Results tagged “michaelmoore”

                     

By now, all the red carpets are rolled back up and sitting in a broom closet at the Elgin (or something, wherever they keep them), Clooney's handsome footprints are stored away for another long year, and all the hottest celebs have flown off to resume being glamourous in their own cities. We're sad, kinda, but we'll always have our special memories of another TIFF gone by. And even better/lazier than memories, we have photos! Now that the shots flowing into the Torontoist Flickr Pool have slowed to a safe trickle, we gladly brings you the best (or just the most celeb-y) of the lot. Eat 'em up.

Feature-length movies that play at the Toronto International Film Festival can broadly be divided into a few categories: those that will be released to theatres within the following five months (i.e. Oscar season); those that will be released to theatres within the next six months to two years; those that skip theatres and, sooner or later, go straight to video; those that never have a life outside of the festival circuit and their region of origin; and those that are never heard from again, anywhere. In this respect, Michael Moore's Slacker Uprising defies categorization; it is almost certainly the first TIFF feature to wind up being primarily distributed online, available as a free download and stream starting today.

Canadians can no longer access Demonoid.com, the world's second-most popular BitTorrent tracker. According to a statement on Demonoid's website, legal action treatened by the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) has forced them to block connections from Canada. This can only be seen as a major victory for the CRIA. Thanks to them, it is no longer possible to download pirated music off the internet...unless, of course, you happen to live outside of Canada, or you can figure out how to type "thepiratebay.org" or "torrentbox.com" into your web browser. Congratulations, CRIA, that's some lawyering money well-spent. Good on ya.

No Film Friday today as we’re too busy with the festival, but we can let you know that this week sees releases of some pretty decent-sounding films: 3:10 to Yuma, Shoot ‘Em Up and Hatchet. Er, and also The Brothers Solomon, starring Will Arnett and directed by Bob Odenkirk but apparently dire. Let's Go To Prison wasn't great either. Sob.

Out of respect for the funeral of Richard Bradshaw, the Toronto International Film Festival Group chose not to hold their traditional big final press conference in Nathan Phillips Square yesterday, and so with slightly less fanfare than usual we received a massive lump of press releases from the Festival announcing that they’ve announced absolutely everything about the festival there is to announce, pretty much.

If today’s column title gets Rachel Sweet’s Hairspray stuck in your head for the rest of the day, good! Because then we’ll have made our point that the version of Hairspray hitting this weekend isn’t as good as the John Waters original. Though the music not being as good is only part of it. There’s also the inherent irony about making a musical in which one of the central themes is integration through a shared love of largely-African American music that features only music written by a couple of white dudes. Hell, the irony of just making a musical about that. Musicals are basically the whitest form of entertainment we can imagine.

Michael Moore’s much anticipated Sicko hits, and having seen it, we can say it’s not particularly essential for Canadian viewers to watch, unless you want to feel smug about our lovely health care system, or slightly surprised that it only takes an hour or so in London (Ontario) to be seen in an emergency room. Yes, the film is chock-a-block with anecdotal evidence, and it’s probably to the film’s fault that, as usual, Moore is selective with his anecdotes to only show free universal health care in a positively glowing light.

Ontario unveils greenhouse gas reduction targets. The plan reduces greenhouse emissions to six percent below 1990 levels by 2014. Not to be outdone, Alberta announced that next week they will release their plan, where they will reduce greenhouse gas emissions to ten percent below 1990 levels by 2257.

ARR! Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End hits this week and as the third second sequel to hit this summer it’s got some stiff competition. Nice to see though that they’ve made sure it beats Spider-Man 3 in at least one respect, in that at 2 hours and 47 minutes long, it’s a good half hour longer. It’s nearly as long as Inland Empire (which is finished at the Royal now, so we promise we won’t mention it again) and apparently, almost as confusing. Reviewers have mostly come to the conclusion that they didn’t have a clue what was going on, but we think NOW’s Deirdre Swain put it most eloquently: “It would take the sharpest sword in the armoury to cut through this sailor's knot of a plot; I couldn't explain it if I wanted to.”

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 elite of the documentary film world gathered this morning at Revival for a press conference announcing the lineup of this year's Hot Docs festival. It's a powerhouse program, which TVO's Rudy Buttingnol attributes to the filmmakers and the growing importance of the medium. "Documentaries are helping change the way people think," says Buttingnol, who will also receive the inaugural Outstanding Industry Achievement Award. "Just look at how governments around the world are now trying to address the problem of the environment...I can't help but think documentaries had something to do with it."

Even though we are way way past school age, we still get a little melancholy at the close of summer. Fortunately, our friends across the -ist network know that the shenanigans don't need to end just because the big yellow buses are back on the roads. So, grab your sunscreen and your favorite hangover cure, as we take a tour of end of summer fun from -ist cities all over the damn place.

A busy day for Torontoist yesterday, though no parties; though the Star! TV Shmooze was taking place. We didn’t hear any gossip about it, but it did rain. So we imagine the gossip would be something like… Famous celebrities got a bit wet.

Well, with day one done and dusted, this morning perhaps many people will still be sleeping off the opening night party, but for others (not least the staff and volunteers) it been another early morning to get the festival up and running. This is the first full day of the festival and as such it’s heavy with films to join the rush queue for. Let’s see what we’d give that honor to.

As a grand finale for the Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival, the Dave Brubeck Quartet performed an incredible set last night at Massey Hall. Although the group of four could have been called Dave Brubeck and the Geriatrics, these jazz cats were tighter than David Bowie's pants in Labyrinth. 85-year-old Brubeck was absolutely amazing. With Bobby Militello on alto sax/flute, Michael Moore on double bass (no, not THAT Michael Moore), and Randy Jones on drums, the group captivated an attentive audience with two hours of jazz brilliance. The 2 hours seemed like 5 minutes as the old men swung through a selection of jazz standards as well as Brubeck’s own compositions.

- a Michael Moore-inspired treatise on marginalized voters. He's been touted by both Tupac and the Utne Reader too. Not a lightweight. The panel discussion begins at 7.