Results tagged “video”

As the Toronto Police Service prepares to expand CCTV coverage in the GTA, this security camera footage of a BMW SUV going alpha-dog on top of someone's hatchback, recorded last Thursday at an Extreme Fitness parking lot in Thornhill, has made us realize a few things:

The folks from Improv In Toronto were up to their old tricks recently, bringing some more whimsy to unsuspecting underground commuters. Those familiar with the merry band of urban pranksters know the drill: participants meet up, head to a public place, and do something unexpected to make onlookers' days just a little more interesting. In this particular iteration, the group decided to add a public transit twist to the Discovery Channel's "I Love the World" song (itself based on the camping tune "I Love the Mountains"), turning it into an ode to the Toronto subway system's red seats, transfers, and door chimes.

If dropping stuff off of a building is too high-concept for you, or if you still haven't decided whether or not to go see Blinkenlights at Nathan Phillips Square tonight for Nuit Blanche (or any other nuit until October 12) and that amazing iPhone app wasn't enough to sway you, boy, have we got the video for you.

Omar Khadr's lawyers recently released video footage of Khadr's interrogation by CSIS agents in hopes that the video would embarrass the Prime Minister and garner sympathy from Canadians. Unsurprisingly, the PM's office wasn't hearing that noise. Clearly these lawyers don't know how hard it is to embarrass Stephen Harper.

Boozy Suzy is the undisputed champion of the Pillow Fight League. When she’s not downing beers, she’s downing opponents with her dreaded hammer fist. Boozy Suzy is also Suzanne Carte-Blanchenot, an event coordinator who has been involved with the Pillow Fight League since its inception. She has watched the girls-only league grow from a local curiosity to an international sensation that has been covered by Anderson Cooper 360º, Good Morning America, and ESPN: The Magazine.

According to the Inside the CBC blog and the National Post, Toronto's favourite boyish-looking provocateur, Avi Lewis, is back on the airwaves with his newest show, Frontline: USA. The show promises to "strip away the spin and highlight real issues such as poverty, violence, race, health, and immigration" in America. Considering that Lewis is involved and that the show airs on Al Jazeera English, chances are that Frontline: USA won't be a Dobbsian exercise in blaming America's problems on immigrants.

Fire at Queen and Bathurst. Adios to Duke's, the Suspect Video outlet, and a bunch of other cool places. Check out Torontoist's coverage of the fire here and here and here––Queen West will be closed until next week.

Today's blaze was not only devastating to the residents of Queen Street West who now find themselves homeless, but also to the business owners who served the community. Duke's Cycle—second home to many of the city's bicycle couriers—has been run by the same family in the same location since 1914. The owners of National Sound, which operated in the area for forty years and at that location since 1988, don't have fire insurance. Clothing design shop Preloved lost their entire one-of-a-kind spring collection. Suspect Video was the essential destination for fans of obscure and hard-to-find films. Some of the destroyed historic brick and timber buildings were built as far back as the 1860s, and were only recently granted heritage protection.

Photo by aardvark from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Today launched Dear Toronto, a new independent videoblog site by Adam Schwabe, Ryan Couldrey, and Rebecca Black. The trio had previously collaborated at BlogTO, but recently decided to branch out on their own to focus on strictly video-based content.

Yes, it's kind of cool to hate on Alexisonfire once you've reached puberty. And no, Crisis, their last record, wasn't filled with delightfully twee indie pop, but pretty much every person who reviewed it dug it like whoa. And the fact remains that as played out as "screamo" gets, these guys have been doing it since long before downtuning and shouting put you on the fast track to rock 'n' roll success. They've bucked trends like awesome make-up and wickedly heavy breakdowns. They paid their dues in halls across this country about a blagillion times, and now they're effing huge. Good on 'em.

Revue Video on the Danforth—one of Toronto's last great independent video stores—shut down earlier this month after two decades of providing Riverdalians with access to the best and most obscure foreign, indie, and documentary films. Apparently tired of answering questions about whether the store would re-open, and certainly bitter about something—maybe the Shoppers Drug Mart soon to open across the street—the store owners left a note on the front door about their future intentions, a rather blunt variation on the more typical "back in 5 minutes." Although today's weather is a good candidate for hell blowing over, it's not quite cold enough for the freezing action required to revive the store.

Sure, Protest the Hero are technically from Whitby. And Troy Sexton, the Stomp cast member featured in this video, is really from Etobicoke. But that's nitpicking. Check out Troy trying to teach some sweet dance moves to Protest's rhythmically-challenged vocalist, Rody Walker. It's funny, but could you do better at noon on a Sunday with a hangover?

In every neighbourhood there is one dude who goes a bit overboard with the Christmas lights. It's the stuff of bad Christmas movies. But few go quite as far as the Lindsay family, who seem to be trying their best to outdo the ZooTV tour.

Toronto native Lucian Matis, 28, landed in second place behind Evan Biddell, a 24-year-old designer from Saskatoon, on the finale of Project Runway Canada last night. Matis, Biddell, and third-placer Marie Genevieve Cyr showed ten-piece collections at Toronto's L'Oréal Fashion Week in October as the final challenge of the reality show. The runway shows were performed in front of an audience and evaluated by the Runway judges: supermodel Iman, Elle Canada Editor Rita Silvan, and Bustle Clothing's Shawn Hewson.

After ten years of making wonderfully chaotic post-hardcore, Denver's Planes Mistaken For Stars called it a day in July of this year. They promised one final tour, and made good at the end of November, making their way across the U.S. and Canada before planning to jump across the pond to Europe. A family emergency early this month forced the band to cancel all of their overseas dates and several U.S. ones; in Toronto on November 21, though, they were still in high spirits. In the name of giving fans the final word, Exclaim!TV asked those in attendance at the Reverb that night what they would like to ask the soon-to-be-departed band.

Most of the bronze plaques bolted to the city's historically designated sites and monuments commemorate some virtually forgotten piece of minor Toronto history—but take a stroll along Queen Street West and some familiar round medallions might particularly pique your interest. The strange plaques were part of the grand Gestures installation by the 640 480 Video Collective, which aimed to memorialize inconsequential events captured on video at ten spots around the city. Each marker was...

The Toronto One Minute Film & Video Festival turns five tomorrow. Not to be lumped in with our typical neverending, city-spanning, celebrity-scoping, press-pass flossing film fests, this one usually comes and goes gracefully before anyone even knows it exists. Sixty films, 60 seconds each, played back-to-back at the Bloor Cinema. You couldn’t get bored if you tried. Founded in 2003 as the result of a dare among friends and former-filmmakers in Toronto, the idea is...

Primate cloning a success. No, we don't have cloned monkeys yet, but we do have cloned monkey stem cells, which could in turn be used to generate human-compatible monkey organs. Man, it's fun just to type the word "monkey." Monkey.

So, what’s scarier: a zombie infestation or the melting of the polar ice caps? This is an urgent and legitimate question! And later this week, Toronto cineastes can compare and contrast, for just as the After Dark Festival winds down, the Planet in Focus International Environmental Film & Video Festival springs up. Running from October 24 to 28, Planet in Focus is the most acclaimed film festival of its environmentally-minded ilk. This year, to coincide with the International Polar Year (which 2007 is, as you are doubtlessly already aware), the festival’s Spotlight Program is entitled Polar Visions. (Hint: these visions may include the melting of large volumes of ice.)

With a little over twelve hours to go until this year's Capture the Flag, Lori and I are feeling anxious and excited.

You may have heard The Saint Alvia Cartel’s "Don’t Wanna Wait Forever" on 102.1 The Edge this summer. Like, two blagillion times. If you happen to like the song, you should probably go check the band out this Thursday, October 4, at the Reverb, as part of the Union Label Group’s annual Union Tour. If you don’t like the song, you should probably still give the band a shot; “Don’t Wanna” is easily the weakest track on their fantastic self-titled debut, which mixes reggae, punk, pop, and rock ‘n’ roll the way The Clash did so perfectly on London Calling. Saint Alvia may not be the only band that matters yet, but they’re still one helluva solid act, a fact that anyone who’s taken enough time to absorb their record in its entirety can attest to. Composed of current and former members of 905 punk rock royalty (Grade! Jersey! Boys Night Out! Video Dead!), the band may hail from just outside Toronto city limits, but they possess an urban grittiness in their sound that simultaneously recalls the Hammersmith Palais and the end of East Bay.

While they may not technically be Toronto residents, The Sourkeys still hold a special place in the heart of this city. And really, Waterloo’s just not that far away. Which is why the band’s final Toronto show, this Thursday, September 27, will be an important one to catch.

Fan Expo is awesome. As awesome as anticipated by Torontoist late last week. Sure, the food is expensive, a bunch of the guests cancelled last minute, and Hobby Star is a huge corporate bully, but that doesn’t change the fact that Torontoist came within spitting distance of Adam West this weekend. In this three-day celebration of all things geeky, the biggest winner in the comics vs. sci-fi vs. horror vs. anime vs. video games battle appeared to be… video games! Playing host to the Toronto stop of the World Series of Video Games, Fan Expo delivered non-stop excitement during which those who still live in their parents’ basements were pitted against each other in intense competitions akin to sporting events. Watching Guitar Hero II champions from across North America rip through a video game edit of "Freebird" while a few hundred people cheered in encouragement ranks as one of the strangest things Torontoist may have ever seen. Also, Battle Royale shirts. They’re amazing, but why does everyone suddenly have one?

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."

Last week, because we were completely distracted by Dock in a Box, we didn’t mention our sadness at the loss of both Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni. We also couldn’t think of a Director bad enough to lament the continued existence of in the same breath.

It's not entirely clear how or when R. Kelly's hip-hop opera "Trapped in the Closet" became a Zeitgeist. Part music video, part soap opera, it—while verging on self-parody throughout—has spawned parodies by everyone from South Park (which used it to make fun of Tom Cruise and John Travolta, among others) to Weird Al (who used it to make fun of fast food. Oh Weird Al!). What is clear is why it's been embraced by seemingly everyone in the entire universe: it's simultaneously the greatest and most confusing thing that any mainstream rap artist, nay, any musician, has ever done.

Ontario unveils greenhouse gas reduction targets. The plan reduces greenhouse emissions to six percent below 1990 levels by 2014. Not to be outdone, Alberta announced that next week they will release their plan, where they will reduce greenhouse gas emissions to ten percent below 1990 levels by 2257.

All photographs in this article courtesy of Much Music.

Yes! The image above, taken at last year's MMVAs and courtesy of Much Music, is just a mere taster of the kind of reaction Torontoist's legions of adoring fans will make when we stroll down the red carpet on our way to liveblog this year's Much Music Video Awards from on-site. Who cares about seeing live performances from Avril Lavigne, Billy Talent, The Used and more! When you can instead sit in front of your computer and read about us recounting said live performances in our trademark snarky manner?