Food on Film, a new six-film series at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, pairs culinary-themed films like Mostly Martha and Kings of Pastry with discussions led by food celebs, including Montreal chef Chuck Hughes and Food Network Canada’s Laura Calder. In honour of each screening, Luma, the Lightbox’s in-house restaurant, will serve a one-off dish for each of the nights (for an additional charge, natch). A subscription for the whole shebang goes for $180 for non-TIFF members. Check out the five already-announced pairings after the jump (the sixth is still TBA).
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TIFF Food on Film series pairs famous chefs with foodie movies
Start burnishing your cred: notoriously exclusive Soho House coming to Toronto in the next couple of years
Come 2014, these could be your new friends (Image: Grey Goose Soho House)
At last year’s film festival, the Grey Goose Soho House hosted the TIFF party to end all TIFF parties—you know, the one that was officially in honour of David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, but also managed to bring in everyone from Bono and members of the Arcade Fire to Anna Faris, Ewan McGregor and George Clooney (to choose rather arbitrarily from a long list of a-listers). Now it looks like the international chain of members-only luxury clubs will be opening up a permanent home in Toronto sometime in the next two years. According to a story from the New York Times’ Dealbook blog, the so-called “Billionaire Party Boy” (and private equity magnate) Ronald Burkle recently purchased a majority stake in the London-based Soho House Group for a reported £250 million. Some of that cash infusion will go toward further expansion, with Mumbai, Chicago and Istanbul listed alongside our fair burg. If this turns out to be true, 2014 should be a blowout year for TIFF parties. Read the entire story [Dealbook] »
TIFF extends hours as Grace Kelly exhibit draws to a close
(Image: Everett Collection/Rex Features)
Royal watchers for whom rehashing Kate Middleton’s outfits online just isn’t cutting it anymore still have a few days to check out the Grace Kelly exhibit at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. TIFF has extended the hours of Grace Kelly: From Movie Star to Princess until the show closes on January 22, giving Torontonians one last opportunity to check out the replica of the wedding dress Kelly wore in her 1956 wedding to Prince Rainier III of Monaco, as well as many of her original dresses, her tiara and the original Kelly bag. The exhibition will now be open until 8 p.m. on Sundays and 9 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. After that, it’s back to the old DVD collection (we can already feel a classic movie marathon coming on).
The Loaded List: we catalogue the astronomical salaries of Toronto’s ruling class
It’s not particularly polite to ask rich people what they earn. But tact is overrated, and we wanted to know, so we asked anyway. When they told us to get lost, we got sneaky. We dug up disclosure documents, annual reports and the tax filings of charitable organizations. When those trails went dry, we surveyed industry insiders who know what other people make—headhunters and consultants and analysts and colleagues—and asked for an educated guess. After hundreds of calls and emails and deep-throat meetings in dark alleys, we phoned the high earners back and told them what we found. Again, with feeling, they told us to piss off.
What follows is our shamelessly gawking, as-precise-as-possible examination of the highest-paid people in the city’s top industries. When the information was available, we included bonuses and perks and, in some cases, exercised stock options. Our findings verified that a high earner in finance is almost always on a different plane (a private jet, usually) than a high earner in, for example, the lowly arts. One major discovery: Heather Reisman took a pay cut. One truth reconfirmed: no matter how rich you are, there’s always someone who makes a helluva lot more.
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Monaco’s Prince Albert II and Princess Charlène are in Toronto for the launch of the TIFF Grace Kelly Exhibit
The serene highnesses, Prince Albert II and Princess Charlène of Monaco, flanked by Hermann Bühlbecker and Karl Lagerfeld (Image: Nadja Amireh)
Their Serene Highnesses, Prince Albert II and Princess Charlène of Monaco, are in Hogtown to celebrate the prince’s famous mother. “Grace Kelly: From Movie Star to Princess,” which we featured in our Best of Fall roundup, opens Friday at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. The exhibit contains all manner of Kelly paraphernalia, including letters from Alfred Hitchcock and her Oscar for The Country Girl (plus the gown she wore to receive it). The prince and princess will attend a grand opening reception today.
Camera: a who’s who of Canadian cinema gathers at the Lightbox to kick off TIFF’s retrospective of Norman Jewison films
Canadian film honcho Wayne Clarkson with art house icon Atom Egoyan and Lynne St. David-Jewison
August 11, Malaparte.
An air-kissing who’s who of Canadian cinema gathered on the sixth floor of the Lightbox to kick off Justice for All, TIFF’s retrospective of the films of Norman Jewison. One of Hollywood’s most prolific directors, Jewison is the kind of success story this city loves to laud at every opportunity. Following the reception, everyone shuffled downstairs for a screening of Moonstruck, Jewison’s 1987 rom-com. The crowd was also treated to a Q&A with Olympia Dukakis and the screenwriter John Patrick Shanley (both snagged Oscars for the movie). But it was Jewison who got the loudest applause, for dropping a well-aimed F-bomb while recounting an on-set incident: Nicolas Cage demanded a moment to think over a line, and Jewison replied: “Don’t think, just say the fucking line.” Beats watching Moonstruck at home in your PJs for the umpteenth time.
Best of Fall 2011: Ten recommendations for an absolutely satisfying, perfectly proportioned autumn
The problem with this season is there’s simply too much to do. Too many tortured opera divas. Too many ballerinas with toe cramps. Too many new sitcoms set in psychiatric offices. Too many touring exhibits of curiosities once touched by now-dead silver screen stars. Too many washed-up TV actors with a surprise talent for stage comedy. It’s all too, too much.
Our coping strategy: pick 10. Here, recommendations for an absolutely satisfying, perfectly proportioned fall
How Matthew Jocelyn tried to revive Canadian Stage but instead ended up scaring audiences away
As the crowd settled in for an early June performance of Édouard Lock’s Untitled at the Bluma Appel Theatre, Matthew Jocelyn, the artistic and general director of Canadian Stage, stood under the spotlight, urging his audience to renew their subscriptions. Some serious name-dropping ensued. The company will be staging Red, about the life of the painter Mark Rothko, which won a Tony last year, as well as Clybourne Park, a Pulitzer Prize–winning play inspired by A Raisin in the Sun. And Atom Egoyan—who was in the audience that day—will be directing his wife, Arsinée Khanjian, in the war-themed British play Cruel and Tender.
Awards, celebrities, allusions to well-known works: there was an unmistakable whiff of desperation in Jocelyn’s populist appeal. Last year, he came to CanStage to make it a hub for, as he puts it, “the great theatre and choreographic artists who work in this country.” But his radical, rapid revamping of the ultra-safe company has alienated audiences. He opened his first season with Fernando Krapp Wrote Me This Letter, an obscure German play, and continued into movement-based and experimental works. By the end of the 2010–11 season, the company had experienced a six per cent drop in subscription rates, and the house capacity numbers were even bleaker. A few short-run plays came close to filling the Bluma for six to 12 performances, but some long-run shows ranged from 45 to 60 per cent capacity, and that factors in tickets sold through heavily discounted specials and other promotions. After two successful decades in Asia and Europe, Jocelyn’s return to his native Toronto has been met with more jeers than cheers.
TIFF 2011 Roundup: Seven films that we think are bound for box office (or critical) success
For the regular folk in Toronto, TIFF is primarily a time for star spotting, catching films that might not be seen otherwise and soaking up a kind of glitz and glamour that is otherwise rarely seen in Hogtown. But for the film industry, TIFF is big business—it’s where movies get big distribution deals and money (lots of it) exchanges hands. Over 30 titles were picked up from this year’s film festival, and more deals are surely on the way. We picked seven that we think are likely to be good investments, after the jump.
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TIFF 2011 Roundup: The winners, and the losers, from this year’s installment of the Toronto International Film Festival
(Images: Christopher Drost)
Well, it’s a wrap. Some might suggest that there are no winners and losers at TIFF, and that the festival is a harmonious celebration of filmmaking and the artistic spirit. For our part, we say these people are wrong. Life is a competition, and we’ve got the goods on the stars, the parties, the neighbourhoods, the red carpet galas and the films that came out on top—and on the bottom—this year, after the jump.
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TIFF 2011 Roundup: How to be Don Draper (er, Jon Hamm)
Jon Hamm at the George Stroumboulopoulos Hazel Hotel Takevoer party (Image: JJ Thompson)
One of the many A-list celebrities to grace Toronto’s streets last week for TIFF 2011 was none other than Jon Hamm himself—or as he’s perhaps better known, Don Draper, the enigmatic ad executive he plays on the television show Mad Men. Hamm was a class act throughout TIFF: he took in Toronto sights, went to all the right parties and, of course, looked devastatingly handsome while doing it. Based on Hamm’s short but sweet stay in the Big Smoke, we’ve distilled four rules on how to be a gentlemen—Mad Men style—whilst in Toronto, after the jump.
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Wherein we get the story behind the rogue autograph-seeker at the Madonna press conference
Madonna walks the red carpet at TIFF 2011 (Image: Christopher Drost)
The rumour mill has been constantly churning regarding the Material Girl’s behavior at TIFF, ever since a rogue fan somehow broke into her press conference last week and asked for her John Hancock (not to mention that whole mess around Madge telling a group of TIFF volunteers to turn their backs to the wall as she passed by). We have the real story (hint: the autograph seeker wasn’t the orange-clad volunteer she pretended to be) after the jump.
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Nadine Labaki’s Where Do We Go Now? wins the Cadillac People’s Choice Award—but will it be Oscar bait?
(Image: Christopher Drost)
And that’s a wrap.
The official closing ceremony for the 36th annual Toronto International Film Festival took place at the Four Seasons Hotel yesterday. TIFF 2011 co-directors Cameron Bailey and Piers Handling hosted the affair, and the attendees sipped mimosas and munched on egg souffle, spinach-and-flower petal salad, roast potatoes and crème brûlée (note: festival food is yum). Where Do We Go Now?, a dramatic comedy set in war-torn Lebanon that follows the lives of several women trying to keep their husbands out of the conflict, received the Cadillac People’s Choice Award, which in past years has been a sign of Oscar-y things to come (but we’re not so sure about this one). The Cadillac People’s Choice Documentary Award went to Jon Shenk’s political documentary The Island President and Gareth Evans took home the Cadillac People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award for The Raid.
Full list of winners here.
Today at TIFF: People’s Choice free screening
Our daily roundup of opening galas, parties and screenings.
• 6 p.m. People’s Choice free screening at Ryerson Theatre
Today at TIFF: Page Eight gala presentation
Our daily roundup of opening galas, parties and screenings.
• 9:15 a.m. The Story of Film: An Odyssey free screening at TIFF Bell Lightbox
• 6 p.m. Page Eight gala presentation at Roy Thomson Hall
• 11:59 p.m. Kill List midnight madness at Ryerson Theatre
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