Results tagged “jesus”

Gossip no longer, culture vultures. We've finally got confirmation on CanStage's upcoming season. Like it or not, it looks like the rumours are true. As we reported before, the Bluma Appel Theatre's rather commercial lineup is entirely free of any Canadian-written shows, which has some folks in quite a tizzy. And as we suspected, CanStage is getting its CanCon through co-pros at the Berkeley Street Theatre. They're calling it The Berkeley Street Project, and it seems intended to supplement the Bluma's playing-it-safe season with "edgier, more provocative works." The first show, Wild Dogs (a co-production with Nightwood Theatre), is a stage adaptation of Helen Humphreys' eponymous novel. Up next, Studio 180 co-produces the Canadian premiere of Blackbird, a West End and off-Broadway hit by British (and consequently not Canadian) playwright David Harrower. The final co-production (with Necessary Angel) is the Toronto premiere of HARDSELL, a new work by Bigger Than Jesus team Daniel Brooks and Rick Miller. (Although, the only reason CanStage can claim "Toronto premiere" status is that the workshop presentation Brooks and Miller were going to present at Passe Muraille a month ago was cancelled due to illness.)

Here's something to clear away your post-NYE doldrums: the Fringe, everyone's favourite early-summer theatre festival (don't worry, SummerWorks, you're our favourite late-summer theatre festival) has had a baby. Aw! Last Wednesday, something called The Next Stage Theatre Festival began at Factory Theatre. Next Stage really is like a baby Fringe: a smaller festival of only 8 shows running in rep at a single theatre, complete with a heated beer tent.

Necessary Angel has just announced a totally cool event planned to take place on March 3, 2008. Three playwrights will be given the opening lines for a new play. Each playwright will have 4 hours in which to write said play, after which three different teams will have 5 hours to rehearse the works. When those 5 hours are up, the plays have to be performed at Necessary Angel's annual gala at the Capitol...

Living Tall is basically an entirely perfect one man show, and it's only playing at the Tarragon Extra Space until Sunday, so you'd better get your act in gear. The script by Mike Geither is tight, hilarious and fascinating, Karin Randoja's direction is focused and inventive and Ker Wells' performance is astounding and completely compelling. The show, which was quite successful at this year's SummerWorks festival, is structured as a pop psychology sales seminar delivered by a man who seems slightly unhinged, if shockingly energetic. The seminar details a multi-step plan to become a more successful salesperson based on the concept of "living tall," even if you aren't tall yourself. Wells prances around the stage like an acrobat who's had a few too many Red Bulls, using hilariously unhelpful transparencies on an overhead projector as visual aids.

If there's anything Jesus loves more than flattery, it's porn stars. Well, technically, Jesus loves everyone—even those little teenage tramps and their HPV vaccines—but now, ol' JHC is adding some marketing pizzazz to that affection.

Thanks to AEG Live, the same great people who gave us Justin Timberlake tickets to give away in April, we have yet another American cultural phenomenon looking to invade Canada: So You Think You Can Dance.

Jesus in Montana is a one-man show by Barry Smith detailing his actual experience as a young man of hitchhiking to Missoula, Montana where he moved in with an octogenarian claiming to be the Second Coming who also happened to be a convicted child molester. If that doesn't sound very funny, you'll just have to take Torontoist's word for it that the results are actually often hilarious.

The good people at Brunswick Theatre are hosting another week of free film screenings! Return their love and boost attendance by coming out to see one (or a few) of the following films:

Weekly indie institution Wavelength started in 1999, setting up shop at Ted's Wrecking Yard, then bouncing between venues until landing at its current home, Sneaky Dee's, in 2002. Past performers read like a who's-who of home grown indie music: Great Lake Swimmers, The Bicycles, Cadence Weapon, Julie Doiron, Peaches, Final Fantasy, Feist—and the list goes on.

Last night at the beautiful Winter Garden Theatre, the winners of the 28th Annual Dora Awards were announced in a ceremony hosted by the hilarious Rick Miller (of MacHomer and Bigger Than Jesus fame). The Doras are basically Canada's version of the Tonies, except you can't watch them on TV and see Molly Ringwald and John Stamos jazz-hand their way through a radical new interpretation of Hello, Dolly! As one might expect, the whole affair is generally more sedate and even less people care about the results. But we do! It's also somewhat validating to see shows that Toronto reviewed positively get the respect they deserve (and occasionally shocking to see the same respect lavished on things we thought were crap). Now, there were a lot of awards being handed out last night, so let's be a jerk and ignore the hard work of all the behind-the-scenes people and focus on the flashier trophies.

Developers RioCan bought the parking lot at the corner of Queen Street West and Portland back in 2005. Immediately, rumours started to circulate that a big box store, like Home Depot, was going to be built at the site. At the time, The Globe and Mail reported that RioCan planned to start building in 2007. Which is now. So what's happening with the project?

Unfortunately, Brunswick Theatre cancelled its weeklong screening of Barbara Hammer films and accompanying art exhibit due to lack of attendance. (Only one person attended last Saturday evening. How disappointing.) So in its place, the cinema will show free films for the rest of the week!

Remember Makeout!? You can see what happened with the roomful of 200 people smooching at the Ryerson University Film Festival. This weekend RUFF will showcase films by about 40 graduating Image Arts students from May 10-12 at Royal Cinema.

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.

Spring is when we get busy here in the Ist-A-Verse. Very busy. But, after staying bundled-up indoors all winter, it's nice for us to be out, about, and collecting things to write about for you. Here's a glimpse at what's been keeping your favorite citybloggers busily away from home and out of bed.

The Lunch Express rides again. It's a shuttlebus service that takes office workers in Markham and Richmond Hill to nearby shops and restaurants so they don't have to drive their own cars. Assuming you count Quizno's as a "restaurant." Admittedly, they GOT A PEPPER BAR! And a pepper bar is important. For starters, it makes the Quizno's food taste like peppers, instead of like nothing.

So last night was the Oscars: Ellen DeGeneres was surprisingly enjoyable; there were not many upsets except perhaps The Departed for Best Picture (really?); Canada only won one award, Best Animated Short for The Danish Poet; Gwyneth Paltrow resembled a giant prawn. And not in a good way.

Each weekday morning, we pick a recent image from the Torontoist Flickr Pool and feature it here on the site. It's our way to give the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention they deserve!

In the post-Christmas period, there aren’t usually a lot of films released, and this year it's no different; really we’re all just twiddling our thumbs waiting for the new Cinematheque season, right?

From left to right (roughly): Vivian Li, Zoe Higgs, Matthew Corker, Melinda Montgomery, Adam Martin and Kerri (aka: Adam's girlfriend).

Amazingly, Maher Arar is

It's been months in the making, but we've finally got our fancy-dancy new layout. Thanks to Neil and the rest of the Gothamist crew for hooking us up!

When the weather is this shit the best thing to do is either hang out with friends at someone's house and tie one on, or go see a flick or two. Last night was time for the latter and the film was Rock The Bells. The film takes a funny, behind the scenes look at the trials and tribulations faced by a promoter trying to book the entire Wu Tang Clan for a live show. Can you say Big Baby Jesus Shaolin crackrock? And as the weather continues so does the rest of Resfest. Tonight at 7 there's a screening of A Decade of Resfest: 10 Seminal Shorts From The Past Decade, Saturday's got a cool Radiohead Retrospective at 5pm and a should be very interesting lecture by filmmaker Dougal Wilson at 7pm, while Sunday night there's a Cancon Shorts and Music Video screening at 7pm followed by The Vice Guide To Travel at 8:30.

Following the success of Spamalot, another part of the Monty Python canon is about to be "lovingly ripped off". This time it's the British comedy troupe's 1979 film, The Life of Brian.

As fall settles in and another calendar page gets turned, thoughts turn from bbq's and vacations to holidays and the realization that '06 is coming to an end. With all that going on, with change in the air, we wonder what is it that made that makes the -ists ponder?

This weekend is the Canadian Art Foundation’s 11th Annual Canadian Art Gallery Hop Toronto. This weekend is also Artscape’s 4th Annual Queen West Art Crawl. Two big art events this weekend? Holy Jesus! What to do?

Paramedics dispatched to a house fire in west Toronto ended up on the Danforth because of a duplicate street name. Even worse, the fire may have resulted in the death of a 65-year old woman. This begs raises the question: why hasn't the city fixed the problem? The Star reminds us that the city has actually done a study about this problem (there are about 100 or so duplications around the megacity) and done nothing.

A 12-year old girl who has been missing for two days has been found after an exhaustive search in the city's east end. She had run away after a fight with her parents.

This has been a rough week for your -ist pals, though you wouldn't know it from the great posts all over the network. Plagued with server problems, our tech team (led by the great Neil Epstein) toiled around the clock to solve the glitches as they arose. Seriously, we've said, typed, and thought the phrase "server problems" more in the past week than we have for the last 35 years combined. Why not say it a few more times, just for fun? For example, SFist is sure the San Francisco Chronicle wishes they could blame server problems for this error. But this San Francisco man that appeared on "The Daily Show" is, sadly, no glitch in the system.

So, we’ve been busy enough with Hot Docs to almost forget that they, you know, are releasing films which aren’t documentaries this week (madness!) Indeed, craziness of craziness, they’re even holding other festivals this week! So we’d feel terrible if we forgot to mention the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, opening tomorrow night with a showing of Jesus is Magic, Sarah Silverman’s concert film which, to our memory, did rather well as a Midnight Madness showing at TIFF 2005. An unusual choice for the fest, however! All thoughts of her ethnicity aside, do we (that’s Torontoist) actually like Sarah Silverman? We can’t tell. She was in Mr. Show, okay, so she gets a million points for that. But her solo shtick (“I’m sexy and say horrible things!”) is a bit… I mean, yawn, right? I guess if you found The Aristocrats funny this might float your boat.