It’s often refreshing to hear an outsider’s point of view of your city. Sometimes they offer a new perspective on something so commonplace that you take it for granted. Or they can simply offer the expected platitudes. One writer, Olga Bonfiglio, who visited Toronto for the first time this holiday season, recently offered her take. She painted a very glowing picture of our city "as both a model and an inspiration for cities," and......

Photo by Stig Nygaard. The Art Bar returns tonight with its annual Audience Appreciation Night with readings by the Art Bards, live music, and free poetry chapbooks for all audience members by the Art Bar Team. Also returning for the new year is This Is Not A Reading Series. For the first event of the year, join Carl Wilson and Mark Kingwell for an on-stage discussion where they will be talking about love and......

As the subject for a serious music book, Céline Dion––amazing or not––seems like an odd choice. In the latest book in the 33⅓ series, however––a series which typically looks at albums like the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds or Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures or the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main St.––Carl Wilson, probably Toronto's pre-eminent music critic, takes it upon himself to "[strive] to understand Céline's global popularity," in the process "fac[ing] the question of what......

Often, ideas are continually improved through the feedback of others. Other times, an idea is at its best when first conceived, and can only be diluted from there. That's part of what Amy Leaman and Ryan Planche wanted to explore by creating Shift:Positions, the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) Student Press' inaugural book, which launches tonight at the Gladstone Hotel. The book contains fourteen essays written by OCAD industrial and environmental design grads......

Sheila Heti (pictured here hiding behind this chair) is one of the many artists invited by the Music Gallery for its fundraiser "Compose Yourself." Heti, along with filmmaker Atom Egoyan, philosopher Mark Kingwell, minor media mogul Moses Znaimer, and haircut facilitator Darren O'Donnell will come with compositions or ideas for compositions that will be played by an improvisational supergroup. The concert starts at 8pm and is $25.......

Between July 2003 and January 2006, photographer Geoffrey James took his panoramic camera across our city, taking shots of areas as diverse as High Park, Dundas Square, Kensington Market, Regent Park, and Liberty Village. Those photographs are collected in his newly-released book, Toronto, and the shots tell a story of a city in flux, both confident in its history and insecure about where it's headed. Besides photographs, Toronto also features an expansive introduction by......

We've got an invite to pass along for a launch party, exhibit, and book signing for photographer Geoffrey James' newest effort, Toronto, on Thursday night. James has travelled around the city taking shots of some of the underappreciated places in the city with his wide-angle panoramic camera. Torontoist's favourite local philosopher, Mark Kingwell, provides the introduction. The exhibition that accompanies the book launch features large black and white prints by James and some other......

The week starts off with another instalment of Pussy Pen, an evening of readings and performance focusing on women, trans, and queer perspectives. It takes place at Tango and Crews, 508 Church St, beginning at 8pm. Free. Tuesday’s Wildsound script reading series features Face to Face, a TV pilot script written by Christina Ray and Mark De Angelis. The event is moderated by Pamela Sinha. It starts at 7pm at the Stealth Lounge, 22......

Torontoist represented at yesterday's launch of uTOpia at the Gladstone. We hosted a marshmallow-and-toothpick building contest (because we're actually about five-years-old) and we got some fabulous entries from aspiring alternative architects of all ages - all eager to recreate their favourite Toronto landmarks in marshmallow. And then we all got tummy-aches from eating too much of the building material. Aside from the marshmallows, there was a strong line-up of panelists and guests, which included Mark......

Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, extraordinary renditions, security certificates, Maher Arar, enemy combatants, torture, all of them erosions of democracy and symptoms of a larger problem. Government abuse of power isn't anything new, and as the sole holder of power and force in most societies, our elected "representatives" can often do so with impunity. The Alphabet City Festival, looks at how "the war on terror" has created a whole new set of bogeymen, irrational fears and......

Forget what all those bleeding hearts tell you about the evils and soullessness of rampant capitalism. What capitalism really gives you is the freedom to choose. Take this weekend's music offerings. Tonight you can choose to see the Inbreds play a reunion show at Santa Cruz. You probably remember listening to them while you were smoking outside the school in grade 9. If reliving some of those high school memories might be too traumatic check......

Well, kinda. The much-awaited, revamped Sunday Star is here, as of yesterday, and, as promised, it is new. It even has an article on the meaning of 'new,' by fishing and floating philisophist Mark Kingwell. It's got week-old Times' crosswords (score! If you can wait a week), chunks of ephemera from Schott's Miscellany, and a back page summary of everything in the paper. Also, it's all colour, all the time. The only thing that doesn't......