Word association time! When you think of the Cannes Film Festival, happening now on the sunny French Riviera, which of the following pops into your head: a) prestigious awards like the coveted Palme d'Or, b) celebrity-studded red-carpet events, or c) insightful online comments like "go suck a dick" and "LMFAO"? Granted, options "a" and "b" have the edge, but thanks to the National Film Board of Canada, YouTube flamers can have their piece of the film-fest pie too.
Results tagged “youtube”
If you've ever been watching television and immediately jumped to back up the DVR lest your eyes had deceived you (a certain Super Bowl halftime performance perhaps?), yesterday's broadcast of Sportsnet's Hockey Central may have been one of those moments.
At first blush, the idea of YouTube becoming a patron of classical music seems a tad counterintuitive. To those versed in its most popular content, the world's dominant video streaming site is known as the domain of the brief, the crass, and the weird, with a meme or two thrown in for good measure (not that that's necessarily a bad thing—we love a good Rickroll as much as anyone). So it was bit of a surprise—albeit a pleasant one—when we learnt of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra (YTSO for short), a ninety-strong ensemble made up of the winners of an online audition and public voting process (conducted on YouTube, naturally) that concluded earlier this week.
Have you ever passed by a yard sale, glimpsed a box full of unwanted VHS tapes, and wondered who in the world would want to lug home a pile of grainy CityTV bootlegs from 1987? As it turns out, the answer is Ed Conroy, a Scarborough television buff and editor with kids' monthly The Magazine. Conroy scours the tapes for pieces of the Toronto area's broadcast heritage, which he posts to his wonderfully nostalgic YouTube channel, Retrontario.
FESTIVAL: Toronto's annual Taste of the Danforth festival returns tonight and runs until Sunday. Along with the usual smorgasbord of excellent Greek food come expected crowds of over 500,000, and a healthy serving of ambivalence. Danforth Avenue from Broadview Avenue to Jones Avenue, 6 p.m., FREE.
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.
Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman has caused a furor with his comment that he'd be willing to test-drive an adult diaper to see if being left in soiled diapers for hours on end is really all that bad. Critics say he isn't taking the issue of sub-standard care in nursing homes seriously, which seems a bit harsh, since there can't be too many politicians who'd be willing to spend a day crouched in their own excrement on behalf of their constituents. Brings a tear to the eye, it does.
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, to conclude our series, we look at the next immediate steps for rep cinema.
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 bellwether of rep cinemas: Bloor Cinema.
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.
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 renovated Fox Theatre and its battle! against! the! killer! dvds!
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 rebirth of the Revue Cinema and its focus on the Roncesvalles community.
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 fall of Festival Cinemas, which sparked fears that rep cinema would disappear from the city.
Rejoice! Final Fantasy finally has a new version of his website!
Chris Bosh is at it again. Although his innovative video pitch to fans wasn't enough to push him past Kevin Garnett and Lebron James for a starting spot in the NBA All-Star Game, it has made him a media player. Sports Illustrated's Chris Mannix details how the video's popularity has raised Bosh's profile to new heights and how it prompted CB4 to start his own Chris Bosh TV channel on YouTube.
It’s that time of year again: the time when ironic bloggers across the world post links to the Star Wars Holiday Special, quip about how terrible it is, and boast about not being able to watch it all the way through (usually linking to the five-minute-long version of it on YouTube).
Queen Elizabeth II––who you will recall is our Head of State and yet still won't pony up to fix the TTC ––- has had her annual Christmas address posted on YouTube this year. The 81-year-old monarch gives a dignified formal message about her thoughts on the past year and hopes for the future before stripping to bra and panties and lip-syncing to Nellie Furtado's "Promiscuous."
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...
On Thursday evening, Torontoist broke the news that Wednesday's bomb threat at the Royal Ontario Museum was OCAD student Thorarinn Ingi Jonsson's final project for an advanced video class. Inspired by Marcel Duchamp's readymades (like Fountain, pictured above), Jonsson told us that the piece was about recontextualization, the idea that context changes art's meaning; in this case, something that is, he said, "quite clearly not dangerous, but when you put it in a different...
A couple weeks back, Spacing Wire posted this brilliant old TTC ad that made us hungry for more forgotten gems of Toronto advertising. The video in question was uploaded by a user calling themselves WNED 17, and their entire archive is made up of similar videos. In fact, their profile page provides a mission statement: "Youtube user WNED17 is proud to present repeat portions of broadcast captured in the 1980s and early 1990s via...
If you haven't been following the Raptors too closely this season, it's possible that you may have missed one of the greatest stories in professional sports at the moment. Jamario Moon is a 27-year-old rookie who had been kicking around just about every minor league on the continent until he finally got his shot with the Raptors this year. And he's tearing things up. Even though he's years older than a number of Raptor veterans,...
Thorarinn Ingi Jonsson has, as he put it to Torontoist in a phone interview earlier today, "seen better days." The Integrated Media OCAD student and his final project for his advanced video class are the direct cause––intended or not––for yesterday's bomb scare at the Royal Ontario Museum, and, a day later, Jonsson is now suspended from OCAD and is wanted for questioning by police. Inspired by Marcel Duchamp's readymades pieces (the most famous of...
First and foremost, we're going to warn you that the video above may not be safe for work, children, or the faint of heart. It's from the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario's latest ad campaign. In the video, a young sweet sous-chef with her whole future ahead of her happens to slip on some grease, spilling a vat of boiling water all over herself and horribly scalding her face. While she's on...
Photo by David Topping. A mysterious bag discovered in an alleyway beside the Royal Ontario Museum at about 7:00 p.m. tonight has shut down all traffic––pedestrian and vehicular––on Bloor between St. George and University and on Queen's Park southbound from Bloor and Harbord. UPDATE (10:45 p.m.): CTV is now saying that police have found "what appears to be a pipe bomb," and that the building was (half-)evacuated (contrary to what we were originally told)....
Are you tired of study sessions completely uninterrupted by YouTube clips? Have you resorted to reading books and periodicals rather than maintaining a constant vigil over your Facebook profile? If this behaviour sounds familiar to you, and you live near one of these locations (that is Agincourt, Albion, Albert Campbell, Bridlewood, Centennial, Eatonville, Flemingdon Park, Gerrard/Ashdale, Lillian H. Smith, Mimico, Morningside, North York Central, Parkdale, Parliament, Richview, Riverdale, Toronto Reference, Woodside Square, and York Woods), you can finally breathe a sigh of relief. For today, the Toronto Public Library announces an expansion of its wireless internet service to 19 of its branches. That's 19 down, and only 80 left to go. But hey, it's a good start! And yes, this wi-fi is totally free to use.
Sure, you like YouTube, but have you ever worried about its dearth of Canadian content? No? Well, anyway, as of last night, there's now a YouTube.ca. (Kind of: its actual URL resolves to ca.youtube.com––good luck getting to YouTube.com proper anymore.) As The Globe and Mail reported today, the Canadian version of the American-run site will feature Canadian videos prominently in the site's "featured videos" and "promoted videos" sections. Whether this change signals a complete...
Torontoist has 25 admit-two passes to give away to our readers for a promo screening of Redacted at 7 p.m. on Monday November 12, 2007 at the Royal. Directed by Brian De Palma (you've probably heard of him) and produced by two Torontonians––Simone Urdl and Jennifer Weiss––Redacted is "a profound meditation on the way information is packaged, distributed and received in an era with infinite channels of communication," and centres on a group of...
As we mentioned in our Nuit Blanche photo album, the culprit behind that "Quick Lobotomy" sign you may have seen at Queen West's Tri Service Centre is our very own fauxreel. Earlier this morning, he posted a video on YouTube of his exploits, featuring some of the messages that he received from outraged/intrigued Nuit Blanche participants. It's lobotoriffic!
Today’s Reviews:

Newsstand: November 19, 2009
