and journalist and author) Hal Niedzviecki as he hosts the self-professed “best games night in the city (on a Monday night anyway).” The occasion? Monday night marks the launch of BP’s newest issue, which is, fittingly, the games issue. There will be an assortment of classic board games, games of hide and seek, and, everyone's......

How unusual! Not a lot of festivals this week. Just the Indie Can Film Festival this weekend, and the Toronto Arab Film Festival starting on Wednesday. Of course, Cinematheque Ontario continues with their exhaustive Roberto Rossellini retrospective and the Toronto premiere of the acclaimed Au-Dela De La Haine (given glowing reviews in both Eye and Now) but our pick of the week has to be tomorrow afternoon’s matinee, Night of the Hunter. Robert Mitchum is......

Sloan is back. And not just because their new album is released today. Spanning 30 tracks and 76 minutes, Never Hear The End Of It almost makes Torontoist want to use clichéd terms like “return to form.”......

Tonight, the Horseshoe Tavern plays host to the Pitchfork/Secretly Canadian Indie Rock Triple-Header. This is a chance to see three awesome bands you've probably never heard of... but who everyone will be talking about in a few months. If you want to get ahead of the curve, read on. San Francisco's Birdmonster headline the night. Their sound is giant. Their guitarist famously declared: "Our main goal is to rock so hard one of us faints."......

Bell Orchestre, a 5 piece band from Montreal, recorded their first LP while some of its members were simultaneously working on Arcade Fire's "Funeral". With the latter's success and the release of "Recording A Tape The Colour Of The Light" delayed until 2005, touring and promotion has been sporadic. Following a brief tour through Europe, the band arrives at Indie Unlimited at the Harbourfront Centre. Frontman Richard Parry talks to us about a new album......

This weekend, the Harbourfront Centre plays host to Indie Unlimited. The festival's lineup features Amy Millan, The Hidden Cameras, Bell Orchestre - and Great Lake Swimmers, who are coming off the end of their touring in support of their acclaimed 2005 album, Bodies and Minds. Frontman Tony Dekker took some time to talk with Torontoist about touring and what's next after this weekend's show.......