Results tagged “thestar”

The Star (and its website) will have a new editor come March 1: Michael Cooke, current Editor-in-Chief of the Chicago Sun-Times, former Editor-in-Chief of the New York Daily News and Vancouver Province, former Managing Editor of the Edmonton Journal and Montreal Gazette, and alleged Cooke Monster. Cooke worked at the Star back in the mid-'70s as the paper's Assistant National Editor, and, according to the Star's publisher, John Cruickshank, "as long as I've known him he has dreamed of coming back." No word yet on whether Cooke will shortly be replaced with an unpaid intern.

It seems that the mere presence of teenagers is enough to herald the downfall of a neighbourhood. The Star quoted a mid-Scarborough building superintendent commenting on the harbingers of doom: "We've seen a big change in this area. In the last six months, we've started to see young people hanging around in groups." After two stabbings (one fatal) in three weeks, the Star now describes the area as a "new trouble spot" that's "violence-racked." No word on what the local hipster hordes think.

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.”

Speculation has been swirling in Toronto's literary community over the authorship of The Calling, a new recent crime fiction novel, penned by a prominent and highly-regarded writer under the alter-ego of Inger Ash Wolfe. First, Maclean's guessed the author was Jane Urquhart, who denied the rumour. Then, citing as evidence a handful of anonymous leaflets distributed to publishers, The Star pointed the finger at Michael Redhill, one of Torontoist's favourite authors. He coyly side-stepped the question without firmly denying it. Finally, Quill & Quire suggested Linda Spalding as a candidate, but she too rebuffed the notion. Pseudonyms are common enough in crime fiction—from Franklin W. Dixon to John Ross MacDonald—but the real identity usually emerges eventually. In this case, the publisher denies that they'll ever reveal the secret. Is the secret a mystery-wrapped publicity stunt to generate pre-release buzz, or a genuine attempt to identify the book as a first-in-genre launch instead of a first-time-author? Either way, now that the book's in stores, is it worth the hype?

Popular Québécois cartoonist Michel Rabagliati will be making an appearance at the Lillian H. Smith Library (239 College Street) on March 15 at 5:00 p.m. to promote his latest book, Paul Goes Fishing. Rabagliati will participate in a Q&A session with The Beguiling’s Peter Birkemoe and sign books for loyal fans of the Paul series. And it's free!

Since fake pharmaceutical ads for a drug called "Obay" starting appearing across Ontario (and elsewhere) last week, everyone from street artist Frank Shepard Fairey (aka OBEY) to Scientologists to comedian Maggie Cassella has been fingered as the culprit behind them.

Many of us were looking forward to welcoming the Buffalo Bills to Toronto. The eight games they'll play here over the next five years could've been the perfect complement to our existing football diet of live Argonauts games and televised NFL matches. Now that the details have been announced, more than a few of us have been priced out of attending. The majority of tickets average into the $350 per game range, and are only available if you ante up for all eight games at once. As Dave Perkins laments in The Star, the arrangements clearly lay the groundwork for Ted Rogers and Larry Tanenbaum to bring the NFL to Toronto full-time. Granted, there's the unlikely possibility that Bills owner Ralph Wilson is using the games as leverage to extort further concessions from the taxpayers of Buffalo, but he's not exactly denying the possibility of eventual relocation. This is simply the latest chapter in Toronto's long-running soap opera love affair with "big league" American football. A couple past episodes in this drama are indicative of how this pursuit has evolved from quiet self-confidence to the fervent desire to be validated as a "big league" city.

More Rosie! More Slinger! More Star PM! (Well, okay, maybe not that last one.) The Star has just announced that it has reached a tentative agreement with its unions, which means it'll be business as usual, at least until the paper implodes in a year or two.

Good newspaper headlines are concise, descriptive, clear, and––occasionally, just occasionally––nothing short of genius. And then there's "Man who stole car with baby faces more charges."

There is certainly no point (or much truth) in saying that a woman should not care how she looks. But do we really need more women who are sassy, political and outspoken devoting their energy to a topic that exerts tremendous negative pressure on all women? After all, women already have more than their share of media targeted to their insecurities. It's unfortunate to see someone with real depth and courage adding to the pile, no matter how earnestly she is going about it.

Craig Silverman, author of "Regret the Error," has published his annual compendium of errors and corrections in global print and online media, and it's a doozy. Culprits are fairly evenly dispersed, with errors from America (Obama? Osama?), the UK, Australia and Russia all figuring prominently. But don't fear! Southern Ontario media did us proud by contributing their fair share. The Toronto Star makes the list—twice. And both about the happy subject of death!A Nov....

Rosie DiManno sucks. Every day, poor Toronto Star readers are subjected to another over-the-top, awkwardly-written, occasionally-insulting column about the day's top depressing story from the purple-streaked purveyor of pulp. Torontoist, for one, can't take it anymore: it's time to take out the trash. The Evidence DiManno Watch needed a bit of a breather for the past week, and, really, we have no one other than DiManno to thank for that. Sure, she's subtly insulted immigrants...

Torontoist has always kept an eye on The Star. Now, it seems, they're keeping an eye on us. Several weeks ago, David Topping launched DiManno Watch, a new column where articles by loudmouth Star columnist Rosie DiManno are rated on a scale of one to six disembodied DiManno heads. Our dislike of Rosie's writing is not a new thing: we've been DiManno critics for ages. In last Tuesday's news roundup, we followed up on...

Former Torontoist contributor Ted Healey came across a great find at the Wellesley & Ontario condo and townhouse development known as "The Star of Downtown." Previously the subject of an Ugly Stick here on Torontoist, the condo's advertisements have seen plenty of scorn since they were put up. The latest addition to the front facade is thanks to someone named Defy, who has decided to give a voice to the gay urban professionals artificially posed around their sweet new townhouses.

A 13-year-old boy at St. Mary's Catholic Secondary School in Toronto was arrested after he was found to be carrying an illegal 200,000 volt stun gun in his backpack.The Star quotes school board chair Oliver Carroll as saying that "everyone was shocked." Presumably Carroll was not speaking literally.

It's Labour Day, so a special shout-out to all the sweatshop workers who won't be reading this because they're working today and can't afford a computer on 21 cents an hour anyway. Thanks for all the cheap clothes, guys.

The arduous, lengthy, and expensive quest to name the Bell Festival Centre is over. The Star described the process for finding a new moniker for the home of the Toronto International Film Festival Group in dramatic terms: "[it] has gone on for years," wrote Martin Knelman, "involving high-priced consulting firms and a committee of board members and gurus, climaxing with a think-tank meeting at a retreat in Cambridge, Ont."

The Real Toronto's hook is relatively simple. Filmed in the summer of 2005 by a now-24-year-old Russian immigrant nicknamed Madd Russian, it aims to show that "Toronto, known to most as a world class city has another side to it. This movie shows the reality of living in housing projects and some of the most run down areas in the city. This footage includes interviews with gang members, drug dealers and some of the realest street rappers in Toronto. From Scarborough to Etobicoke this movie will take you through hoods in 9 different locations to show you."

Earlier this evening, The Star reported on what might somehow rank as one of the strangest videos on YouTube. Recorded on Monday afternoon at the protests in Montebello, the video shows the tail end of a confrontation between Dave Coles (president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada) and three masked men who seem hell-bent on rilling up him, his fellow protestors ("old guys, grandmothers, grandfathers"), and the line of riot-ready police.

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.

Wondering what tragic news event The Sun will exploit and sensationalize for its cover tomorrow? Based on last week, we have a likely candidate [link now expired], though the death of another "tot" in gang violence could also fill the paper's daily quota of grisly.

The Star reports this morning about U of T political science student Evon Reid (pictured). Reid applied for a job at Queen's Park as a media analyst earlier this month and was waiting to hear back when an e-mail from Aileen Siu, a part-time contract employee (whose contract is probably about to end prematurely), landed in his inbox on Friday morning. Siu's e-mail simply read: "This is the ghetto dude that I spoke to before."

What if suburbanites could commute to downtown Toronto on the H20 highway? TTC chair Adam Giambrone says high-speed ferries could ease road traffic and cut commute times in half. David Miller thinks the idea has merit, but is concerned the $25 million price tag on boats and docking facilities may be too high. The Star is skeptical, but Torontoist rarely turns down a nice boat cruise.

Yesterday, the Lakeview Generating Station in Port Credit was demolished as crowds looked on. Toronto usually gets weepy over the destruction of buildings, but the station was a pretty ugly example of Soviet-era industrial architecture and it was powered by coal. Are you going to miss it?

The problem with doing a weekly CD review is that an excellent album will sometimes cross your path, only to realize that you can't get to it for weeks. Then they explode (sort of), play a show that gets covered by everyone and their Grandma (a.k.a. The Star), and you end up twiddling your thumbs, not sure if one more review is really going to say anything different from all the other ones. It might not, but Five Roses (Secret City) by Miracle Fortress is too good and we can't let it pass by.

Developers RioCan bought the parking lot at the corner of Queen Street West and Portland back in 2005. Immediately, rumours started to circulate that a big box store, like Home Depot, was going to be built at the site. At the time, The Globe and Mail reported that RioCan planned to start building in 2007. Which is now. So what's happening with the project?

You know all those flashy LED lights on the CN Tower? Apparently they're going to get flashier by this Thursday.

The Star is reporting this morning that The City of Toronto has designated the Sam The Record Man store as a heritage building, protecting the signs from being auctioned off. Kyle Rae said that "[the City will] sit down with the owner or future owners as the property is being sold, and we hope to be able to maintain the two discs and `Sam' signs on the rooftop as part of the ongoing history of Yonge Street." If it was possible to slow-clap over the internet, we'd be doing it right now. Well done, Toronto.

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.

Photo by Eyeline-Imagery in the Torontoist Flickr Pool.