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Urban Planner: October 20, 2009
Urban Planner is Torontoist’s guide to what’s on in Toronto, published every weekday morning, and in a weekend edition Friday afternoons. If you have an event you’d like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you’ve got any—to [email protected].
Still from A Season to Whither by LeighAnn Maynard. Courtesy of rock-it promotions.
FILM: The 2009 Air Canada enRoute Student Film Festival is a festival run by Air Canada’s enRoute magazine that sees selected short films screened on all Air Canada flights from July to December. Tonight, they are holding a free screening of the best of the fest (four of which are by Toronto filmmakers) at the Scotiabank Theatre. See tales of procrastinating film students (The Creative Process by Jeffrey Royiwski), misunderstood flies (A Freshwater Plague by Jake Chirico), a fateful storm in the countryside (A Season to Whither by LeighAnn Maynard), being depressed in Montreal (Synthétiseur by Sarah Fortin), a lovesick computer animation (Intermedium by Alain Huynh), and one woman’s struggle with Alzheimer’s (Princess Margaret Blvd. by Kazik Radwanski and Daniel Montgomery) without ever having to step on a plane. The films are nominated for Best Short Film, Achievement in Animation, Achievement in Direction, and Achievement in Cinematography. The judges, including director Deepa Mehta, actor Remy Girard, actress Lisa Ray, director Michael McGowan, and BravoFACT’s Judy Gladstone will be at the screening, and an awards ceremony at the Drake Hotel will follow (for invited guests only). Scotiabank Theatre, Cinema 13 (259 Richmond Street West), 7 p.m., FREE.
WORDS: We’ve all had them; they throw wild parties the night before you have an exam, they leave dirty dishes in the sink, they steal your crock-pot when they finally decide to move out—roommates can be a pain in the ass. But for everything they steal when they move, there’s always a box of stuff they leave behind, perhaps knowing that someday you’d have the opportunity to pull out those mementos and share them with a room full of strangers. Tonight, the Awkward Show and Tell, an open-mic event that asks people to bring in and share things (notes, gifts, scars—anything with a story attached to it), is back with the theme of “Ex-friends and Roommates” after two successful shows covering “Things My Ex Gave Me” and “Weird Work/School Stuff” earlier this year. For tonight’s show, audience members are asked to bring in anything that reminds them of an ex-roommate or friend, and to share that awkwardness with people who can sympathize. Victory Café (581 Markham Street), 8:30 p.m., FREE.
MUSIC: Dead Man’s Bones, the macabre love-child of Breaker High‘s Sean Hanlon (AKA Oscar nominated actor Ryan Gosling) and Zach Shields, is in town tonight to play The Opera House. The band released their debut album earlier this month, and far from being a vanity project, Dead Man’s Bones features the raw, unpolished vocals of L.A.’s Silverlake Conservatory Children’s Choir on every track, as well as Gosling and Shields’s own amateur (yet earnest) instrumentals and vocal work. The mix of gospel and ghost folk make it a perfect listen for Halloween, and a genuinely interesting album for an actor-turned-musician. If that’s not cool enough, the opener for tonight’s show is Canadian mentalist Mysterion the Mind Reader. The Opera House (735 Queen Street East), 7 p.m., $15.
DANCE: Just a few weeks after Meagan O’Shea produced a twenty-four-hour-long piece for Nuit Blanche, dance like no one is watching, she has moved on to her new piece, based on actual unrelated events, playing at HUB 14 until the end of this month. The title is very apt as most of the themes O’Shea will explore with this mash-up of contemporary dance, physical theatre, and comedy are completely unrelated to each other. The show will express “home/less/ness in the body, the evolution of language and how that relates to movement,” and a sort of political commentary on corn crops and honeybees as interpreted through O’Shea’s body. HUB 14 (14 Markham Street), 8 p.m., $25 ($20 for Canadian Alliance of Dance Artists members, underemployed, or students).