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. The programming begins tomorrow at......

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. Mediocre Action Movie + Toronto + Sam Jackson = HELL YEAH! Let’s get this out of the way: The Long Kiss......

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......

So, who else remembers that Rambo III was about Rambo going to Afghanistan to help the Taliban, huh? We do (and apparently the Sun’s Jim Slotek does too). It’s rather a shame that Sylvester Stallone hasn’t seen fit to continue from that point and deal with the consequences of the conflict, instead jumping straight to Burma/Myanmar for, as far as the reviews tell us, an absolute ton of incredibly graphic (and meaningless) violence. Eye’s......

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. Cloverfield! Also, we just type the names of the films that are out that week with exclamation marks! In an attempt to......

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. Instead of listing all of the films and theatres on one page and linking them to their reviews, like......

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. Getting furious at advertising may seem so early 2000's, but commercials this year have not only annoyed, but shown......

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......

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. According to IMDB, the plot summary is thus: "Barry......

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,......

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. So there, done and dusted. Turns out we’re actually quite forgiving here compared to......

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. First, savvy ad execs painted a giant donut around the base of the CN Tower. Now, the Fox and Fiddle (106 John Street) is being turned into Moe's Tavern for a Thursday night post-screening party. Rumour has it that Flaming Moes will be served. Rumour also has......

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 just happens to be that a few weeks ago, with an evening to kill, we picked up Peter Jackson’s King......

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......

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......

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......

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......

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......

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......

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......

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. Held at the Revival nightclub on College St. (as last year) By the Toronto International Film Festival Group, the event was hosted by Sylvie Moreau and, (yes!) Dave Foley, who were actually excellent hosts that seemed to have a good understanding of the......

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. "You better be going to school this......

Goodness! This is a week stuffed with festivals (and, surprisingly, interesting general releases), and frankly, it’s time to pick sides. And when the option is facing off against zombies, psychopaths and ninjas or siding with them, why on earth would you choose anything else? Yes, tonight is the opening night gala of the inaugural Toronto After Dark Film Festival, the first real genre film fest that Toronto has had in a while (well, outside of......

Yes, you thought it was all over and you’d finally get some peace and not have to think about the film festival again for another whole year, but we’re back with one final post, our hotly anticipated Torontoist awards for the best, worst, and weirdest of the festival (as you know, we weren’t that impressed with the official selections.) The ceremony was held last night in a location so secret that not even we turned......

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. Though he may not be local, J. Mann is still very supportive of the Canadian scene. In far-off Spain, he runs a small record label, Middle of the Road Records,......

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. Everyone, and we mean everyone is talking about Borat but there are other films playing at this festival don't you know? Kenneth Branagh and Stephen Fry's adaptation of Mozart's the Magic Flute......

God, we're so sick of Snakes on a Plane 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. Austinist makes it easy for us, with Candidate......

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......

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......

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?) We agree that it......