The coolest movie opening this week is Be Kind Rewind, which is a treasure trove of Things White People Like, as it stars Jack Black and his black friend played by Mos Def, and is directed by Michel Gondry, and has lots of irony, seeing as how it is about a couple of people who erase all the videotapes in their video store and then make their own mocking versions of the movies they......

Okay, so, this week it’s definitely the Oscars! Everyone you know is probably all excited and arranging Oscar parties because, you know, Jon Stewart is presenting! He’ll be all edgy spelt with a ‘3’ and probably insult George Bush or something! Will he mention Cheney shooting a lawyer again? OMG that dude is the funny! Expect a muted performance from Stewart, so muted, in fact, that you’ll wonder if he’s wearing a ball gag. This......

Courtesy of our friend Fauxreel, here's a full-service dry cleaners specifically for emcees. Was it only a matter of time before the rap game took over the laundry services industry? Apparently sometime-Torontonian Mos Def gets his shirts starched here...at 4020 Dundas Street West.......

Since there hasn't yet been an article that really articulates what we're about here, Torontoist has decided to submit our own. And this isn't some monthly fluff piece, this is really indicative of our culture and personal constitutions. Two months ago in Toronto Life, Globe writer and Queen's University alumni Russell Smith planned out 24 hours of activities in Toronto without regard to cost or plausibility. Last month, impish designer Joeffer Coac told Toronto......

Well, The Toronto International Film Festival is over for another year, and even the Torontoists who were deeply involved are breathing a sigh of relief, either getting back to normal life or letting themselves to finally succumb to stress based illnesses. Some final updates, however, with a round of reviews to let you know what you should or shouldn’t have missed, and what you should look out for in the future. Evil Aliens Evil......

Yesterday, while listening to NPR for the obvious reasons, we heard a terrific interview with Ralph Fiennes. Terrific because at the very end of the interview, Leonard Lopate throws a curve at the pointy actor by asking him why he pronounces his name Rayfe. A short pause follows, and then Fiennes cobbles together an answer along the lines of 'that is actually how it was pronounced historically.' Now if we could only ask Chloë Sevigny......

Why is it so few Getting Up Festival write-ups avoid using the word "bling"? It's neither funny nor cute, and distracts attention from a rare Toronto appearance of Nas (a man who predates the word by over ten years). This weekend's Getting Up Festival was unquestionably Toronto's biggest-ever hip hop and hip hop culture showcase, and perhaps need more recognition for that. All references to "bling" aside, clothing designer Mark Ecko put his money where......

A relatively light upcoming week in shows still has some fine musical happenings to help you kill time while waiting for the apocalypse. And curiously, all on the waterfront. Harbourfront's excellent summer festival schedule continues Friday through Sunday with T.O. Twang, billed as "Toronto's first and only alt.country festival". In addition to musical performances from such excellent acts as The Sadies, Carolyn Mark, Billy Joe Shaver, Elliot Brood, Luther Wright & the Wrongs and The......

The Getting Up Festival really got up. On August 13-14, the hip hop music festival brings in Nas, Kanye West, Ciara, Mos Def, Busta Rhymes, Fat Joe, Ludacris, Lil Jon and the Eastside Boyz, Keshia Chante, Brooke Valentine, Rascalz, Kardinal Offishal and mo'. Though not entirely clear, the music has something to do with an Atari video game of the same name. The event will be directed by Toronto-bred director, Lil X. The festival will......

Bouncing around the Hollywood stratosphere for years, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy the movie has finally landed in theatres. That first sentence, or a variation of, most likely made an appearance in some cheeseball newspaper this past weekend. And it's that type of mediocrity that makes Torontoist pee our pants in frustration. For our review, we dish the nitty gritty, willy nilly. Firstly, how does it stack up to the book? Well, it's said......

Over the past few weeks on Le Mercredi Mixtape, Torontoist has constructed several successful straw-man arguments, made a few ad-hominem attacks, and may have actually thought up some valid criticisms. But since there's too much free music and disparaging remarks to speak of this week, Torontoist abandons our essay format in favour of a more economical point form: - Did Pitchforkmedia steal excerpts from our interview with the Arcade Fire and then use them in......

This February 14th is in the running for the most depressing day of the year. The gloomy weather, the TTC fair hike, U2's performance at the Grammys and the fact that it's a Monday all add up to one sad day. So to get you and yours in the mood, Torontoist has come up with this cute little playlist...(Sorry, no downloads) VD CD 1. Notorious B.I.G. - "Me and My Bitch" 2. RZA - "My......

Given the relatively short existence of rap music, tracing its lineage appears fairly simple. The advances in the genre are well-documented: Kool Herc started turntablism, Kurtis Blow first brought rap to the mainstream, Prince Paul popularized skits, Afrika Bambaataa rocked the sample, and so forth and so on. Then there is Dr Dre's classic 1992 album The Chronic, which represents perhaps the most perplexing turn in hip hop history. The album essentially brought West Coast......