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......

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......

Federal finance minister Jim Flaherty emphasized that today's budget will be "frugal" in anticipation of an economic slowdown in the coming year. To demonstrate the concept in symbolic terms, Flaherty had an old pair of shoes resoled instead of buying the pair of new shoes traditionally associated with budgets. Flaherty also announced that he's saving money on undergarments by going "commando," although to be fair that gesture is more about sexiness than symbolism. A......

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. Photo by Flashfonic. The story of rep cinema in Toronto is......

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. Photo by Smaku. Audiences at the Bloor Cinema have fallen in love with zombies; a......

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......

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! Photos by Jonathan Goldsbie. When Festival Cinemas flopped in 2006, the......

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. Photo of Revue Cinema reopening by Mike Charbonneau. Nobody......

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. In 2006, the future of repertory......

Rejoice! Final Fantasy finally has a new version of his website! The site now has a full list of accomplishments that you can memorize and quiz your friends on, including a list of upcoming projects: upcoming album Heartland, two E.P.'s (Spectrum and Plays To Please), and arrangements for Alex Turner (of the Arctic Monkeys) and plenty of others. Better, there are some videos that have been kicking around on YouTube, like a live action version......

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. To ring in......

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). However! We here at Torontoist are bucking that trend. Yes, we can sneer at things as well as anyone, but we’re not going......

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." Stephen Harper made a perplexing statement on immigration, suggesting......

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......

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: You, The Living One of the most critically acclaimed films of the festival so far, You, The Living (pictured above), is a very warm look at the hopes and dreams of the misfit inhabitants of a Swedish apartment complex, told through a series of vignettes. From Roy Andersson (Songs from the Second Floor), the warmth isn’t just towards the characters—it coats each shot like a fog. The film unfortunately places its funniest......

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......

A lot happens in and around Toronto, but we can only write about so much in a week. Here's the best of the rest, in a new weekly feature we're calling Superfluist. Superfluist will now appear every Saturday. Three couples tried to break the world record for longest kiss last weekend at Mexx. If the photo above is any indication, it was precisely as awkward as kissing competitions tend to be! More photos are in......

Earlier this evening, The Star reported on what might somehow rank as one of the strangest videos on YouTube. Recorded on Monday afternoon at the protests in Montebello, the video shows the tail end of a confrontation between Dave Coles (president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada) and three masked men who seem hell-bent on rilling up him, his fellow protestors ("old guys, grandmothers, grandfathers"), and the line of riot-ready police.......

Last night, Teletoon's The Detour held a small event in the Royal Cinema to celebrate their upcoming fall lineup, showing a selection of the adult-orientated animation that will soon be on the channel. The lineup includes the long-overdue Sealab 2021, Frisky Dingo (from the creators of Sealab 2021), Moral Orel (created by Mr. Show alumni, including Jay Johnston), and Metalocalypse, which was created by Brendon Small (who is best known for Home Movies) and......

While the Bicycles filled the Tranzac’s main space with their own glorious indie-rock racket (and a forty-five minute "interactive gaming session" of their new DVD board game!), this Friday found an even weirder sort of noise-making taking place inside the little glassed-in room just beside the venue’s main entrance. Leading the weirdness factor inside the cozy space was Gravity Wave, probably the only sort-of-rap-cum-pop group in the city to possess a twelve-year-old hype man. Seriously,......