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. Take our word for it: the film is a comedy...more or less. American Psycho is one of those movies. By all......

It's Canadian Music Week and that means there's an unusually large number of hip hop shows going on. KRS-One will be teachin' at The Opera House on Saturday as he continues his Stop the Violence movement. RZA dons his Bobby Digital mask on Sunday at the Phoenix. There's also grimy New York hip-hop (M.O.P. on Friday), French rap (DJ Orgasmic and Cuizinier on Thursday), and a strong showcase of local talent (Friday's Exclaim! event). Also......

Photo by Darryl Scott. Danger! The Mothership descends onto the Phoenix this Monday, bringing George Clinton and his ace group of funkateers, Parliament Funkadelic, into town to tear the roof off the mutha sucka. Meer mortals are powerless to Dr. Funkenstein and his bop gun. All attempts to fake the funk are punishable with potential exile to the Zone of Zero Funkativity. Accept that it's one nation under a groove. (Note: resistance to groove......

It's snowing again! This gives Torontoist yet another opportunity to bust out a pretty picture of streets clogged with snow, and it gives the rest of Canada the opportunity to go, "Hey, how come those Toronto folks can't deal with a little snow ha ha ha don't they have plows?" Then we say, "No, we don't have enough plows, fuckers, because it turns out everybody else is entirely happy to suck money off us......

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. Two years ago, the Toronto Raptors were the laughing stock of the NBA. Vince Carter and his mom had......

Toronto seems to get its annual dose of legendary outsider filmmaker John Waters around this time. A couple of years back he was hosting the TIFF gala of his latest film, A Dirty Shame, then in late 2006, he could be found gallivanting around Roncesvalles overseeing the transformation—for good or ill—of his 1988 comedy, Hairspray, into this year's hit family-friendly musical starring John Travolta (based more on the 2002 Broadway remake than on its original......

The Hidden Cameras are back home, and we are all better off for it. As we mentioned in this week's music listings, the Cameras––they of the Mississauga-bred now world-famous exuberant gay pop fame––are playing an AIDS benefit concert this Thursday night at the Great Hall in Hart House (7 Hart House Circle), with proceeds going to Toronto People With AIDS Foundation and AVERT International. The show, with Montreal's Sister Suvi and Toronto's Allie Hughes, will......

If you are saddened by your procrastination that cost you Richard Hawley and Jose Gonzalez tickets this week, you can direct your attention to the eclectic choice of shows as a mild substitute. It does, however, appear as if local label Arts and Crafts have successfully cornered the market on this week's moderately sized shows (read: tickets that cost no more than $35). Tuesday you can catch Jason Collett with a surprise guest at the......

Some musicians are professional wallowers. Others are professional romantics. And still others are professional fun-havers. Both Toronto's Spiral Beach and Brighton's The Go! Team fall into that last category—performers who embrace the sheer joy of performing. But more than that, they are young, talented, and famous, they know they are young, talented, and famous, and they're grateful for being young, talented and famous. Although Beach's Maddy Wilde and the Team's Ninja may strike diva......

Spoon have made only one big misstep in their ten-plus years of recording albums: Gimme Fiction. The 2005 album, a follow-up to 2002's absolutely brilliant Kill the Moonlight, marked a step backward for the band's music and a step forward for its accessibility––an album of decent, friendly, straightforward, catchy, and ultimately forgettable rock songs, an album able to retain the band's old fans while hooking tons of new ones. Gimme Fiction––save for (pictured) lead......

Steve Jordan, founder of the Polaris Prize, discreetly passes a bottle of Smirnoff to an ecstatic post-victory Patrick Watson. Just before he opened his two-song performance at the Phoenix on Monday tonight as part of the 2007 Polaris Prize gala, Patrick Watson welcomed the crowd of musicians, industry folk, and media to "the battle of the bands." Two-odd hours later, and after quick sets from The Besnard Lakes, Joel Plaskett Emergency, Julie Doiron, Miracle......

This Monday, September 24, the winner of the second-annual Polaris Prize will be announced at a gala event at the Phoenix. There will be stars, musical performances, free food and drink, and, unfortunately, you are probably not invited. Given to the best Canadian album of the past year, and awarded solely on artistic merit, the $20,000 prize is getting handed to someone (probably Feist) at a media and invite-only event. (Torontoist was graciously invited, but......

Lovers of live music are in luck this week—there are a great deal of quality shows in the next seven days. Musicologist's number one choice this week is The Cinematic Orchestra (Sunday at the Phoenix), since we were utterly enchanted by their free outdoor show at Harbourfront earlier this summer. Head over to their MySpace and give the songs a listen. Just try to resist being won over. Another good bet is blues singer/guitarist......

Musicologist is Torontoist's weekly concert listings. Check back in every Monday for more. This week, Musicologist recommends Girl Talk at the Phoenix—if you can find a ticket—but with a couple of caveats. First, do not go expecting your typical live show, or even your typical DJ. The magic of Girl Talk is in the atmosphere he creates with his sample-crazy mash-ups, not in any sort of live technical impressiveness. Think of the $15 ticket price......

While the rest of the city ferried their way to Toronto Island for this weekend's Virgin Festival (Torontoist will have more on that later!), art-rock darlings Animal Collective stopped by at the Phoenix (early!) last night on their world tour for their latest album, Strawberry Jam. After an Alec Empire-like opening set of apocalyptic industrialism by Eric Copeland (from Black Dice), the boys hit the stage. Contrary to audience scuttlebutt, Animal Collective did not sport......

Everyone loves the thrill of discovering a hot new band, but there's something equally exciting about watching a bunch of grizzled, middle-aged rock 'n' roll veterans show the kids that they can still hold it down. The second annual MQMusicfest takes place on August 19 at the Phoenix Concert Theatre, and promises to be filled to the point of overflow with old schoolers shredding like it was somewhere between 1985–95. The Festival is headlined by......

Cat Power hit the stage at the Phoenix last night for her third Toronto show in less than a year. It was Torontoist’s first time seeing her live and after having waited a few years for the privilege, and hearing wonderful things about her shows of late, we were slightly let down. But only slightly, and mostly for reasons beyond Chan Marshall’s control. With the Dirty Delta Blues Band, featuring Judah Bauer of Blues......

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......

Hey, so what are you up to tomorrow night? Wanna go to a concert for free? Of course you do. Texas mega-band The Polyphonic Spree are in town at the Phoenix with their 561 matching-robed band members (okay, so really about 23), in support of their third album, The Fragile Army. And we want you to be there! Courtesy of Universal Music Canada, we have one pair of tickets to give away. But that's not......

For a band with an entire album named for Mississauga, The Hidden Cameras and Toronto sure haven't seen much of each other of late. Friday night at the Phoenix was the band's first full-length show within the GTA's walls in almost a year, the too-long hiatus forced by (pictured) lead man Joel Gibb's Berlin exile; as he goeth, so goeth the band. Live show as interactive spectacle has always been the motif at Cameras shows,......

Music blogs love to hate Silversun Pickups, brushing them off as a low rent Smashing Pumpkins. Besides the sound (the Pickups sound uncannily like the Pumpkins circa their criminally-underrated b-side collection Pisces Iscariot), there are the matching initials, the sweet-voiced female bass players and the lanky frontmen with similarly metallic-sounding voices. But when they rolled into the Phoenix on Wednesday night for a sold-out show, they proved that anyone dismissing them as such is......

Another ticket giveaway! This time it's to check out Toronto's very own Uncut at Sneaky Dee's tomorrow night, courtesy of The Musebox. Also on the bill for the evening are Debaser, Fjord Rowboat and Fire Hydrant, so it's going to be a busy night! We have a pair of tickets to put into someone's hands, and all you have to do to win is be the third person to email carrie@torontoist.com with your full name.......

Comedians Dawn Whitwell and Elvira Kurt wanted to start a comedy movement. So they created Girls School, an all-woman comedy tour featuring some of Canada's most hilarious performers. The reason they chose the name and the all-lady lineup relates to research showing that students in all-girl schools perform better academically than those in co-ed schools. It follows that female comics would feel freer on stage with some sisters. The movement is gynocentric, but the comedy......

New Jersey singer songwriter Pete Yorn is stopping by Toronto on Sunday evening for a show at the Phoenix Concert Theatre, along with opener Moses Mayfield, for a night of making the girls swoon over his pretty face and golden voice. He's touring in support of his latest album Nightcrawler, the final installment of his 'day cycle' trilogy -- Musicforthemorningafter and Day I Forgot being the first two, respectively. You wanna swoon over his pretty......

Spring appears to have, er, sprung, at least temporarily, in most of the Ist-A-Verse, so naturally, we're all feeling pretty good. (Yes, we know that spring doesn't officially start till later this month. Just let us enjoy our weather!) And that makes us that much more eager to share all of the nifty things we're up to... Over at Sampaist, spring has more than sprung: it's sweltering! But, as everyone knows, museums are an ideal......

You wouldn't expect to hear the words "AC/DC's Back in Black" and "recital" in the same breath, but that's exactly what goes on each month at the Phoenix's Classic Albums Live concerts. The series features musicians performing an entire album from the classic rock canon, one song after another in a note-perfect recreation that includes (if warranted) reciting between-song banter, bringing in extra musicians to cover overdubbed parts, and sticking as closely as possible......

If you're a fan of Guster, the very excellent, very melodic, and, as this picture aptly demonstrates, somewhat quirky band from Boston, you'd know that they pretty much never ever play a concert in Canada. Despite their more than modest success (they've, like, totally been on the O.C. twice, and they're a staple of US college radio), the closest they've come to anything Canadian lately is playing with the Barenaked Ladies...in a United States tour.......

It seems pretty appropriate that we just had Groundhog Day, given that we're feeling a little bit like Bill Murray looking at the concert listings this week. Not only is there very little going on, but most of the bands who are playing seem to be here every week (Apostle of Hustle, The Tragically Hip, Hostage Life, Friendly Rich). Thus, we have nothing left to say about them! So if you've already seen these......

Tonight marks the first installment of Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School at the Cameron House. The event provides a night of drawing from the live model with a series of cheeky twists. Firstly, the model is not some random naked person, but rather a cabaret star dressed in appropriately Vaudevillian costume. And at this life drawing session, the art-making is accompanied by alcoholic beverages and groovy tunes, not to mention kooky contests (best incorporation of a......

Yesterday, Jorge Garbajosa was named the Rookie of the Month for the NBA’s Eastern Conference, and he has been leading NBA.com’s unofficial Rookie of the Year Race for the past month. Garbajosa, however, is not a typical rookie; he doesn’t look like one and he doesn’t play like one. He just turned 29 years old, making him about seven years older than most of the league’s other leading rooks. Perhaps that is why he never......