"Stop the torture—end the war," read one colourful placard at Queen's Park. "End the siege of Gaza," read another. Voicing solid opposition against the war in Afghanistan and the occupation of Iraq, immense columns of demonstrators took over Queen's Park and Bloor Street on Saturday. "From Iraq to Palestine," they shouted, "occupation is a crime!" When the demonstration reached the heart of Yorkville, you could imagine the neighbourhood's original war resisters seized by the......

The highly-respected British science journal Nature has called the Harper government's record on science and the environment "dismal." The PM was unavailable for comment yesterday, as he was in an emergency cabinet meeting called after Wednesday night's lunar eclipse to determine why the moon had disappeared. An independent panel of experts has come up with a number of recommendations to put Toronto on firmer fiscal ground, including tolls on highways, higher residential property taxes,......

When your own mother calls you "foolish" and "an idiot," you know you're in serious trouble. However, if your name is Salman Hossain, it's likely that your mom's assessment of your intellectual abilities is the least of your concerns right now. According to a (relatively) recent National Post story, Hossain, a student at the University of Toronto's Mississauga campus, is currently under investigation by RCMP national security investigators. What could young Salman have done......

David Miller delivered a balanced budget yesterday, thanks to higher property taxes, some fabulous new tariffs, and a one-time infusion of $150 million from the the provincial government. According to Miller, the property tax increase of 3.75% is in line with his commitment to limit raises to the rate of inflation (1.9% in Toronto last year), evidence that the mayor is either math-illiterate or assumes that everyone else is. Transit expert Richard Soberman will......

Palace of the End, Judith Thompson's most recent play, is not only her most political work, it is also her best. As most auditioning actors in this country have discovered, Thompson's greatest strength has always been her monologues, and in this piece, she uses that strength to its full advantage. In fact, she dispenses with character interaction altogether and breaks her show into three long monologues, each spoken by someone who has been greatly......

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,......

You may remember our coverage of the excellent Vice film Heavy Metal in Baghdad. A documentary following the Iraqi heavy metal band Acrassicauda, we reviewed it at TIFF and called it “one of our top films of the festival” before interviewing one of the directors, Suroosh Alvi. Although Acrassicauda have since managed to escape Iraq (and then escape Syria) with the help of Vice and many generous donations, the band is still in trouble,......

This weekend, resist the urge to do the same old bar hop and try a more sophisticated means of indulging your party ADD: the art show hop. Okay, so we just invented that term, but the city does have three rad art happenings going on almost simultaneously this Friday, November 30. And we say, why choose? To start your adventure, knock back a whiskey for warmth and head down to the Harbourfront, where the......

Torontoist has 25 admit-two passes to give away to our readers for a promo screening of Redacted at 7 p.m. on Monday November 12, 2007 at the Royal. Directed by Brian De Palma (you've probably heard of him) and produced by two Torontonians––Simone Urdl and Jennifer Weiss––Redacted is "a profound meditation on the way information is packaged, distributed and received in an era with infinite channels of communication," and centres on a group of......

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.......

October 16 is the day that the Walt Disney Company was founded (1923), the day that Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act in response to the October Crisis terrorist kidnapping (1970), and the day that President Bush signed into law the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (2002). It is also, though you may not know it, World Food Day, as deemed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United......

The Revue cinema is due to reopen its doors on October 4th, and if you’ve been waiting for the chance to buy tickets for the opening night, they’re now on sale at She Said Boom (393 Roncesvalles Avenue) at $20 for the film and the after-party or $10 for just the party at the Lithuanian Hall (1573 Bloor Street West). The opening night film is secret, but it was selected by an online poll,......

It’s not been a week since the Toronto International Film Festival left us, and this week’s new releases make it hard for us to move on despite a couple of TIFF premieres leading the way. We’ll start with Paul Haggis’ In The Valley of Elah, because he’s a good Canadian boy…or is he? It’s interesting to note that in the interviews with him in the weeklies about this film (a "murder mystery" about a......

Despite having seen a lot of screenings after only two days (and already being completely knackered as a result), Heavy Metal in Baghdad is still one of our top films of the festival. We got the chance to talk to the Toronto-born Suroosh Alvi (pictured above on the left)—co-founder of Vice Magazine and co-director of Heavy Metal in Baghdad—about the film and the current situation of Acrassicauda. Today’s Interview: Suroosh Alvi, co-director of Heavy......

A 13-year-old boy at St. Mary's Catholic Secondary School in Toronto was arrested after he was found to be carrying an illegal 200,000 volt stun gun in his backpack.The Star quotes school board chair Oliver Carroll as saying that "everyone was shocked." Presumably Carroll was not speaking literally. The Toronto International Film Festival opened yesterday, and as always, will showcase some of the most creative minds and promising newcomers in the movie industry. More......

If you missed it, yesterday our Toronto International Film Festival preview began with a look at the Gala and Contemporary World Cinema programmes, and if you didn’t know, tickets go on sale tomorrow morning online, at 416-968-FILM or 1-877-968-FILM and at the TIFFG Box Office at the Manulife Centre, 55 Bloor Street—so after you’ve read this, you might want to start queuing. Today we have our preview of the Special Presentations, Real To Reel......

This summer, thousands of Canadian kids are once again at traditional camps, singing "Kumbaya" and crafting art from uncooked macaroni. However, an "adventure camp" just outside of Toronto is aiming at removing the canoe paddles from the hands of children and replacing them with AK-47s. Camp Okutta counsellors hit the pavement downtown last week handing out brochures for the wilderness getaway, which aims to teach kids the "art of war." Ads posted to utility poles......

Where can you find popcorn lovers and peaceniks together? At a politically conscious film fest—in a park, no less! Tomorrow is the final night of Peace Reel: an anti-war focused outdoor film festival co-presented by the Toronto-based collective, Artists Against War (AAW) and by CitizenShift, an initiative of the National Film Board. Over the past month, Peace Reel has organized a free Sunday-night series of short films and documentaries at Christie Pits Park. This week,......

I love the smell of police raid in the morning. Toronto Vice arrested 60 people in the Jane and Finch area this morning in a raid called Project Kryptic. They seized "30 kilos of cocaine, hash oil and marijuana with an estimated street value of $1 million" from the Driftwood Crips. That's actually pretty badass. Hey, buddy...we're not mad that you stole the Hershey bars, we're just concerned that they may be contaminated with......

If you remember the "handing over" of Iraq to Iraqi authorities by the US-led coalition a few seasons ago, you may recall that, in order to prevent terrorist attacks, the ceremony was performed a day early. Yup, W, you sure pulled a fast one on them. Well, we couldn't help but draw the mental parallel between that auspicious day and the rolling-out of new police cameras three days ahead of schedule, perhaps to zigzag......

It was only inevitable; indeed, they would say we asked for it. The Secret, the latest in a long line of mega-selling self-help phenomena, is on its way to Toronto. Several "teachers" featured in the original film and the subsequent book will be holding forth on April 14th and 15th at the Westin Harbour Castle. The promotional literature is distinguished by its modest proposal: "The Secret to everything—the secret to life filled with joy, good......

We're sometimes cynical about token gestures calling for world peace, but at least this one looks nice. And kinda like that legendary British Airways commercial. Today at 3 p.m., the Humanist Movement is calling on Torontonians to help assemble a giant human peace sign in Nathan Phillips Square, continuing a tradition started in Budapest and since performed internationally in public spaces. The demonstration is part of an event happening in at least four other......

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! Well, we think he’s scary looking, anyway. To think he was in 28 Days Later...playing a human! The Wind that Shakes the Barley, which stars the aforementioned Murphy, has done......

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,......

Toronto's overwhelming reception of Al Gore yesterday prompted David Miller to toughen his stance on climate change. Mayor Miller promised an aggressive change in policy on pollution, transit and construction, which will be formally proposed in late March. The Ontario government may have come up with a way around the new U.S.-Canada passport rules. A new super-secure driver's license is in talks, which would feature "laser engraving, holograms, currency-like print quality and other security measures......

Toronto can't seem to keep its trash out of trouble. Those giant sidewalk trash bins aren't generating enough in ad revenue to honour their $1-million-a-year payout to the city, so now what? Well, bids for Toronto's street furniture contract are still being accepted. The winning companies will be supplying garbage bins, bus shelters and bike racks for no cost, but will reap the benefits of the "furniture"'s potential adspace. The Big International Headline: US......

It appears that most members of the Liberal caucus will support Stephen Harper’s resolution that Quebec be considered a “nation” within Canada. Toronto Police Services Board chairman Dr. Alok Mukherjee now wants to hold a public inquiry into possible cases of corruption, cover-ups and general nasty stuff by members of the Toronto police department. This should come as no surprise: The day after it was announced October was the deadliest month in the history of......

Downtown hosted the annual Santa Claus Parade on Sunday, kicking off another season of gratuitous shopping. In related news, the Nintendo Wii was released and quickly sold out. B.C. slaughtered Montreal 25-14 to win the Grey Cup, and then promptly broke it. Pssht. Way to go, Lions. Today in War: Kissinger says a victory in Iraq is "not possible ", but Bush has no plans on bringing the troops home just yet, and Tony......

It was only a few days ago that (now former) Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was given the support of the President. But now, the day after the Republicans were sent packing in the House of Representatives and (it looks like) the Senate, Rummy is packing his bags as well. While the Americans are in a fine mess in Iraq, according to a new CBC survey it now seems more Canadians think we’re in a mess......

You can play for Toronto FC next year. They are holding open tryouts at the end of December as long as you're willing to pony up $115. And if you don't make it, you also get a T-shirt and two free tickets to a game in their first season. "I'm sorry," apologized Jim Flaherty with nice, cheap words yesterday. He was apologizing to the Canadians who collectively lost $25 billion when he announced the surprise......