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The comprehensive index of every blog post, magazine story and restaurant review that appears on Torontolife.com
Arsinée Khanjian and Christopher Morris in Andromache
The fifth edition of Luminato, the city’s annual everything-culture fest, kicked off last Friday and goes all through the week. Here, three events to check out today.
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Christy Turlington Burns, Donato DiStefano in Cinderella and Diego Matamoros in The Aleph
1. FESTIVAL OF IDEAS AND CREATION (FREE!)
CanStage’s annual Festival of Ideas and Creation is all about supporting artists and developing new works. This year’s lineup has some serious thespian credentials: director Atom Egoyan, opera director Robert Carsen and playwright Will Power. This weekend, don’t miss The Decameron: Things We Left Behind. Loosely based on Boccaccio’s collection of novellas, this new production is about four friends in a swiftly degenerating city. (Similarities to Toronto’s 2012 budget are, we’re sure, strictly coincidental.) May 9 to 21. Berkeley Street Theatre, 26 Berkeley St., 416-368-3110, canadianstage.com/festival.
2. WEEKEND GEOFEST Read the rest of this entry »
Geocaching, in a nutshell, is a high-tech take on scavenger hunts: participants search for hidden clues and race to the finish line, all aided by a GPS device. This weekend-long event, hosted by the Golden Horseshoe Monthly Geocaching Club, includes a GPS 101 workshop, guided tours and a series of themed geocache hunts. It’s the perfect way to separate the kids from their Wii for a weekend. May 14 and 15. $6.50. Kortright Centre for Conservation, 9550 Pine Valley Dr., 905-832-2289, trcaparks.ca.
(Image: Kevin Knaulls)
The Royal Wedding is more than just another way for Canadians to express their fondness for the motherland; Kate and Will are also the hottest celebrity couple du jour. Hardcore wedding watchers of either stripe will want to secure their Friday morning plans in advance. To whit, here are six restaurants celebrating the Royal Wedding on April 29 in style.
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With the recent announcement that Toronto’s ever-growing food service company Oliver and Bonacini Restaurants is set to make The Bay the city’s newest foodie destination with a string of in-store eateries, not long after adding food service at Muskoka’s Windermere House to its porfolio, one thing is clear: the O&B empire is officially taking over. In his recent Toronto Star feature on the corporation, Corey Mintz shadows the two men behind the company, Peter Oliver and Michael Bonacini, to find out what it takes to build an empire. (Mintz also published a “deleted scenes” post on his own blog.) Here are five things we learned.
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This week’s pick: A Married Couple
Before Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica and Jon and Kate Plus 8 there was A Married Couple, a 1969 documentary discomfiting in its universality and its particularities.
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In today’s hype-obsessed mediascape, it’s easy for public attention to bounce from one issue to another. Toronto to Japan, a local collective of artists, musicians, writers, activists and business types, is working to keep Japan’s earthquake-tsunami-nuclear disaster trifecta in the minds of Canadians. Committed to raising support for disaster relief, the collective is hosting Hope Blossoms at the Bell Lightbox on April 21. Organizers promise a showcase of Canadian talent inspired by the tradition of the Japanese variety show. Dedicating their time and support are Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Adrienne Clarkson and Bob Wiseman.
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1. HARLEM GLOBETROTTERS
This long-running exhibition team—they celebrate their 85th anniversary this year—may have all sorts of tricks up their sleeves (think ball-handling skills and buckets of confetti), but they play to win. And win they do; according to their records, they’ve lost only 345 of their 25,000-plus games. One can only hope their three-game stint in the city this weekend inspires the Raptors to strive for a 98 per cent success rate. April 8 and 9. $15–$195. Rogers Centre, 1 Blue Jays Way, 416-870-8000, ticketmaster.ca.
Denis Gagnon F/W 2011 at Fashion week, Nelson Takkiruq sculpture and Dr. Jane Goodall
1. INUIT MODERN
This brand new exhibit draws from a huge collection of Inuit art acquired by real estate developer Samuel Sarick and his wife, Esther, featuring 175 contemporary works by artists like David Ruben Piqtoukun, Kenojuak Ashevak, Karoo Ashevak and Lucy Tasseor. Budget-friendly bonus: if you’re under 25, this is the last weekend to take advantage of the AGO’s Maharaja exhibition offer, which gets you into the entire gallery for free. April 2 to August 21. $19.50. Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas St. W., 416-979-6648, ago.net.
2. LG FASHION WEEK Read the rest of this entry »
It’s enough to exhaust even the most dedicated fashionista: the past couple days have been a flurry of fashion shows, after parties and boldface name–laden events, and the week before that was much the same (Rogue Fashion Week included off-site shows by Mark Fast, Greta Constantine and Ezra Constantine and the much-anticipated return of Arthur Mendonça). It all winds down this weekend, but before the city’s couture kids head home for some much-needed rest, they’ll be hitting the last of the shows (including Diepo and Line Knitwear) and hoping to score some advice from Jeanne Beker, who’s signing copies of Strutting It!, her behind-the-scenes guide to making it in the biz, on Friday. To April 2. $40–50 per show, day pass $200. Heritage Court, Exhibition Place, 105 Princes’ Blvd., lgfashionweek.ca.
In an era of decline for organized labour, an aggressive hospitality workers’ union is determined to turn menial labour into middle-class employment. To do so, they need to galvanize the recent immigrants who overwhelmingly staff the service industry. First stop, the Royal York
Battleground: the hotel union has co-opted celebrity guests, such as Martin Sheen, to draw attention to its cause (Photographs: Strikers by Cristal Cruz-Haicken; Street by Jerryb8/dreamstime.com/Getstock. Illustration by James Dawe)
On a warm morning last September, the managers of the Fairmont Royal York Hotel had a PR problem. The Toronto International Film Festival had just begun, and celebrities were trickling into the city. The 1,365-room downtown hotel was booked solid, and the lush Library Bar stocked with the ingredients for $14 TIFF Tinis, but outside on the sidewalk, hundreds of unionized Royal York workers were on strike, angrily accusing the hotel of exploiting them. They pounded on overturned buckets and exchanged call-and-response chants: “What do we want?” “Contract!” “When do we want it?” “Now!” And they marched back and forth across the grand Front Street entrance singing “We want a contract” to the tune of K’naan’s “Wavin’ Flag,” and hoisting red and black banners emblazoned with the logo of UNITE HERE, the aggressive international union that represents 8,000 hospitality workers across the GTA.
Outside the main doors, Martin Sheen stepped onto the pavement and was immediately mobbed by the crowd. He gave a thumbs-up to the strikers and began shaking hands and slapping backs, looking every bit the left-wing political hero he once played on television. The strikers eagerly linked arms with him and marched before the cameras and TV crews that were scrambling to get the best angle. Someone thrust a megaphone into Sheen’s hands, and he gamely improvised a few slogans. “When it gets tough in labour disputes like these, people say that it’s a lost cause,” he said, his voice rising passionately. “Well, I’m here to remind you that lost causes are the only causes worth fighting for!” The logic seemed a little shaky, but the crowd roared its approval anyway. “Stick to it like a stamp!” he shouted with a final wave, before he and his son Emilio Estevez were whisked off in a white Escalade. Read the rest of this entry »
Wanda Koop’s paintings are composed of as many as 20 fine washes of paint (Image: Katherine Knight)
This week’s pick: Koop at the Reel Artists Film Festival
Wanda Koop’s mother always told her that she didn’t need to be like anyone else. She took the advice to heart and built a 35-year painting career on the strength of her arresting large-scale canvases. A new documentary by Katherine Knight, simply titled Koop, follows the artist as she prepares for retrospectives at the National Gallery of Canada and the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
Alexandre Tharaud The French pianist with the moody pout has an approach to programming that is frequently labelled “adventurous,” but this evening’s combo of Schubert’s Moments Musicaux and Scarlatti’s sonatas won’t upset any traditionalists. Find out more »
Human Rights Watch Film Festival Now in its eighth year, the Toronto edition of the Human Rights Watch film fest is moving from its old digs at the AGO to the TIFF Bell Lightbox, where a compelling range of documentary and feature flicks do their best to shine a light on cases of oppression and abuse around the world. Find out more »
The Blue Legacy A companion piece to the ROM’s upcoming Water: The Exhibition, this lecture by filmmaker and burgeoning explorer Alexandra Cousteau—who was taught to dive by her famous grandfather Jacques when she was seven years old—touches on both the local and global importance of water preservation. Find out more »
Read the rest of this entry »After three new restaurant openings last year (O&B Canteen, Luma and O&B Café Grill), a $1 million facelift at Canoe and a host of new restaurants at Bay stores announced just last week, it seems as though nothing can hold Peter Oliver and Michael Bonacini back. Adding to their portfolio expansion, Oliver and Bonacini announced today that it will become the new food service provider at Muskoka’s historic Windermere House, one of the oldest hotels in Canada.
Poor Little Rich Girl Mary Pickford (Image: Courtesy of the TIFF Film Reference Gallery)
This week’s pick: Mary Pickford and the Invention of the Movie Star.
It all started with a single photograph. Rob Brooks bought his first Mary Pickford memento on the Danforth back in 1980, kick-starting a decades-long obsession with the Girl With the Golden Curls. Now the owner of the world’s largest collection of Pickford memorabilia—nearly 2,000 items—has decided to spread the mania by donating it all to TIFF, which has put 300 of the pieces on display in a fascinating exhibit that opened last Thursday.
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1. OPERA 101: THE MAGIC FLUTE (FREE!)
Hosted by the CBC’s Brent Bambury, the Opera 101 series features behind-the-scenes chats with cast and crew from one of the Canadian Opera Company’s current shows. This week, it’s Isabel Bayrakdarian, who plays Pamina in Diane Paulus’ family-friendly production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Jan. 7. Duke of Westminster, 77 Adelaide St. W., coc.ca.
Incendies, Canada’s foreign language film pick for this year’s Oscar race, exposes a family’s secrets and lies and delivers a gut-punching portrayal of war’s lasting traumas
(Photograph courtesy of Eone Films)
A woman in an unnamed Middle Eastern country is pulled from a bus and forced to watch as her fellow passengers are massacred and the vehicle set aflame. The reason she’s spared? She is Christian and they are not. Unable to move, she stays on her knees until there’s nothing left to burn. This desert tableau is a scene in Incendies, the latest offering by Montrealer Denis Villeneuve (Polytechnique). The film charts a brother and sister’s quest to uncover the secrets of the woman from the bus—their mother, Nawal—after her death. A string of increasingly horrifying revelations lends her story the scope of a Greek epic, with Nawal serving as a mirror for countless women in wartime. Incendies is based on the play Scorched by Lebanese-Québécois writer Wajdi Mouawad, which was a smash hit for the Tarragon Theatre here in 2007 and 2008. So often, screen versions of theatrical sensations sag under the weight of their lovingly preserved texts, but Villeneuve’s adaptation brandishes a visual vocabulary that’s as strong and distinctive as Mouawad’s words. Working with ace cinematographer André Turpin and a cast that includes Quebec staple Rémy Girard and the extraordinary Belgian actor Lubna Azabal in the lead, Villeneuve has created something bold, lean and eminently cinematic. Elaborate digital wizardry (and its attendant eyewear) may be film’s favourite child these days, but the starkest images still have the most power. Read the rest of this entry »
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