The best things in life, everyone knows, aren't free. The best things in life are things other people have to pay for, and you get for free. Like the 1,000 bottles of beer at the latest of Toronto's legendary Vice parties, if you were early or lucky or special enough to get into the Deleon White Gallery on Friday night. Or, say, the three hundred Microsoft Zunes given to young "influencers" (bloggers, DJs, other......

Photo of Amsterdam's Red Light District by Stuck in Customs. With all this talk about promoting tourism, all kinds of ideas have been proposed, from improving our toilets to depicting the city as a tattoo. These suggestions are a good start, but it is also important to look at one of the biggest attractions that brings people to cities: entertainment. With all the focus on making Toronto better, maybe some of our efforts ought......

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,......