The University of Toronto has announced that Ramin Jahanbegloo—academic, author, and former Iranian political prisoner—is returning as a professor of political science and a member of the scholar-at-risk program in Massey College. Jahanbegloo is a former lecturer at U of T who moved to Tehran to lead the Department of Contemporary Studies at a private institution called the Cultural Research Bureau. In 2006, he was detained without charge (which is perhaps unsurprising seeing as we're......

Hey, remember Nuit Blanche? You know: that all-night cultural art thing a little over a month ago that maybe wasn't all that great. That thing. While the city did a pretty spectacular clean-up job, they've missed a spot: a sign sturdily attached about ten feet up a pole outside the Isabel Bader Theatre at Queen's Park and Charles Street on U of T campus still welcomes visitors to Zone 3, and invites them to......

Today’s Reviews: Juno BY MATHEW KUMAR It sounds unfair to hold directors who are the children of directors to a higher standard than other new filmmakers—but is it really? There is such a wealth of connections and expertise within a phone’s reach that it’s utterly disappointing when someone like Jason Reitman just poops out the latest in Hollywood’s line of safe, fake “indie” films that have absolutely nothing indie about them. Juno MacGuff, a......

Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love My Bike You should go see a movie tonight, dontcha think? Here are two you might want to check out. The Isabel Bader Theatre (map) has a free screening of Dr. Strangelove starting at 8:15 p.m. This particular version is digitally-restored and has a resolution of 4K, which apparently means something significant. Actually, it's kind of a big deal: the restoration is being shown-off as part......

It was a record-breaking year at Hot Docs, as more than 68,000 people came to watch more than 200 screenings of 129 films. If those numbers aren't enough, here's another one for you: attendance was up a whopping 33 per cent from last year. This year the festival decided to be a bit more environmentally-friendly, and had audience members using their ticket stubs as ballots for the coveted Audience Award. The winner was announced Monday......

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......

So there we were, all ready to write another post previewing the final weekend of the Sprockets International Film Festival for Children, when we realised that the film we wanted to bring everyone’s attention to, When the Show Tent Came To My Town, had already had all of its showings! Darn. So though we aren’t going to do a full review of the film, we’d just like to note that When the Show Tent Came......

Sprockets begins this weekend! Yay! Despite not being aimed at us, Sprockets is one of our favourite film festivals in town for what it represents, which is getting kids out to see, discuss and think about world cinema. It’s pretty important if you have kids to make sure they don’t grow up into adults who say “if I wanted to read, I’d get a book” when faced with a subtitled film. Admittedly, not everything......

Director Terry Gilliam onstage at Cinematheque Ontario following a screening of his classic film Brazil. The former member of Monty Python was pleased when one member of the audience asked about the difficulty getting the film made. Gilliam delighted in retelling the (in)famous struggle in which he took an ad in Variety asking a studio executive when exactly Brazil would be released. Eventually, after Gilliam began screening the film personally and critics suggested it......

Tonight, The Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto is presenting a lecture by architect and educator Peter Eisenman entitled Architecture Against Itself. Mr. Eisenman is a central figure in American architecture from the 60s until today. At times labeled a deconstructivist, a label he does not feel an affinity to, his built work and theories on architecture as a discipline have been quite influential in many disciplines. The lecture......

Yeesh; another week, another pile of movies which were at the Toronto International Film Festival. Considering there are, oh, 32,064 or so films at each TIFF we should probably get over this as soon as possible, otherwise every week our column is going to sound the same. Still! At least this week we’ve seen some of them. Burtynsky doc Manufactured Landscapes is the big dog of the week, having been covered heavily and given glowing......

Real to Reel 9:30am - This Filthy World (Cumberland 3) - See our review. 8:00pm - Manufactured Landscapes (Varsity 1, 7) Visions 2:35pm – Time (Paramount 1) 2:45pm Bugmaster (Paramount 4) - See our Day 6 coverage. 3:45pm - Zidane: Un Portrait du XXIe Siècle (Varsity 4) - See our Day 7 coverage. Midnight Madness 3:45pm - S&Man (ROM Theatre) 11:59pm - Princess (Ryerson Theatre) Canadian Open Vault 4:45pm - Paperback Hero (Isabel Bader Theatre)......

Special Presentations 3:00pm - The Fountain (Ryerson Theatre) 9:00pm - Exiled (Visa Screening Room (Elgin)) - see our Day 7 coverage. Real to Reel 5:00pm - Sharkwater (Varsity 8) 6:00pm - Kurt Cobain About A Son (Varsity 7) 9:00pm - This Filthy World (Ryerson Theatre) - See our review. Discovery 6:00pm - King and the Clown (Varsity 4) - See our review. Visions 6:00pm - Invisible Waves (Paramount 1) Gala 6:30pm - Bobby (Roy Thompson......

Masters 12:00pm – The Wind That Shakes the Barley (Visa Screening Room (Elgin) 9:00pm – Rescue Dawn (Ryerson Theatre) Discovery 12:30pm – King and the Clown (Paramount 1) – See our review. 6:00pm – The Art of Crying (Paramount 3) 8:15pm – Reprise (Varsity 2) – See our review. Gala 12:45pm – Penelope (Ryerson Theatre) 1:30pm – The White Planet (Roy Thompson Hall) 9:30pm – Babel (Roy Thompson Hall) Real to Reel 3:00pm – Manufactured......

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......

Yesterday at The Isabel Bader Theatre, David Miller delivered this year's Davey Lecture on "Building a Great World City for the 21st Century." Unfortunately, it was far more election speech (and a boring one at that) than anything remotely motivational or inspirational. Plus, he was kind of mean afterwards. So, in lieu of inserting a nice flattering photo of Miller, Torontoist feels it would be more appropriate to include this one, of his face......

Fellow Torontoist contributor Alison Broverman is currently in Australia which has made the rest of us here at Torontoist HQ a little bummed out and on days like today, very jealous. Fortunately we get a bit of a consolation prize. The Australian Trade Commission has organized the first Australian Film Weekend. Australia's film scene, blessed by distance from the US and a supportive government has had a history of creating good work and of creating......

When a movie festival runs for five days and shows over 230 films, calling it 'short' seems a little misleading. But the organizers of the World Wide Short Film Festival have decided to go ahead and use the 'short' qualifer to describe the bigtime, 11-years and counting event. Starting tonight until this Sunday, June 14-19, films like Taika Waititi's "Sons of War," Craig Goodwill's "My Own Revolution," Jeff Moneo's "Plastic Bitch," Monica Rho's "Stationary," Brian......

...in the audience as Douglas Coupland reads dramatically from his new book, Eleanor Rigby. As usual, the U.K. cover is some kind of beautiful, the Canadian/U.S. editions slightly less so. But hey, it's what's inside that counts, and what's inside is the same, reportedly so-so stuff. Should you go-go? We don't know-know. Chalk it up to our generational, ineffectual attitude. It's at the Isabel Bader. The price is low low. Or $10. Which is not......