Results tagged “innistownhall”

ART: "Off Camera" is an exhibition at the new Filmport Studios, featuring more than 200 works from 50 artists currently working in the Toronto film industry. The reception tonight will include musical performances and a silent auction, and did we mention you get to go inside Filmport Studios? Filmport Studios (Studio 7, 225 Commissioners Street), 6 p.m.–1 a.m., FREE.

THEATRE: Hart House Theatre's 2008–2009 season officially begins this evening with Shakespeare's King Lear, which runs until October 18. This production of the classic tragedy stars Peter Higginson as Lear and is directed by Jeremy Hutton. Hart House Theatre (7 Hart House Circle), 8 p.m., $12–$20.

When we emerged from Funky Forest: The First Contact, our friend asked us what we thought of it. We found ourselves unable to form a sentence in reply and just spontaneously burst out in giggles. "I told you, man," said our friend, "that movie makes you high."

ART: As part of the continuing Manifesto Festival of Music and Art, there will be an opening party tonight at the Well and Good Art Space for “Us & Them,” a four-section art expo that will run until September 30. One section will showcase the work of artists who over the last ten years have been a part of Canada’s largest street art organization, them.ca (Dstrbo, Fauxreel, Omen, and Specter, to name just a few). As well, there will be a display by the Z’otz* Collective, known for their artistic exploration of the urban lifestyle. “Banknotes” is a showcase of youth artists producing art on, well, money. Each banknote will be up for auction, with all proceeds going to Amnesty International. The fourth section is “The Puzzle Project,” a collaborative effort of eighteen Toronto artists to create a single piece of artwork. Well and Good Art Space (639 Queen Street West on the third floor), 8 p.m., FREE.

FESTIVAL: Ladyfest kicks off their highly anticipated music series tonight, as the week-long festival continues. Tonight, come out to the Boat for performances from electronic soul group Lal, alternative crooner Emma McKenna, and experimental pop band Miau Miau. Also starting today is "Ooh-La-La," the female-identifying art exhibit at Beaver Hall Gallery (rescheduled from Sunday), which will run until September 27. The Boat (158 Augusta Avenue), 9 p.m., $5–$10.

WORDS: Chris Carlsson, one of the founders of Critical Mass and the author of 2008's Nowtopia, is speaking this evening at CineCycle as part of Pages' This Is Not A Reading Series. He'll be discussing Nowtopia, which researches social challenges faced by outlaw bicyclists and others looking to get away from urban consumer lifestyles. Spacing's publisher and creative director Matthew Blackett will be interviewing Carlsson, and there will be an audience Q&A following the interview. CineCycle (in the alley behind 129 Spadina Avenue), 7:30 p.m., FREE.

FILM: BAFTA award-winning director Rex Bloomstein's new documentary, An Independent Mind, is having its North American premiere this evening at Innis Town Hall. The film investigates freedom of expression today, sixty years after its enshrinement in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The screening is presented by Canadian Journalists for Free Expression along with Hot Docs and The Walrus. After the film, there will be a panel discussion on the limits of free expression with John Miller, professor of journalism at Ryerson; Frank Addario, a media defense lawyer; Mary Deanne Shears, former managing editor of the Toronto Star, and Carol Off, who co-hosts CBC Radio One's As It Happens. Innis Town Hall (2 Sussex Avenue), 6:30 p.m., $10 ($8 for students).

FILM: Parkdale MPP Cheri DiNovo is presenting a free screening of award-winning documentary Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion tonight at The Revue Cinema. After the screening, stick around for the feel-good Q & A of the year, featuring panelists from the Tibetan Joint Action Committee. It’s party time. The Revue Cinema (400 Roncesvalles Avenue), 7 p.m., FREE.

We managed to see Cloverfield a few weeks ago, and with the release of Diary of the Dead (above) this week, we have to say it's rather timely to discuss our opinion of it. As tired as this quote is, there's really no better way to describe Cloverfield than to take from Macbeth's famous soliloquy: "Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Celebrating its fifth anniversary, the Toronto Japanese Short Film Festival opens its doors tonight and runs until Sunday at the Innis Town Hall (2 Sussex Avenue).

Have you entered our Hot Rod competition yet, readers? It's still running. You probably should enter, as it’s the most exciting film you could see this week, in our humble opinion. We really like Andy Samberg, you see. It’s so rarely worth struggling through an episode of Saturday Night Live just to see him (he’s so often wasted) but Hot Rod could be good! It really could!

Ah, CINSSU, how we love thee. U of T's Cinema Studies Student Union's free screenings have been a staple of Mathew Kumar's weekly Film Friday posts...and, uh, our hearts. Now, CINSSU has graced us with 20 passes (each of which admits two people) to give away to Torontoist readers for a special advance screening of Andy Samberg's new film Hot Rod. Andy Samberg is awesome (see: The Lonely Island), so we're actually looking forward to it.

What if by chewing gum you could eliminate your body odor, cure yourself of cancer and take pictures with your eyes? You’d do it, wouldn’t you? Of course there may be a few side effects, but you don’t need to worry about that now, do you? Open your mouth and say ah!

Look out! Here comes David Lynch, man!

If you aren't all Hot Docced out yet, there's still plenty of fantastic non-fiction flicks to see (including City Idol, of course). Comrades in Dreams, a film about independent cinema owners around the world has been building up great word of mouth (today at 4:30 p.m. at Innis Town Hall). Tonight, drink in the first screening of Milk in the Land (Innis at 9:45 p.m.), a doc about how the world got hooked on the white stuff. At 11 p.m. at the Bloor, Reverend Billy preaches his stop shopping gospel in What Would Jesus Buy? Tomorrow, check out the macabre and comic Seven Dumpsters and a Corpse (11:30 at the Bloor). Saturday sees a second screenings of audience favourite Lovable (2:15 p.m. at the Isabel Bader), a look at love by local curmudgeon Alan Zweig.

This year, Hot Docs honours Toronto-based film maker Kevin McMahon with its Focus On retrospective. McMahon, whose films are noted for being playfully intellectual, accepts the accolade in that same spirit. "Geoff Pevere said to me, 'a retrospective—now you have to die.'" says the director, "So I'm focusing on the mid-career part."

The University of Toronto really seems to be getting as much as it can out of its relationship with Atom Egoyan. The Canadian film auteur, currently in the first year of his three-year term as the Dean's Distinguished Visitor in Theatre, Film, Music and Visual Arts, will be giving a free lecture at Innis Town Hall tonight (Wednesday, April 11) where he will screen a selection of his short films and discuss "the appeals and limitations of the short film form." Appropriately, the evening is called Short and Sweet (and Sour) and is highly recommended for anyone who loves film.

Going to see all three films in Nicolas Winding Refn's Pusher Trilogy, one after another in one night, is one of this Torontoist’s most treasured cinema memories, and although we did it at 2005’s Toronto International Film Festival, anyone who missed that chance can now do it at the Brunswick Theatre (296 Brunswick Avenue) tonight and tomorrow night starting 7 p.m. It’s $10 for one film or $15 for the lot, so obviously you should see all three.

So, this week's most noteworthy film featuring a horrible zombie is obviously Fido, considering it’s Canadian and stuff, but we’ve talked about it more than enough, so in this week’s column we’ll make do with the next best thing—the horrible freaky visage of Cillian Murphy!

Torontoist officially can’t wait for the first home renovation programme to have its interior designer kick open a door to an empty room and scream "This…Is…SPARTAN!" referencing this week’s biggest release, 300. On the topic of 300, we link you to the best review ever featured on the otherwise not-particularly-good Ain’t It Cool News. Neill Cumpston enthuses, "If you watch this movie and go into a Taco Bell, and say to the cashier, 'I need some extra sauce packets' guess what? You’re getting twenty sauce packets because your face will punch him in the brain."

Without a doubt, this week we’d be letting cheapskate cinephiles down by failing to mention the CNISSU’s Free Friday Film of the week, which isn’t just one but three, starting at 6:30 p.m. tonight at Innis Town Hall (2 Sussex) with the remarkably hard-to-see The Monster Squad, followed by Toronto classic The Brood, and finished off with the excellent blaxploitation nonsense The Human Tornado, starring, of course, Dolemite (Rudy Ray Moore). Check out the trailer, which is pretty much NSFW –- he uses an earthquake to make his milkshake!

Torontoist has never seen an Alejandro Jodorowsky film! Should we be ashamed to admit that? Possibly. We are, however, not ashamed to say we love that crazy guy anyway. Who couldn’t love a guy who killed three hundred rabbits with karate chops for a scene in his most well known work (and occasionally screened by Reg Hartt’s Cineforum) El Topo? Torontoist suspect we’ve lost everyone who likes rabbits. Okay then, how about his plan to film Dune with Salvador Dali as the Emperor? No? Come on! Be honest. Lynch’s version was rubbish.

Can you believe that Unaccompanied Minors features three out of five Kids in the Hall? Neither can we! Or that the film is directed by Freaks and Geeks creator Paul Feig and features lots of other excellent folks such as The Office’s BJ Novak. We can still believe it sucks, though. Which, apparently, it does. Called “a generally lousy movie” by Now’s Deirdre Swain, she notes, oddly, that Tyler James Williams is a “particular standout, as uncomfortable as it is to see the black kid turned into a clown.”

The word on the street is that the hottest ticket in town is The American Astronaut, screening tonight at Innis Town Hall (2 Sussex) as part of U of T Cinema Studies Student Union’s Free Friday Film. Screening in 35mm, this black and white sci-fi western rock opera is “the best thing ever” according to Todd Brown from Twitch Film.

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.

Torontoist already has a documented history on disliking Death of a President (including arguing with a FIPRESCI jury member about it) and we don’t really need to go into it again, so let’s hear what the critics have to say. Eye’s Liz Clayton gives it three stars, but doesn’t seem that enthused; “ultimately doesn't insinuate anything more creepy and despairing than what turns up in the real news every day”, while NOW’s Cameron Bailey finds it more interesting to talk around the film rather than about it, finally admitting the film is “not paranoid enough to be really interesting”.

You may wish to go to the cinema, but nothing you saw in the Film Friday really tickled your fancy. You may wish to go to the cinema, but you don't actually want to spend money to do it. Or, perhaps, you may wish to go to the cinema, but you actually want to go and see something genuinely good. Starting .

Well, not even a week until the Film Festival is left, and frankly, Torontoist is ever so slightly… No, scratch that, we’re utterly crapping our pants over the enormity of trying to cover the world’s largest film festival. We’re only little!

Oh man! This week’s big news in films comes from a crazy place called Vancouver??? We know! Torontoist have never heard of it either, but apparently it’s in Canada! Wild! So anyway, it’s clearly going to be an exciting place to be come September, as the famous for being terrible German director Uwe Boll wants to have a fight with YOU. Yes, you! As long as in the year of 2005 you’ve written two articles insulting him (and you’re in-shape, male and weigh between 64 and 86 kilograms) you can, apparently, fight him in a boxing ring as an extra in his big screen remake of Postal, the rubbish and intentionally controversial shoot-em-up from Running with Scissors.

Torontoist has mentioned his love for green roofs before so we're happy that Jane Rabinowicz, who helps run Santropol Roulant, a Montreal community group that organizes rooftop gardens, bike workshops and meals on wheels programs, will be lecturing tomorrow night 7:15 at Innis Town Hall.