What's better than sex? Maybe writing about sex. Sex and Our City is a special week-long series that looks for questions and answers about love and sex in our city. Photo by PPDigital. Ah, the second date: dinner and a movie. (First date involves, of course, a course of non-alcoholic beverages.) Choosing the right restaurant is a chance to demonstrate compatibility ("You love sushi? No way! I love sushi!") and the right flick can demonstrate......

You may wonder why local MC and producer Kardinal Offishall appears for a split second in Estelle's "American Boy" video (the one featuring Kanye West), but the two go way back. Kardi originally appeared on the British singer's 2004 remix single, "Don't Talk," and Estelle—née Fanta Swaray—became part of Kardi's Black Jays collective in 2006. Estelle and Kardinal Offishall collaborated again (with Mark Ronson producing) for the track "Magnificent," which appears on her latest......

If there’s something that all critics know, it’s that it’s great fun to rip apart something that’s incredibly bad. Especially if you know the person who made it deserves it. So as a result there’s a regular bounty of great criticism thrown at Roland Emmerich’s 10,000 B.C. The guy has foisted some of the worst, laziest, most idiotic films on the public ever (his take on Godzilla should have had him tried in the......

We managed to see Cloverfield a few weeks ago, and with the release of Diary of the Dead (above) this week, we have to say it's rather timely to discuss our opinion of it. As tired as this quote is, there's really no better way to describe Cloverfield than to take from Macbeth's famous soliloquy: "Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." It's particularly relevant because Cloverfield and Diary of the Dead are similar......

Hello, and welcome to another installment of everyone’s favourite film column in which the writer makes up their opinions on the weeks films largely based on what trailers they’ve seen on TV. This week we didn’t watch much (busy watching our IT Crowd Series 2 and Metalocalypse DVDs) so the only one which managed to break our consciousness was the three seconds or so we caught of a trailer for In Bruges, a Belgium-set......

It’s wild outside, huh? So wild that it allows us to segue into talking about Strange Wilderness first, for some reason. It surprises us that the last Happy Madison film that we saw was (the quite sweet, really) 50 First Dates. Strange Wilderness is only of interest to us because it has quite possibly the worst trailer we’ve ever seen on TV. It’s absolutely meaningless. It explains nothing about the (surely) threadbare plot of......

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......

According to their online mission statement, the Fuck Death Foundation is "an organization dedicated to the elimination of death through the generation and distribution of funds to strategically selected causes and initiatives worldwide." Co-founders and directors Dugald Stewart and Simon Murphy also plan to target "the most ruthlessly indiscriminate killer of all—oldness." Yes, they're serious...we think. Watch their interview on The Hour, or call the toll-free infoline at 1-877-DIE-DON'T, and decide for yourself. Unfortunately, Fuck......

Though there are only three new films on release this week, it would be unfair to bemoan the shortage when one film, Persepolis, is of a high enough quality that it might as well be the only film released. During TIFF 2007 Christopher Bird handed it a 5/5 and called it "a masterwork in every way that matters." Much like in our praise of There Will Be Blood, we do have to hesitate with......

Nobody likes to be stranded during the holiday season due to car trouble. Whether it's a dead battery, unexpected snowfall, or executing a 180-degree spin into the ditch alongside the 401 on the way back to the city, inclement weather and Murphy's Law often combine to make this a busy time of the year for auto clubs like CAA. Even beloved weekend movie hosts occasionally require their assistance. Before gaining fame as a movie......

A couple weeks back, Spacing Wire posted this brilliant old TTC ad that made us hungry for more forgotten gems of Toronto advertising. The video in question was uploaded by a user calling themselves WNED 17, and their entire archive is made up of similar videos. In fact, their profile page provides a mission statement: "Youtube user WNED17 is proud to present repeat portions of broadcast captured in the 1980s and early 1990s via......

During TIFF we said, "if you’re as big a fan of Joy Division as Torontoist is, you’ll quickly come to terms with the fact that Control is simply one man’s interpretation of Deborah Curtis’s book Touching from a Distance, and your overall feelings will (probably) lie on how you feel about that interpretation," and we stand by that even now—despite the gorgeous cinematography, which remains the film’s strongest point, we still like 24 Hour......

Darryl’s Hard Liquor and Porn Film Festival (covered by Amanda Buckiewicz earlier this week) is at the Bloor Cinema this Saturday, October 13 at 8 p.m, but if you’re a person of milder tastes (soft liquor and corn?) this week’s festivals of interest include the Toronto Latin Film Festival, the Macedonian Film Festival, the DNA Film Festival (it’s a busy week for festivals!), and the ImagiNATIVE Film Festival, which continues to win us over......

Slightly different beginning to our Film Friday today, because we’d like to highlight the fact that our favourite film in ages, Reprise (pictured above), was released on DVD this week. We really feel it should have been given the same kind of cinematic release it’s getting right now in the UK, rather than an astonishingly bare-bones DVD transfer with burned-in subtitles, but what are you going to do? You really have to see it......

CityPulse. The New Music. Baby Blue Movies. City Lights. Fashion Television. Speaker's Corner. These programs are among the innovative shows that have aired on CityTV since it officially launched way up the dial 35 years ago this evening. CityTV had a short gestation period after the CRTC approved its license in November 1971. Key figures in the station's early ownership included president Edgar Cowan, vice-president Phyllis Switzer, lawyer Jerry Grafstein and managing director/former CBC......

It’s always strange to write a Film Friday column in the week before the Toronto International Film Festival, since by this point it’s hard to think about anything else. We’ll be previewing the festival on Monday, so be sure to check back if you can’t think of anything else, either. In the meantime, have you had a chance to enter our Canadian Retrospective contest? You could win one Canadian Retrospective ticket package containing tickets......

They’re trying to hypnotise us, people. They’re trying to brainwash us and subdue us by bombarding the television with adverts and by using the media to confuse us, and they’ll never stop… Until Superbad is the number one movie this weekend. Stupid movie executives. We were totally stoked for Superbad until they started a non-stop marketing frenzy that made us completely bored and, frankly, offended. John Harkness at Now is similarly unimpressed: “The weirdest......

Last night, Teletoon's The Detour held a small event in the Royal Cinema to celebrate their upcoming fall lineup, showing a selection of the adult-orientated animation that will soon be on the channel. The lineup includes the long-overdue Sealab 2021, Frisky Dingo (from the creators of Sealab 2021), Moral Orel (created by Mr. Show alumni, including Jay Johnston), and Metalocalypse, which was created by Brendon Small (who is best known for Home Movies) and......

Last week, because we were completely distracted by Dock in a Box, we didn’t mention our sadness at the loss of both Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni. We also couldn’t think of a Director bad enough to lament the continued existence of in the same breath. Thanks to a viewing of Brett Ratner’s Rush Hour 3, we have that man! We really think that Lars von Trier missed a trick in his recent satire......

Tut tut tut. We’re all very disappointed in you, John Krasinski, for your decision to star in License to Wed. Sure, you’ve been working so hard to build up your hipster cred—interviewing the Shins, playing on stage with Ben Gibbard, but I’m afraid we might have to revoke your hipster privileges. The Sun’s Kevin Williamson claims of the film, “you can at least approximate the experience of sitting through this alleged romantic comedy at home......

Yesterday was Canada Day. Well, actually, technically it wasn't because Canada Day is officially celebrated on the second of July whenever the first of July falls on a Sunday. But that sort of thing only matters to the people who insist that the new millennium started in 2001 rather than 2000, and who wants to be one of those people? Canada losing manufacturing jobs rapidly. Economists say "no, really? A strong dollar and globalization......

In Craig Silverman’s most recent Globe Life blog entry, entitled "How to lose friends and make people hate you," (cute, but sounds familiar, doesn’t it?) he discusses a Harvard Business Review study about likeability in the workplace. According to the study, people won't want to work with you if you act smug, sarcastic, or bored or if you obsess over your own workload. Eh, this is boring. And we have ten million other important things......

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......

So, although we’ve only just spent a whole post gushing about Sprockets, we can’t really forget about the other excellent stuff that’s going on this week. The Images Film Festival closes this weekend, and we’ve been told Live Images 4: Quasar, tonight at the Music Gallery (197 John) at 9:30 p.m. is the hot ticket, as it features “an army of modified 16mm projectors and a quadraphonic sound system to envelop the audience in a......

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......

This week our attention is almost completely owned by Cinematheque Ontario’s offerings, even with the thought of Christina Ricci chained to a radiator in Black Snake Moan grasping at us. Not only are Cinematheque Ontario hosting the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, they’re also showing From the Tsars to the Stars, a series of Russian sci-fi. How awesome is that? (There’s more to Russian sci-fi than just Solaris, doubters.) Maybe they’ll do a season......

Ghost Rider’s head is a flaming skull. Can’t get much cooler than that, eh? And yet, from trailers you’d barely know that Ghost Rider is a cinematic version of a Marvel comic book (with, as per usual, a ridiculously complex history) that stars a biker whose head is flaming skull. Having seen the film, we have to argue that the film itself almost doesn’t want you to remember Ghost Rider's awesome fiery visage, concentrating almost......

Torontoist has never seen an Alejandro Jodorowsky film! Should we be ashamed to admit that? Possibly. We are, however, not ashamed to say we love that crazy guy anyway. Who couldn’t love a guy who killed three hundred rabbits with karate chops for a scene in his most well known work (and occasionally screened by Reg Hartt’s Cineforum) El Topo? Torontoist suspect we’ve lost everyone who likes rabbits. Okay then, how about his plan to......

Let’s start with something everyone likes: free films! Yes, the U of T’s Cinema Studies Student Union has revealed the new Free Friday Films line-up, starting tonight with Atom Egoyan’s Exotica. Next week is Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, and Feb. 23 features a Cult Night triple-bill, with Monster Squad, The Brood, and The Human Tornado all showing. Screenings are at Innis College Town Hall, 2 Sussex Ave. Also screening at the Innis......

Sad news from New Orleans, where during a recent spate of violence one of the victims was Helen Hill, filmmaker and animation teacher who worked for many years in the Halifax scene and the Atlantic co-op, and friend of many in Toronto's indie film. Helen was affiliated with the Super 8 festival in Toronto and numerous other activities, so this should come as a horrible shock to the local filmmaking and animation communities. Her husband......