Results tagged “movie”

If you’re into bad classroom reels, found footage, grainy home movies, and low- to no-budget outsider flicks, then it might suit you to head over to Stacey Case’s Trash Palace this weekend for the 8 fest. This small-format film festival is new to Toronto and will exclusively feature films shot on Super 8, 8mm and 9.5mm, as well as loops and zoetropes. Zoetropes! Please let there actually be zoetropes.

Toronto's extensive work on the silver screen reveals that, while we have the chameleonic ability to look like anywhere from New York City to Moscow, the disguise doesn't always hold up to scrutiny. Reel Toronto revels in digging up and displaying the films that attempt to mask, hide, or—in rare cases—proudly display our city.

Barack Obama lays down the smack in South Carolina's presidential primary. Obama won by an enormous 28-point margin, prompting Bill Clinton to afterwards comment that this was no big deal because Jesse Jackson, who is a black man, like Barack Obama, won South Carolina when he ran for President, and did he mention that Barack Obama is black just like Jesse Jackson? (Also black: Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, and that R&B star that had sex with those underaged girls.)

So, who else remembers that is simply reprehensible."

Films! Films films films films. Sometimes it’s hard to get this column started, so we just sit in front of a blank word document and type the word "films" until it doesn’t make any sense to us any more. But by then, we’ve got started typing, at least, and so we continue.

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains of 2007––the people, places, and things that we've either fallen head over heels in love with or developed uncontrollable rage towards over the past twelve months. Get your dose, starting Boxing Day and running into the new year, three times a day––sunrise, noon, and sunset.

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains of 2007––the people, places, and things that we've either fallen head over heels in love with or developed uncontrollable rage towards over the past twelve months. Get your dose, starting Boxing Day and running into the new year, three times a day––sunrise, noon, and sunset.

Feeling “Christmassy” yet? We aren’t either (we've just assumed you weren’t, apologies if you are, or something), and there isn’t that much on at the cinema yet to start ramping up the festive joy. It’s a Wonderful Life is showing at the Fox starting tomorrow and Bad Santa is going to be on at the Revue this Wednesday. To be completely honest, if you’re going to check out anything at those cinemas, we recommend you go and see King of Kong (which we talked up last week) when it’s on. The Fox is showing This is England, too. Not Christmassy at all, but fantastic.

Seriously, who cares about Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt or George Clooney or Ben Affleck or whoever? Jerry Seinfeld––one of the greatest comedians, one of the greatest television actors, and owner of 47 Porsches––is coming to Toronto on Wednesday. He'll be at the Manulife Centre (55 Bloor Street West) at 9:45 a.m. to promote Bee Movie, the new animated movie that he directs and stars in.

Will Sheff's voice sounds something like Imogen Heap's (you know, the woman who sings "Hide and Seek") stripped of every bit of sheen. Sheff jumps octaves as often and with as much animation, though the results are rougher, darker, uglier––more appropriate to sing about, say, killing people, or to take the character of a man about to commit suicide or the ashamed father of a porn star. Throw in a trumpet, guitar or two, organ, piano, and drums, and you've got the makings of Austin's Okkervil River, a band so filled with joyous hate that it's impossible for their music not to constantly verge on catharsis. And you've got the reason why the band easily sold out Lee's Palace on Friday night.

This week Torontoist decided to work out for itself exactly when The Simpsons was good. Because it’s just been so long, so depressingly long, since we’ve seen a episode that didn’t make us want to open a vein. Seriously. Using the powers of science (well, Wikipedia) we’ve decided it was good between seasons three and ten, peaking in (roughly) season seven.

When a dozen U.S. 7-11s were converted into Kwik-e-Marts earlier this month, Torontoist wondered when we were going to get our share of The Simpsons' Movie hype.

We’ve been looking for a way to talk about King Kong again for a while now. It’s unlikely you’ll remember, but Torontoist’s first Film Friday column was actually published in the week Peter Jackson’s remake hit cinema screens, yet that’s not (specifically) the reason we’ve been in the mood to mention it again.

It's the last day of Inside Out, and this afternoon, the gay and lesbian film fest presented a pretty exciting Q&A session with director Laurie Lynd. Lynd directed, among other things, gay-friendly fare like the film version of Torontoist-fave Daniel MacIvor's House as well as episodes of Queer As Folk, Degrassi: The Next Generation and Noah's Arc. But it was his latest project that brought him to the immediate attention of Inside Out. Lynd directed the upcoming film Breakfast With Scot, which is that "gay Maple Leafs movie" you may have been hearing so much about. The afternoon began, however, with a screening of two of Lynd's earlier short films, RSVP and The Fairy Who Didn't Want to be a Fairy. The former is a sad short about a man grieving for his partner who has died of AIDS and the latter is a musical fantasy with Holly Cole about (literally) a fairy who decides that he wants to have his wings surgically removed. Both star Daniel MacIvor, at his loveable, charming best. Torontoist gives him a hug!

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 To My Town is an absolutely brilliant Japanese-language film that deals with school bullying and friendships in an intelligent and moving way, and that if you get a chance to see it (even if you don’t have any kids) you should. It’s great.

You may be aware that there are no plans to release the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters in Canada, as reported by The Toronto Star, Dose, Twitch Film, and, of course, us, in our film column last week. If, like us, you're saddened by such news, there's not much you can do to make yourself feel better about it, other than, I suppose, continuing to watch it on The Detour on Teletoon (10:15 p.m. weeknights) or... winning some excellent Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie swag?

Interesting and depressing news today in the Toronto Star, with the revelation that there are no plans to release the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theatres in Canada. Why is that, hmm? The article states (quite correctly) that it’s one of the most popular shows on The Detour on Teletoon (where you can watch it at 10:15 p.m. weeknights) so why they’re not giving it at least a limited release here confounds us.

Microsoft put up an ice house in Dundas Square yesterday to promote the launch of Windows Vista. WARNING: Only click through to the article if you have never read a "tee hee I don't know shit about computers but I sure like to play Minesweeper, does Windows Vista have Minesweeper on it?" type of article and are interested in a fresh experience, complete with - yes - a reference to HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Because when I think timely and topical allegories, I think of a movie from 1968. What, was referring to Deep Blue too edgy or something?

Our title this week of course refers to Catch and Release, a film which has been so endlessly trailered on TV (and we don’t even watch that much) that Torontoist feels like we could recite the whole bloody film right now. “The man I was going to marry is dead! I’m sitting wearing my wedding dress and moping – it’s a girl thing! Kevin Smith is fat and talentless, but friends with Ben Affleck so he can be in this! I’ve fallen in love with you now, sexy and stereotypical unshaven male lead! The End!”

Fresh from their holiday break, the fine folks at This Is Not A Reading Series kick off the Winter/Spring 2007 season with…a film? Well, partly. This evening, join TINARS at the Royal Cinema as they celebrate the launch of Annabelle Gurwitch’s new book, Fired! Tales of The Canned, Canceled, Downsized & Dismissed. As the title would suggest, the book is comprised of tales of getting the axe from a host of contributors, from Bill Maher to Bob Saget.

We already mentioned it in our news round-up but we thought we’d share with you this lovely picture of the assembled filmmakers and cast of Canada’s Top Ten films of 2006.

The subject on everyone's mind at Spacing this morning is Regent Park's revitalization project. Our favourite public space newswire will be featuring a series of documentaries on YouTube called Regent Park TV, a project by the Regent Park Focus Youth Media Arts Centre. The Toronto Public Space Committee will be screening another series on Regent Park at the Toronto Free Gallery on Thursday, December 14 @ 7:30.

Goodness! This is a week stuffed with festivals (and, surprisingly, interesting general releases), and frankly, it’s time to pick sides.

(Voted for by an international jury consisting of: David Topping)

We had the good fortune of catching J. Mann at the Free Times Cafe last night. It was his first Toronto gig since last year's NXNE showcase. Live appearances are rare -- the Canadian singer-songwriter now resides much of the year in Barcelona, Spain.

There are literally dozens of blogs covering the Festival this year, and while most of them are personal sites listing what movies they could or couldn't get into, a few stand out. Torontoist will do his best to roundup the blogosphere's TIFF coverage.

God, we're so sick of that we want to kill anyone and everyone that makes a "something on a something" joke. But then we realized that there was no way we could ever win this fight, and, hell, if you can't beat them, we might as well join them. And with that, you have the theme of this weeks' Gothamist network post.

You may have noticed that Torontoist looks a little different. The tech staff of our parent site, Gothamist, have been busy rolling out new features to sites across their network of sites, including here at Torontoist. We have two new big things to show you that we're pretty excited about: Contribute, and Favourites. And it's all about you, the Torontoist reader: more power, more of a say, and improved interactivity. The first new page is Torontoist Labs: Contribute. This is what you can do there:
• Share Links: Using popular bookmarking website del.icio.us, you can tell other Torontoist readers about news stories, websites and other wonderful stuff on the internet that you think they might find interesting, entertaining or useful. All you have to do is tag a link with for:torontoist and it will automatically appear on our Contribute page. For information on how to get started, visit del.icio.us.
• Share Photos: Everyone loves Flickr, right? Now, when you join our Flickr group and upload a shot to the group's pool, it will automatically appear on this page.
• Share an Anonymous Tip: Cops outside your house? Movie shoot nearby? Just saw something absolutely crazy? Let Torontoist readers know!

Well, though he’s been away, this Torontoist certainly missed Toronto. And his feet are a size 11 Ron but nice try. But honestly folks, what has happened to our town since we’ve been gone? The Royal, the Revue, and the Kingsway closing down? Are you kidding us? This is a serious problem. Not only is it probably going to kill off (or at least make it difficult for) many of the small festivals that make this a continually interesting city to live in as a movie goer, it’s also going to basically make Kung Fu Friday, which was moved from the Royal to the Revue a while back and recently has been very well attended, completely unviable.

Torontoist heard through the grapevine that three Festival Cinemas were going to be closing down. The rumour was confirmed by the Star this morning. The Fox, the Royal and the Revue will be closed by June according to their story. With the Uptown being torn down and the fate of the Metro up in the air Toronto's old-time movie houses are more threatened than a baby seal in Newfoundland. (too soon?)