Results tagged “nowmagazine”

For the second year in a row, readers of the alt-weekly that we have never written anything critical about, not even once, have voted Torontoist Toronto's Best Blog. Aw shucks, NOW readers, thanks. We accept.

NOW Magazine has just opened up voting for all categories in their annual "Best of Toronto" issuestravaganza. Last year, we somehow won both Best Website and Best Blog. NOW wrote snarky things about us, but they also said that "there is no other blog that cares so much about covering the city"! Thanks NOW!

We sort of agree with Susan G. Cole. There, we said it.

If nothing else, Susan G. Cole, NOW's Senior Entertainment Editor, does live up to one part of her job title: she sure is entertaining.

This week, NOW Magazine called out Jesse Brown, of TVO’s Search Engine, over comments Brown made on Monday night at SaveOurNet.ca’s Open Internet Town Hall meeting at the Gladstone Hotel. If you missed our coverage of the net neutrality event, here’s what Brown said: "NOW Magazine, Rabble.ca, the absent Mrs. Chow—is it necessarily a good idea to align net neutrality with the far left in Canadian politics? I can see it just as easily being a right-wing free market libertarian issue…why don’t we keep net neutrality neutral and put up a big tent, and everybody who cares about it can get under?"

     

Three weeks ago, Now Magazine published a first-person account of the forcible confinement and assault of regular contributor (and Pedestrian Committee member) Roger Brook. On an unspecified part of Dufferin, Brook stopped to take down one of those junk signs illegally attached to utility poles throughout the city—the kind of advertising that even right-wing city councillors get pissy about [PDF]. Despite the fact that he (and the sign) were fully within the public space, Brook was threatened and attacked by a private security guard who wrestled him to the ground, handcuffed him to a fence, and radioed the police. Private security of course has no such authority in the public space—nor had Brook done anything illegal—but silly things like laws aren't really of much interest to someone whose behaviour would warrant a feature-length investigation even if he were a cop. Brook's article gave us difficulty sleeping; we have no idea how we would handle the situation he found himself in.

Every single one of the 107,000 copies of Now Magazine published each week is read by (on average) three different people. Sure, PMB, whatever you say. Perhaps that's not surprising when your annual studies—used to determine readership numbers and thus a year's worth of ad rates—are based largely on how recognizable a publication's logo is [PDF].

Before Slumdog Millionaire won the Best Picture Oscar, Susan Cole wrote an article for NOW saying that it'd be "the most violent film to do so ever" if it did, in spite of overwhelming evidence otherwise. And idiots like us actually read and understood her argument based on the words she used! Today, Cole backpedals—she meant to say the most unnecessarily violent Best Picture ever: "Yes, I left out the word 'unnecessarily' which messed with my meaning, but for the record, my point is that this film could have been as exhilarating as it had to be, without sustaining its one-note edgy tone and without the hero oozing snot and dripping blood during a torture scene in the first two minutes." "Thanks for the responses," she adds, "from those who think I don't know what movies have won Academy Awards," before defending previous winners' violence as justifiable based on their subjects ("Movies about war and battle...need the violence to be authentic"; "No Country For Old Men...is about drug wars and thus need to convey dealers' violent ethos to be convincing"). If we were in a scrappier mood, we might mention that Indian slums are not exactly havens free from violence and that not representing that violence would mark a movie like Slumdog as inauthentic and unconvincing. But that point's so obvious it's probably unnecessary.

Last night, Slumdog Millionaire won the Oscar for best picture. But did you know that it is "the most violent film to do so ever"? It's true, according to NOW's Senior Entertainment Editor Susan G. Cole, who has apparently never seen No Country For Old Men (which features a guy strangling a cop to death with handcuffs), The Departed (which features several guys shooting other guys in the head), Gladiator (which features plenty of beheadings and severed limbs), Silence of the Lambs (which features a guy who kills women and makes coats from their skin), Braveheart (which features an extended torture scene complete with disembowelling), or Schindler's List (which is about the holocaust). Good thing, though, that He's Just Not That Into You wasn't nominated for best picture this year, too: according to Cole, it features a scene of "a little boy who pushes [a little five year-old girl] into the sand, sneering at her that she smells like dog poo." When that girl goes to her mother, her mother tells her that "that little boy did those things...because he likes you." The scene, Cole writes, is "repulsive," "totally terrifying," and is an instance of "abusive parenting" and "excusing violence against women." Never you mind that Buffalo Bill guy.

Here’s a short-term memory game for you. Gloss over the music section in last week’s issue of NOW. Ok, now take a look at this week’s issue. What’s missing? That’s right! Perlich’s Picks! It seems like Tim Perlich’s legion of anonymous flamers have been granted their wish. The veteran music critic (or “arrogant gasbag,” as his naysayers call him) appears to have been 86’ed from NOW’s offices. There’s been no official statement made on this yet, but shooting an email over to his NOW address prompts this telling bounce back message:

Tim Perlich is no longer with NOW Magazine.

Continue reading "Toodle-oo, Tim!"

Obama! The dude is everywhere. And everywhere he goes, so goes Hope, and so go the dreams of the souls of black folk and of Toronto's alternative weeklies.

                    

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains of 2008--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, with one hero and one villain selected by each participating staff member. On Christmas Day: the heroes. On Boxing Day: the villains. And next week, cast your vote to determine the Superhero and Supervillain of the year.

First, hipsters were going to spell the end of western civilization. And, now, western civilization is going to spell the end of hipsters. In the latest edition of NOW, Joshua Errett (Torontoist's co-founder, for what it's worth) argues that hipsters are so totally over, thanks in no small part to a certain Barack Obama. Maybe Errett's just being ironic (or post-ironic?). Or maybe Sarah Nicole Prickett—justifiably cited as something of an expert on hipsterdom in NOW's article—was sorta right.

When Eye published an article in August about how Toronto has no Gawker equivalent, and specifically faulted us for "all-consuming earnestness" and being unable to address the city's "gore," we didn't really have anything to say about it. Torontoist co-founder and NOW Online Editor Josh Errett does, though: in this week's issue of the already Torontoist-heavy mag, Errett cuts to the chase, chronicling the creation of Torontoist as proof positive that something like Gawker couldn't exist here, in no small part because of the "bizarre hypersensitivity of some of our best about-towns."

Torontoist has just been named by NOW staff as Toronto's best website and by NOW's readers as Toronto's best blog, all in this year's Best of T.O. feature. We couldn't be more delighted with the honour. Says NOW:

Torontoist is often petulant and snarky, and seems uninterested in the world outside U of T (downtown campus only). Occasionally, its wall-of-text entries are dry and difficult to read, perhaps better suited to Wikipedia.

But overall, there is no other blog that cares so much about covering the city. For that, Torontoist should be saluted—and the rest of the local blogosphere should try harder.

In the current issue of Toronto Life, Philip Preville attempts to argue for a big-box store in Leslieville. It's no easy task, but Preville's argument is pretty sound, resting on convenience (it'd be close to where people live), location (what else is going to go in its place?), cost (cheap!), and—oh yes—the environment (less driving = less pollution). Preville also says about the smartest thing we've yet heard about the development, which is that "instead of trying to keep the downtown big box free, we’d be better off figuring out how to make large-format retail compatible with a mostly walkable, constantly improving, ever-greening city in which many people still shop in their cars." NOW's Susan G. Cole obviously takes issue with Preville's argument—as many surely will—but the best argument she can muster in reply is to say that Wal-Mart, the crown jewel of the project, are just a bunch of fascists who want us all to conform. Um, okay.

Last week, Torontoist reported that the Alliance Atlantis–owned Cumberland Cinemas were going to be demolished to make room for a condo development, based on information from the Greater Yorkville Residents' Association (GYRA).

NOW is getting set to launch its new blog, NOW Daily, this week. Edited by former Torontoist editor/curmudgeon Josh Errett, it's promising "daily album reviews, a stable of online-only columnists, stage and live music recaps, breaking news and interviews. And, what with the wonders of the World Wide Web, a healthy amount of content will be interactive, like map mash-ups and reader reviews, and also multimedia, like playlists, podcasts and videos." About time. And also: yay! Errett writes: "I sincerely hope you find our new section, as well as the rest of the site, both usable and well-presented." We'll believe that when we see it.

Well, we've listed the films that are showing at this week's NXNE festival, but we haven't particularly shown any opinion about which you should go and see. Until now! Our pick, above all, is Agile, Mobile, Hostile: A Year in the Life of Andre Williams, which plays the NFB Cinema at 1:15 p.m. this Saturday. Tim Perlich at NOW complains, "[directors] Matthies and Todd are unable to put [Williams's] sad current state in proper historical perspective," but we're still interested to see a film about Williams's current life. For a quick introduction to his work (and for some historical perspective), you couldn't do much better than checking out his song "Jail Bait." Pretty amazing—or amazingly offensive, depending on your point of view!

Like it or not, big bad Rogers will be the exclusive provider of Apple's beautiful and magnificent and world-changing iPhone, and as each week goes by it's getting harder and harder to mitigate disgust for the former with adoration for the latter.

Read our Sprockets preview? Don’t have kids—or don’t care? Well, there’s… Not a great deal we can genuinely recommend instead, but there is some stuff. Obviously, the Images Festival continues, ending this Sunday night with the closing night gala Trading the Future at 7 p.m. Cinematheque Ontario is also running The Latest Wave: New Romanian Cinema, a retrospective of the latest hot films to come out of Romania to thundering critical acclaim and absolutely no attention from the general populace. Now, we hate to be a negative nelly, but isn’t a retrospective of new Romanian cinema just about the most predictable thing that Cinematheque could have done? We almost wish we’d bet money on it (as poor as the odds might have been).

Couple of things going on with the films released this week. With Shutter, most interesting is that it’s based on a Thai horror film, but has been, in its Western remake, transplanted to Tokyo. Reasons? Well, either “all of Asia is basically the same thing, right?” or “people always think of scary pale girls with long black hair as being Japanese, anyway.”

Forget Harlequin––the results from NOW's massive love and sex survey are now out.

SEPT. 28, 2006: Torontoist publishes "Two Peas In A Pod," a poorly considered article making fun of Eye and Now for both deeming Nuit Blanche significant enough to feature on their covers the same week.

NOW's yearly Best of Toronto issue is out, and amidst a slew of other winners (Cherry DiNovo is the Best MPP! CiRCA sweeps "Best Dance Club" and "Best club for an impromptu orgy"!), the alt weekly has named Spacing Toronto as the city's best blog. We're a bit jealous––we were Best Blog in 2005, and we'd definitely be up for winning again––but Spacing has been pretty awesome, consistently, since its formation. If anything, the award is long overdue. Congrats!

So, what’s scarier: a zombie infestation or the melting of the polar ice caps? This is an urgent and legitimate question! And later this week, Toronto cineastes can compare and contrast, for just as the After Dark Festival winds down, the Planet in Focus International Environmental Film & Video Festival springs up. Running from October 24 to 28, Planet in Focus is the most acclaimed film festival of its environmentally-minded ilk. This year, to coincide with the International Polar Year (which 2007 is, as you are doubtlessly already aware), the festival’s Spotlight Program is entitled Polar Visions. (Hint: these visions may include the melting of large volumes of ice.)

Another weekend of trade shows is upon us. The belle of the ball this year is the Green Living Show, but there are two other significant expos for which you should make room in your schedule: the Good Food Festival and the Yoga Show.

If you picked up a copy of this week's Eye, you may have noticed that the text along the bottom of the cover claims that "It's official! Eye Weekly has the largest circulation of any urban weekly in Canada!*" Yipee!

Canadian rapper k-os has questionably hinted at a racist agenda at NOW Magazine after receiving a mediocre review.

Uh-oh. It seems that today's issues of Now Magazine and Eye Weekly have both run cover stories on the same event- the first time it's happened in, well, three weeks. But the double-coverage on Sept. 7 coincided with the Toronto International Film Festival (see here and here). Where as TIFF is said to be the most important film festival in the world, this time the publicist's wet dream is over... Nuit Blanche? Apparently it's a "luminous citywide happening" or "all-night art party" (guess who said which).