Results tagged “mtv”

Aliya-Jasmine Sovani is the anchor of MTV News, and, as an MTV News intern recently informed us in Eye, she listens to an "eclectic mix of Led Zeppelin, MGMT and Britney Spears." But did you know that she is also a woman, with breasts?

On Tuesday, Eye published "The new NewMusic?", a fawning article about how MTV, and specifically MTV News, embodies all that was once great but is no longer about MuchMusic and The NewMusic. It's been updated a bit since then, but Google caught it in its original form, and you should go read it right now here [ Google's cached version of the article is now up to date, so you'll have to pretend like the last sentence in the fourth paragraph, in parentheses, isn't there—because it wasn't originally.] Seriously, go. We have a surprise for when you get back.

When Tamarama rolled into town for STAND Canada’s latest Darfur benefit concert, they encountered a mob of fawning teenagers and twenty-somethings. Indeed, the transplanted Australian-American reggae-rockers found a half-capacity, albeit captive, audience at Toronto’s Berkeley Church last week. And the reason for all the wide-eyes and short-shorts in the room? Reality television.

One small step for Toronto, and a giant step down for the rest of mankind.

We've said it before: MuchMusic kinda sucks nowadays.

Yes, it's kind of cool to hate on Alexisonfire once you've reached puberty. And no, Crisis, their last record, wasn't filled with delightfully twee indie pop, but pretty much every person who reviewed it dug it like whoa. And the fact remains that as played out as "screamo" gets, these guys have been doing it since long before downtuning and shouting put you on the fast track to rock 'n' roll success. They've bucked trends like awesome make-up and wickedly heavy breakdowns. They paid their dues in halls across this country about a blagillion times, and now they're effing huge. Good on 'em.

Photo by Jeff Croft.

Sure, they penned the obviously raddest one-hit-wonder of 1996, but since that fateful year, full of cheerleaders and homoerotic football players, Nada Surf have continued to rage against the dying of that hit-single light. They may have fallen off MTV's radar, but so have most things north of Christina Aguilera's baby-bump. Since leaving Elektra in 1998, the band have built a quiet following of appreciative indie rockers around the world, unconcerned with attaining the high-rotation status that launched their career in the first place. Their last record, 2005's The Weight is a Gift, was called "a top-notch collection of sad-eyed guitar ballads" by Rolling Stone, and was their second album to be released by some label that also includes a band that's all about killing people in taxis, or something. Its follow-up, Lucky, is scheduled for release on February 5, and for no particular reason at all, the band are celebrating early with a Toronto in-store this Wednesday, January 9.

Are you getting geared up for the season finale of The Hills on Monday? If so, continue reading. If not, we don't need another lecture about how the show is quasi-scripted—tell it to your boring friends. The last few weeks have surprised loyal viewers with some major plot twists: Audrina finally dumped Justin Bobby, Lauren wants to make a boyfriend out of notorious man-whore Brody Jenner, Spencer's sister has turned cat-fighting into the official...

Every weekday morning, bright and early, we feature a photo (or two) from a photographer in the Torontoist Flickr Pool. It's our way of giving the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention that they deserve. Beaver Brothers Wood Co. BY HDR IMAGES ARE SO MTV....

Every weekday morning, bright and early, we feature a photo (or two) from a photographer in the Torontoist Flickr Pool. It's our way of giving the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention that they deserve.

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve teamed up with the Toronto International Film Festival Group to run a contest each day until the end of the festival for tickets to next-day screenings.

Every weekday morning, bright and early, we feature a photo (or two) from a photographer in the Torontoist Flickr Pool. It's our way of giving the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention that they deserve.

Starting September 1, the Hamilton television station known as CH will be rebranded as E! Entertainment Television. E! is an American entertainment and lifestyle cable broadcaster best known for its wildly successful E! True Hollywood Story series.

City council says up to 2,500 tonnes of dog poop are deposited in park trash bins every year. This is problematic since our garbage dumps in Michigan refuse to take it. So where should we put our growing heap of canine feces? Councillor Pam McConnell (Ward 28, Toronto Centre-Rosedale) thinks the city should provide green bins in parks, while Councillor Paula Fletcher (Ward 30, Toronto-Danforth) doesn't think it's a big deal for dog owners to carry the waste home and flush/compost it. What are your thoughts on this crap?

We don't know about where you are, but it seems like spring can't decide whether or not to happen. Some days are warm, some days are cold, and sometimes you aren't sure which. Baseball may have started up (and soccer/football winding down) but it still seems cold out there. Unless it's not. Anyway, onto the -ists.

Torontoist was very saddened to learn of yesterday's passing of Canadian animation legend Ryan Larkin.

Anyone can make a digital short and then use the interweb to distribute it around the world. It helps if it's something that people want to watch and then tell their friends about, but spreads the message better than playing to 14 people in the back of a bar.

In order to more accurately reflect the values of German youth, MTV Germany altered the hit TV show Pimp My Car to Pimp My Bike. Toronto's own Corwyn Lund has pimped a bike so hard, he's gonna head up bike pimping operations for MTV World. Well, maybe one day he will. But for now, he is delivering missives and enunciations to the citizens of Toronto with this luminous bike – but only on Mondays.

Austinist was in a musical frame of mind as they listened to the new Shins album, updated the SXSW band listings and got called "punk rock" for their efforts by MTV. And an ice storm swept through the area.

Ah, convergence. It's a word fraught with different meanings, competing motives, and opinions up the proverbial wazoo. To some, convergence is a paradise of synergy, cross-promotion, and massive profits. To others, it's confirmation that more and more information is being disseminated by less and less people. Wherever you stand, however, the world of Toronto media overlords might be on the verge of becoming a whole lot smaller, as Alliance Atlantis confirmed today that one of the companies it is in exclusive talks to sell itself to is none other than Canadian broadcasting and publishing behemoth CanWest Global.

Between the groundbreaking (and Oscar-nominated) Walking in 1969 and his equally revolutionary follow-up, Street Musique, three years later, Ryan Larkin cemented his status as among the most daring and brilliant animators of his time, taking hand-drawn animation to a previously-unseen level of surreal impressionism. He was the rising star of the NFB, the protégé of, and successor to, Norman McLaren, but the pressure to top his earlier triumphs exacerbated his already-present problems with drug- and alcohol-dependency. He left the NFB in 1978, and after a "hazy" decade during which he managed to get himself off of cocaine, Larkin took up panhandling outside (the greatest restaurant in the world) Schwartz's deli in Montréal. This tragic fall from grace was chronicled in Chris Landreth's excellent 2004 Academy Award-winner for Best Animated Short, Ryan, which renewed attention on Larkin, who nevertheless chose to continue his long stint on The Main.

Tonight, the Horseshoe Tavern plays host to the Pitchfork/Secretly Canadian Indie Rock Triple-Header. This is a chance to see three awesome bands you've probably never heard of... but who everyone will be talking about in a few months. If you want to get ahead of the curve, read on.

Sometimes you have to wonder what they're thinking down on Queen Street.

You know who's going to be upset about those Bikini Bandits? The Houston school system. Houstonist also reports on some redevelopment shenanigans over a landmark theater.

Even as the stores sport back to school sales (which depress us, even now), summer lingers on your friends the -ists. This week's collection of links provides some of the best, worst, and oddest bits of summer fun. So, bring your laptop up onto the roof, make yourself an umbrella drink or ten, and enjoy this week's choice posts from across the Gothamist network.

Bell Globemedia, owners of CTV, the Globe and Mail and a bunch of cable channels is in the midst of buying Chum, owner of CityTV, radio stations and even more cable channels. The resulting media conglomerate would be scary to say the least and probably own about half the specialty cable channels in Canada. It will also make the Canadian media scene just a little more concentrated. Bell Globemedia has indicated that it plans to keep CityTV intact but the question on all our minds is will they keep MuchMusic or MTV Canada?

San Francisco is proud host of a new reality show called "How to Get the Guy" that's unfortunately not a descendant of Will and Grace, Queer Eye, The L Word, American Idol etc. Also a biodefence lab is coming to the East Bay and SFist teaches wine pairing.

If this green arrow were real it would crush several hundred teenie boppers and a few dozen talentless musicians on Sunday. Sadly, it's not real. What is very real is the Much Music Video Awards and the resulting noise from screaming adoring fans and traffic confusion from out-of-towners who forgot that MuchMusic actually occupies real space and once a year holds a large award ceremony.

MTV Canada launched three months ago, and since that time one thing has become obvious: it's way better than MuchMusic. Less annoying VJs (including Daryn Jones, of Daryn Jones & Mista Mo fame) and way more addictive content (My Super Sweet 16 and Laguna Beach, to name a few) are just the tip of this sexy, American iceberg. Sure, MTV doesn't have any actual music videos and their website is a huge pain to navigate, but for some reason, that doesn't matter; it's all coated in MTV goodness. The two channels are so unequal in quality, it's like comparing The Daily Show to Last Call with Carson Daly. No contest.