Rejoice! Final Fantasy finally has a new version of his website! The site now has a full list of accomplishments that you can memorize and quiz your friends on, including a list of upcoming projects: upcoming album Heartland, two E.P.'s (Spectrum and Plays To Please), and arrangements for Alex Turner (of the Arctic Monkeys) and plenty of others. Better, there are some videos that have been kicking around on YouTube, like a live action version......

Dundas Square gets a lot of flak for being a cold and soulless expanse of commercial neon and grey granite, and in a new music video for local singer-songwriter-producer Colin Munroe, it still is! But in this case, it's appropriate for his fantastic cover of Kanye West's mediocre "Flashing Lights" track. Directed by Toronto-based street artist, musician, and director Philip Sportel, the super-low-budget video effectively dulls the square down into a generic, industrial, underpopulated......

It's been a while since we've had a good beef between two rappers (and release date conflicts don't constitute beef, Kanye and Fifty), but here's one that may have some artistic merit: Toronto rapper Seazon claims that American hip-hop star Chamillionaire ("Ridin'") jacked his idea for a music video. According to hip-hop news site SOHH.com, the video for Chamillionaire's "Evening News" (above right) bears striking resemblances to Seazon's video for "The Reporter" (above left).......

It's not entirely clear how or when R. Kelly's hip-hop opera "Trapped in the Closet" became a Zeitgeist. Part music video, part soap opera, it—while verging on self-parody throughout—has spawned parodies by everyone from South Park (which used it to make fun of Tom Cruise and John Travolta, among others) to Weird Al (who used it to make fun of fast food. Oh Weird Al!). What is clear is why it's been embraced by seemingly......

Indie popsters Stars will be shooting a new video in Toronto tomorrow and Thursday and they want you to be in it. If you missed the Joel Plaskett shoot we told you about earlier this year, you've got another shot at your 15 minutes of fame (or at least becoming known among your acquaintances as "the one who was in a music video"). Aspiring extras should send photos and contact info to extras@blinkpictures.com for......

Yes! The image above, taken at last year's MMVAs and courtesy of Much Music, is just a mere taster of the kind of reaction Torontoist's legions of adoring fans will make when we stroll down the red carpet on our way to liveblog this year's Much Music Video Awards from on-site. Who cares about seeing live performances from Avril Lavigne, Billy Talent, The Used and more! When you can instead sit in front of......

At Bathurst and St. Clair West, the abandoned Wychwood TTC streetcar repair barns are soon to be revitalized, and the provincial government is investing $3 million in the project. The Green Art Barns will be a community arts and environmental centre with studios, a gallery, a greenhouse and workspace for local not-for-profit groups. Go take a look at the old carhouse before it's all fixed up, as it is highly photogenic. The new archbishop......

He was best known to children of the eighties as the iconic host of Canada's first major daily music video show, CFMT's Video Singles in 1983, which pre-dated MuchMusic and led to the legendary Toronto Rocks program on CityTV (click here for a clip of the intro). Perched before multiple TV screens on a tiny set, John Majhor's loose style and low-fi production would foreshadow the oft-copied format that CityTV would make famous over the......

Special guest Victoria Kent sent us this article, and, since it's about Final Fantasy and "This Lamb Sells Condos," we're pretty much obliged to post, especially now that we've interviewed Brad J. Lamb, whose advertising slogan inspired Owen Pallett to write the song. Thanks Victoria! Toronto-based artists Stephanie Comilang and Jamie Shannon have created an enchanting music video for the Final Fantasy song "This Lamb Sells Condos" -- that required no editing whatsoever. In the......

When the weather is this shit the best thing to do is either hang out with friends at someone's house and tie one on, or go see a flick or two. Last night was time for the latter and the film was Rock The Bells. The film takes a funny, behind the scenes look at the trials and tribulations faced by a promoter trying to book the entire Wu Tang Clan for a live......

He was known for his tales of Old Hollywood as much as his ever-present hairpiece, and Toronto just became way more boring without him. Yesterday, famous publicist and personal manager Gino Empry died at Western Memorial Hospital from congestive heart failure due to a stroke he suffered in July. Though he lived in a huge downtown penthouse condo on Mutual Street, Empry had been in the hospital since the stroke. Empry never revealed his true......

Ah, another week, another Film Friday. But wait! There’s something special this week to break up the monotony! An extra special review of the (heavily delayed) Pulse brought to us by our superhuman photographer and co-editor David Topping. What do you have to say about it, David? Pulse may be both the worst and best movie of all time. It's not an even halfway-decent horror movie, so don't go expecting something like The Shining -......

We've all been to record release parties and book launches, but a party to celebrate the latest music video? Local indiepop crooner Gentleman Reg asks, "why not?" by hosting an event this Friday at the Drake Underground. It's the video debut for "Over My Head," the second single from his adorable Darby & Joan record. Reg's previous outing on video was deemed too risque for MuchMusic. (Who knew they disapproved of make-out parties and sex......

Who Is DJ Cyber-Rap? Depending what circles you run with, this question may have been nagging you for quite some time. If you’re a member of Stillepost, the message board that plays hosts to almost all of Toronto’s scenesters, you’ve known about DJ Cyber-Rap since 2005. That’s when the 59 year-old widower (born Robert “Ronald” Marie MacDougall) first started posting in the Toronto forum of Stillepost from internet cafes, using painfully effortful internet jargon in......

This has been a rough week for your -ist pals, though you wouldn't know it from the great posts all over the network. Plagued with server problems, our tech team (led by the great Neil Epstein) toiled around the clock to solve the glitches as they arose. Seriously, we've said, typed, and thought the phrase "server problems" more in the past week than we have for the last 35 years combined. Why not say it......

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. Guests this year include Paris Hilton (and the resulting......

Oh man! This week’s big news in films comes from a crazy place called Vancouver??? We know! Torontoist have never heard of it either, but apparently it’s in Canada! Wild! So anyway, it’s clearly going to be an exciting place to be come September, as the famous for being terrible German director Uwe Boll wants to have a fight with YOU. Yes, you! As long as in the year of 2005 you’ve written two articles......

Now this Torontoist isn't big on movies. For me, they have to have a point and be pretty good... and Da Vinci Code doesn't qualify as either. Short films, on the other hand, get to the point. It's all in the editing... a craft Hollywood has lost long ago. But all is not lost. This week, from June 13 - 18, marks the 12th Annual Canadian Film Centre Worldwide Short Film Festival. Here we......

Resfest is rolling it into town this weekend with a packed slate of videos, animation, shorts, digital experiments and guest lecturers. They'll be premiering Just for Kicks, a doc about footwear fetishism, and Ginga, Fernando Meireilles' doc about Brazilian footballers. And on Saturday, they'll present Fear and Anxiety: An Evening with Charlie White, a talk by the acclaimed artist at 8pm. On that same night Resfest also screens Cinema Electronica at 10pm, a mixed......

Upstart OCAD grad mag Eat Your Friends is throwing a launch party for its third issue tonight. It'll feature the dazzling sounds of Henri Fabergé and the Adorables, considered by some to be the most adorable conglomerate of musicians on the indie rock block. Indeed, those some may have been drunk and given to hyperbolic outbursts, but hey, let no man say that drunken hyperbole isn't a valid incentive for getting oneself out of......

At the last Resfest, some "slamming" music video's by artists such as Dizzee, Interpol and RJD2 kept things appropriately "popping" at the Royal. This time around, the global digital film festival kicks out more of what you came for, with new GONDRY directed BECK VIDEOS, Can-favourites PIZZA SHOP, and shorts by JARED HESS of that much-loved NAPOLEAN DYNOMITE film. And after Res, watch the feature premier of Autodestruct: One Man's Obsession with William Shatner. Can......