Results tagged “tonyblair”

Sending typed letters, postcards, or small packages of treats via snail mail is sadly going the way of the dinosaur. It’s a rare surprise to find a handwritten letter in the mailbox among the pizza menus and flyers for the local gym. When it comes to mail art, the extra time and effort in composing the work is far more rewarding than attaching a .jpg and pressing send. For the receiver, opening a mailed masterpiece is extra special and a cause for celebration.

Tony Blair resigns as British Prime Minister, and Gordon Brown takes over. For those not familiar with British politics, an analogy: remember when Jean Chretien stepped down and Paul Martin took over as Prime Minister, and everybody agreed that although it was clearly time to go, wow, was Paul Martin boring or what? It's like that, except pretend that Paul Martin was even more boring.

Dethroned! Ed the Sock will no longer be serving as grand marshal of the Toronto Beaches Lions Club Easter Parade this weekend. After dozens of complaints that the bawdy sock was an inappropriate choice to host the children's parade, the Lions Club replaced Ed with the less-offensive Luba Goy and Craig Lauzon of CBC's Royal Canadian Air Farce.

In what we would consider a bit of a surprise, Stephen Frears' The Queen has swept the Toronto Film Critics Association awards, winning Best Picture, and picking up three other awards (and even sharing another). Helen Mirren won as Best Actress for playing Queen Elizabeth II; Michael Sheen won Best Supporting Actor for Tony Blair (who he looks basically exactly like and has played before, so that’s a bit of a cheat); Peter Morgan won the Best Screenplay Award for writing The Queen; and Stephen Frears shared the Best Director prize with brothers Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne for their drama L’Enfant.

Downtown hosted the annual Santa Claus Parade on Sunday, kicking off another season of gratuitous shopping. In related news, the Nintendo Wii was released and quickly sold out.

The Pet Shop Boys (Yes they're still around. They never left, actually) come to the Hummingbird Centre tonight, 8pm (some seats still available), bringing their campy, more politically-charged pop tunes to the colonies (who knew I'm With Stupid was about Tony Blair's love affair with GW Bush?). Judging by the various bootleg Youtube cell phone videos out there, the show is more militaristic and yet not as over the top as their "Very" tour. Neil is very 80's expressionless, played with such irony, although his voice is weak. It doesn't really matter 'cause the music is so loud. Of course it's all on tape, but no one will find out.

Documentaries aren’t usually the most hotly anticipated titles at each year’s Toronto International Film Festival, with most people, even by September, still probably a bit burnt out from Hot Docs, but that’s not to say that the documentaries at TIFF are any less valid. This year they’ve announced 22 titles as part of their Real to Reel programme (in addition to the 5 already announced in other programmes). Our pick of the titles confirmed to day include Jeff Garlin’s This Filthy World Starring John Waters, because who doesn’t love Water’s twisted take on life? (Even if he does look like that creepy orange guy on those infomercials). The Prisoner Or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair from Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker, and AJ Schnack's Kurt Cobain About a Son, because even though we feel like we’ve heard everything we can about Kurt, we still keep coming back to see if we can find out more. The full press release is available at TIFFG’s website.