Photo by Ryan Coleman from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. Maybe you've heard? TIFF starts today! Spotlights! Cameras everywhere! A-listers in action! Parties every night! With free champagne! And gift bags! Also, apparently there are some movies playing somewhere! And yet, contrary to the appearance of every front page of every Arts or Life or Style section in the city, the entire city is not hyperventilating in unison. Not every body has leapt from its......

The Toronto International Film Festival lands with a thud today and is going to colour this city in its inimitable fashion for the next 10 days, and, as before, we'll be there to cover the festival inside and out with reviews, listings, and more each day. Though it's only the first day—traditionally a quiet one for everyone except press and industry—there are a surprising number of interesting screenings on tonight. We won't start our......

You may have already heard that TIFF is bringing a cokeload of celebrities to Toronto. And really, it's totally understandable that the list of five hundred big names visiting our fair metropolis would be cause for excitement. Nothing says "awesome" like catching a glimpse of Zac Efron gaily sipping something expensive on the patio of Sassafraz, after all. So as long as the Toronto International Film Festival is going on, we want to hear about......

Remember during last year's TIFF, when Colin Farrell took a homeless man known as "Stress" on a $2,100 shopping spree and gave him $830 in cash to find a place to stay? The Sun reports today that Stress is now "clean and sober, has a comfy bachelor pad, goes to church and the Y and darts around town on a mountain bike," has "taken up yoga," and credits Farrell for giving him the help he......

It was 363 days ago that Torontoist trekked down from North York to the NFB Cinema at John and Richmond for a 9:00-on-a-Monday-morning press screening of Boy A, ahead of its world premiere at TIFF. It was worth the schlep. Surprised to learn from the credits that it was a TV movie produced for Britain's Channel 4, we said of the drama about a young adult being assigned a new identity upon his release......

The Toronto International Film Festival made a whole fleet of announcements today. In addition to revealing their full line-up and gala presentation details (including the Coen Brothers' no-way-it-won't-be-amazing Burn After Reading), the fest is also rolling out the red carpet at Yonge-Dundas Square, which will host a ton of free stuff in the first half of September, like a slam dunk competition featuring LeBron James for some reason. But oh, show-off TIFF wasn't over,......

WORDS: Breaking Dawn, the final installment of author Stephenie Meyer's vampire/romance book series Twilight, is being released at midnight. A masquerade-themed party at Indigo this evening celebrates the book launch, with Breaking Dawn-inspired activities, music, and prizes for the best costume. Plus, you get to buy the book—which will certainly suck—as soon as it goes on sale at 12:01 a.m. Indigo Books (55 Bloor Street West), 8:00 p.m., FREE. SALE: Vintage boutique Marylou Flamingo is......

Dr. Steve Brule. Now, that name either fills you with joy, and probably running straight to YouTube, or it rings absolutely no bells at all. We mention him—John C. Reilly's character from Tim & Eric Awesome Show Good Job!—because he's pretty much the reason we rate Reilly so highly. Initially he was lumped in with the list of "people who have been in Paul Thomas Anderson films that we are ambivalent about," but Dr.......

Really we were. Between the alcohol and the giddiness and the fact that we couldn't think of anything intelligent to ask him about his new movie, Coopers' Camera, we opted instead to snap a few photos from afar. And then when we finally did work up the nerve to approach him, he had just left, leaving us with memories of Homer and Mr. T. Jones, along with countless other Canadian film industry and media......

It’s time to rev up film fest season again, folks. This week, Visa cardholders could purchase ticket packages in advance for the Toronto International Film Festival and, starting Monday, so can regular folk. A package of ten tickets will set you back around $170 including taxes and fees, or $17 per ticket. The good thing is that the ten-pack can be shared, so up to four tickets can be used from the pack per......

We're a little under three months away from the 33rd Toronto International Film Festival, which means it's about time to begin the constant buzz for the festival that many of you will find insufferable. The first announcement? That the festival is to open with the world premiere of Passchendaele, written, directed and produced by Paul Gross. Or "that guy out of Due South" if you're in the mood for a lazy short-hand. Only Gross's......

It’s almost time for the Toronto International Film Festival for Children, Sprockets (it runs this year from April 12th to 18th) and the complete line-up of films has been announced. Once again this year all film journalists will find it impossible to mention the festival without bringing up Mike Myers (after all, it’s was one of the best SNL sketches ever, really) but far more relevantly, this year Sprockets features 68 films from 26......

Hello! Although you probably didn’t notice, this Torontoist writer was away for a week, and as a result we failed to do something very important. Specifically, to congratulate Norm Wilner on becoming NOW’s senior film critic. We're not doing this just because we know Wilner keeps an eye on Torontoist to see if he gets a mention, but because we like his work so much that we can’t think of anyone better to step......

Every day this week, Torontoist is exploring the future of repertory cinema in Toronto. We spoke to the theatre managers of four major rep cinemas to hear if rep cinema is dying, what it's like to exist in a YouTube society, and what original programming has them most excited. Today, we look at the model used by Cinematheque Ontario. Cinematheque Ontario, the screening program run by the Toronto International Film Festival Group, is not a......

It’s wild outside, huh? So wild that it allows us to segue into talking about Strange Wilderness first, for some reason. It surprises us that the last Happy Madison film that we saw was (the quite sweet, really) 50 First Dates. Strange Wilderness is only of interest to us because it has quite possibly the worst trailer we’ve ever seen on TV. It’s absolutely meaningless. It explains nothing about the (surely) threadbare plot of......

Toronto has been called a city of neighbourhoods: The Beach, Yorkville, Chinatown, Little Italy, Greektown, The Annex; all have their defining characteristics that make them appealing to locals as well as visitors. And when it comes down to it, most of these areas are well-defined by the intersection of two major streets. Photo by David Urbonas from Flickr. Since the inaugural Yonge & Bloor installment of A City Intersected, Torontoist has made every attempt at......

Films! Films films films films. Sometimes it’s hard to get this column started, so we just sit in front of a blank word document and type the word "films" until it doesn’t make any sense to us any more. But by then, we’ve got started typing, at least, and so we continue. Cloverfield! Also, we just type the names of the films that are out that week with exclamation marks! In an attempt to......

Though there are only three new films on release this week, it would be unfair to bemoan the shortage when one film, Persepolis, is of a high enough quality that it might as well be the only film released. During TIFF 2007 Christopher Bird handed it a 5/5 and called it "a masterwork in every way that matters." Much like in our praise of There Will Be Blood, we do have to hesitate with......

Really not much on in terms of Christmas films this week. The Bloor is showing National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (which is about as far away from a Christmas classic as we can imagine without being a film about aliens from another galaxy that have never heard of Christmas) and White Christmas. We’re still happy to recommend Enchanted (we just saw it, and it was absolutely lovely), but for those of you who want to......

Every November and December, a handful of current and former Toronto International Film Festival employees make the trek to the United Arab Emirates to help run the Dubai International Film Festival. Its fourth year having wrapped up on Sunday, DIFF—like most everything else about Dubai—is an experiment in accelerated postmodernization, an attempt to create a world-class film festival (this year's opening movie was Michael Clayton, with George Clooney in attendance) from scratch. One of......

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......

You may remember our coverage of the excellent Vice film Heavy Metal in Baghdad. A documentary following the Iraqi heavy metal band Acrassicauda, we reviewed it at TIFF and called it “one of our top films of the festival” before interviewing one of the directors, Suroosh Alvi. Although Acrassicauda have since managed to escape Iraq (and then escape Syria) with the help of Vice and many generous donations, the band is still in trouble,......

The Toronto International Film Festival Group announced their top ten Canadian features for 2007 last night, along with (for the first time) their top ten list of Canadian short films. The top ten Canadian features were: L’âge Des Ténèbres (Denys Arcand), Amal (Richie Mehta), Continental, Un Film Sans Fusil (Stéphane Lafleur), Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg), Fugitive Pieces (Jeremy Podeswa) , My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin), A Promise To The Dead: The Exile Journey Of Ariel......

Last week, we were told off a bit in the comments for being "down" on everything. We thought we’d do our best to be really positive this week, and then we realised how lame it is to force it, you know? The great news is we don’t actually have to force it, as this week sees the release of King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters—one of the most entertaining films we’ve seen in......

Blade Runner is no longer showing at the Regent, which in many ways is lucky, as otherwise it was going to turn into a weekly, Rocky Horror Picture Show-style event for us—well, without all of that tedious audience interaction, which now we think about it, would make it not very like the Rocky Horror Picture Show at all. If you’re still hungry for more vintage Harrison Ford, though, they are showing Raiders of the......

Oh man! What a pickle. This week we have the release of one of our favourite films in ages, This is England, and one of our favourite films of all time, Blade Runner, in its super-special, Ridley Scott-approved final cut. So, what do we lead with? It’s an impossible situation! If Torontoist was some kind of a 1960s robot, we’d be wobbling back and forth, smoke spouting out of our metal brain holes, yelling,......

If there’s one thing Torontoist likes to do, it’s moan about stuff, but on the face of it, that Palme d’Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days receiving a theatrical release here is something that should be received without complaint. After all, journalists have praised the film, including Norm Wilner at Metro, who calls the film "marvellous filmmaking." But really, it just gives us a chance to moan about the lack of......

During TIFF we said, "if you’re as big a fan of Joy Division as Torontoist is, you’ll quickly come to terms with the fact that Control is simply one man’s interpretation of Deborah Curtis’s book Touching from a Distance, and your overall feelings will (probably) lie on how you feel about that interpretation," and we stand by that even now—despite the gorgeous cinematography, which remains the film’s strongest point, we still like 24 Hour......

The After Dark Film Festival! Happening all week! The only film festival where Uwe bloody Boll could have his film accepted! We talked about it here! Check it out! Another crowded week for festivals, though, and sometimes we have to wonder how even Toronto can support this many in a week. We’ve got the ImagiNATIVE Film Festival and Toronto Latin Film Festivals finishing up, the Student Shorts Film Festival and the Estonian Documentary Film......

Darryl’s Hard Liquor and Porn Film Festival (covered by Amanda Buckiewicz earlier this week) is at the Bloor Cinema this Saturday, October 13 at 8 p.m, but if you’re a person of milder tastes (soft liquor and corn?) this week’s festivals of interest include the Toronto Latin Film Festival, the Macedonian Film Festival, the DNA Film Festival (it’s a busy week for festivals!), and the ImagiNATIVE Film Festival, which continues to win us over......