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Cinemania

From Kingston to New York: a big month for The Trotsky

Jay Baruchel in The Trotsky

It’s been a big month for The Trotsky, the indie film written and directed by Montreal’s Jacob Tierney. The movie stars Jay Baruchel (who is also the lead in She’s Out of My League, though we prefer to remember him from those Popular Mechanics for Kids episodes with Elisha Cuthbert) and premiered at last year’s TIFF. It’s one of three Canadian films to make it to the Tribeca Film Festival this year, along with Cairo Time and the documentary Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage. It follows a Montreal high school student who believes he is the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky and is obsessed with recreating the leader’s life, complete with exile and assassination. Typical teenage stuff, really, minus any Jonas Brothers. Coming off its massive People’s Choice win at the Kingston Canadian Film Festival (which enjoyed an increase of 20 per cent in attendance this year) last week, Tierney and co. will surely feel right at home amid the glamour of New York.

• The Trotsky wins Kingston film fest People’s Choice Award [Kingston Whig Standard]
• The Trotsky makes U.S. debut at Tribeca [CBC]
• 1997 Popular Mechanics for Kids: World Trade Center [YouTube]

| Leave a Comment » March 16, 2010 | 2:30 pm | Greg Hudson

Gimme Shelter

House of the week: glassed-in glory on the Bridle Path for $12.9M

(Image: Cooper and Company)

DON’T THROW STONES

ADDRESS: 83 The Bridle Path
NEIGHBOURHOOD: Bridle Path–Sunnybrook–York Mills
AGENT: Steven Maislin, Cooper and Company
PRICE: $12.9 million
THE PLACE: Recently featured on MTV Teen Cribs, the modernist glass house is every adolescent boy’s dream. Massive windows encase an indoor basketball court and games area, making it easy to see what’s going on.

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| 5 Comments » March 12, 2010 | 8:12 am | Natalie Goldenberg-Fife

The Hype

Unleash The Hype

Readers of torontolife.com could be forgiven for thinking that its editors only care about food and fashion. We are fanatical about eating and shopping, it’s true, but our obsessions don’t stop there. That’s why, in addition to tweaking our home page, we’re launching two new blogs: The Informer and The Hype.

The Hype is our entertainment blog, where you can find updates throughout the day on all the juicy culture news—from live blogging the Junos to the hottest gossip at TIFF to best bets at Luminato. We’ll swing both low- and highbrow, offering up authoritative recommendations, and dishing on the latest hookups, blow-ups and makeups among Toronto’s cultural power players.

This is also the place to find out what’s happening in the city. Each morning, we provide a rundown of the day’s noteworthy cultural events, and The Weekender, our guide to the weekend’s best events, will appear here on Thursday morning.

| 1 Comment » March 10, 2010 | 4:13 pm | Toronto Life Staff

Beauty School

Grey hair trend makes its way to Toronto

Drew Barrymore's TIFF dye job (Photo by James Helmer)

We’ve been wondering when the grey hair trend would make its way from celebrities, teen bloggers and fashion runways to the streets of Toronto, and it seems that time has come.

Toronto junior stylist Mike Baronowski went from dark brown to a platinum-silver months ago to match his clients at Greg May Hair Architects in Yorkville. But Greg May, owner of the salon, has seen a serious increase in demand for all kinds of wacky shades.

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| 1 Comment » February 25, 2010 | 10:05 am | Glynnis Mapp

Shop Talk

Just opened: Hugo Boss debuts Yorkville flagship

A look from the Boss Black fall collection

The Mink Mile’s newest resident is Hugo Boss. The office wear outfitter recently opened a store on Bloor Street, where Bemelmans bar once stood, and fêted it last week with an A-list party catered by North 44° and attended by the likes of Atom Egoyan, Suzanne Boyd and Shinan Govani.

The hoopla is over the company’s first Canadian flagship, which has been designed in a new Hugo Boss look to be adopted by all future flagships across the world. The space is awash in greys, creams and black, which makes for an impressive, if a bit sterile, first impression. Halfway through the shop is a grand circular staircase underneath a modernist chandelier of rectangular hanging lights.

The merchandise will appeal most to high-rolling businessmen with an affinity for golf. Downstairs, there are a rainbow of polos ($95) and a flashy golf bag ($550) and umbrella ($185); upstairs is the suiting boutique, which carries younger, slim silhouettes, as well as more traditional cuts. We spotted a gorgeous slim-cut blue wool blazer, in the vein of Etro and Paul Smith, with a light blue polka-dot lining ($695). Aspiring Gordon Gekkos can pick up the Boss brand humidor, loaded with three Cohibas and sporting a leather exterior ($2,895); it’s one of only two available in Canada.

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| Leave a Comment » December 16, 2009 | 12:43 pm | Fraser Abe

Required Reading

The year in fashion: a roundup of 2009 retrospectives

Drew Barrymore's "daring" TIFF dress (Photo by James Helmer)

• Judith Thomson takes a look at the most memorable fashion moments of the Obama era. The highlights: the cardi-skirt combo Michelle Obama wore to meet the Queen, Aretha Franklin’s bowed inauguration hat and Sarah Palin’s glasses. [The New Yorker]

• The fall of Eatons, the rise of fashion week, the influx of starchitecture and seven other noteworthy Toronto design moments of the oughts. [Now]

• Topping People’s snoozy best-dressed list is Kate Winslet, who wins for her body-conscious red carpet looks. Michelle Obama scored the award for most accessible style, and Cameron Diaz has the year’s best jeans. [People]

• Celebrity style bible In Style has put together a slide show of the most daring dresses of the year. None of the looks come close to J. Lo’s plunging Versace gown from 2000, but one of our favourite TIFF outfits—Drew Barrymore’s Alexander McQueen tattoo dress—made the cut, though we’d hardly call it risky. Barrymore’s dye job, on the other hand… [In Style]

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| Leave a Comment » December 14, 2009 | 12:14 pm | Carley Fortune

Required Reading

Hermès accused of hoarding alligator skins, Karl Lagerfeld creates SpongeBob doll, Tom Ford disses Jason Reitman

Tom Ford at the TIFF premiere of A Single Man (Photo by Karon Liu)

• Canadian model Coco Rocha announced last week that she’s launching her own fashion line. No details yet, but her sketches include high-waisted skinny jeans, ankle-skimming pants, and a shirt, skirt and cape. We’re not impressed with the initial designs, but if her line comes out anything like Kate Moss for Topshop (we hope, coming to The Bay), we won’t complain. [Oh So Coco]

• SpongeBob SquarePants got a makeover courtesy of Karl Lagerfeld, who moulded the cartoon creature into a golden mini-Karl, complete with sunglasses, fingerless gloves, shirt and tie. The figurine fetched 1,000 euros at a World Wildlife Fund charity auction. Lagerfeld has already designed a teddy bear in his image, but fans shouldn’t wait for a Karl doll. The designer told W magazine, “Nothing scares me more than people with some doll collection. Frightening.” [WWD]

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| Leave a Comment » December 3, 2009 | 2:15 pm | Fraser Abe

Read All About It

Black carrots are the latest craze, Madonna hates cheese, Prohibition feud heats up

Oprah dined at Sotto Sotto while in Toronto for TIFF (Photo by Karon Liu)

• Feuding continues at Queen Street East bar Prohibiton. Ex-manager Joey McGuirk published a letter from his lawyer on Prohibition’s old Web site this summer, which detailed how he came up with the concept of the bar and demanded compensation after McGuirk was fired. Some of his cutting-edge ideas include serving “high-end pub fare,” focusing on customer service, offering more than 15 kinds of beer and being “fun and sexy.” We hope he patented those, because they’re restaurant gold. [BlogTO]

• When Madonna told David Letterman that she’s never had a slice of New York pizza, the host got her a slice with olives but no cheese. Madonna reports that she’s “not a cheese person.” (A body like that doesn’t happen by eating cheese.) We’re just happy she’s no longer a fake-British-accent person. [Grub Street]

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| 1 Comment » October 5, 2009 | 10:05 am | Fraser Abe

Toronto International Film Festival 2009

The final goodbye: this is TIFF.TO, signing off

The accumulated detritus of our TIFF life (Photo by Jen McNeely)

We went into TIFF feeling like a groomed and glowing Jessica Simpson and came out looking like Mickey Rourke after a bender. What begins with clinking glasses of Moët and bumping hips with George Clooney at a Bridle Path mansion descends into glamorous gluttony: Dolce and Gabbana swag littered in a pile of dirty laundry, espresso stains, broken pumps and scattered taxi receipts. We are now ready to trade in stalking Oprah Winfrey for life in the country with a pint-sized pony and some Cookstown greens. It was swell drinking Grey Goose martinis with Clive Owen and hobnobbing with boldface names, complaining to coiffed socialites that our party schedule was maxxed out, but we now find ourselves yearning to float down from the elevated eclipse of seductive fantasy and find solace in googling how to start a hobby farm. Nikki Beach? No thanks; we are dreaming of greeting a Kincardine sunrise with a bowl of oats. Call us extremists, but as TIFF comes to a close, the last thing we want is a free cocktail and cured meat. Just give us a stack of hay to lie in, far away from Yorkville. If we can’t have that, then we’ll settle for an oxygen facial and an afternoon at Body Blitz. That should carry us through until next September, when we’ll be ready to do it all over again.

| Leave a Comment » September 22, 2009 | 2:53 pm | Jen McNeely

Toronto International Film Festival 2009

The best and worst of TIFF 2009

The after party for The Men Who Stare at Goats. Not many people can say they were at a house party on the Bridle Path with George Clooney and Jeff Bridges.

TIFF is toast for 2009, so we asked our team of writers and photographers report back on the best and worst, the scary and the sublime, the hot and the lame of this year’s festival. Here are their harrowing responses.

: Without a doubt, George Clooney, for having a bottomless pit of facial expressions, headline-worthy quotes and spending 20 minutes signing autographs for the entire line of fans.

: Eating smoked meat and kosher pickles with the dudes from Schwartz’s Deli. For The Trotsky after party at Pravda, Alliance Films flew in the Montreal meatheads, put them up at the Royal York, and paid them to feed a CanCon crowd with real-size sammies. Through full stomachs, our hearts were won.

: A glass castle on the Bridle Path, enormous and cubist, like something out of a Bret Easton Ellis novel. (People in glass houses probably shouldn’t throw parties, but we’re glad they do.)

: Getting chastised by a security guard for walking on the Duchess of York’s dress train at the InStyle party (although this moment would have been amazing had we not noticed and she kept walking).

: Hearing a group of middle-aged male photographers sing Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” while waiting outside the press conference room.

: “So, you’re an actress?”, generally followed by a shocked, “No? Really?” when we shook our heads. Look, we can tell by your loafers that you’re from out of town, but come on—we’re holding a press pass, eating majorly caloric pastries, and carrying our own not-it bag. Nothing about this screams “movie starlet.” Kristin Booth is probably here somewhere, so please move on.

: The Grey Goose martini we sipped alongside Clive Owen while sitting on a TTC subway car in the secret Bay station.

: We had a hunch that Drew Barrymore would turn up at Sweaty Betty’s, as she has in the past, and we were right. We got there in time to see her behind the bar of our local watering hole, swigging beer in an Alexander McQueen gown.

: How to tell a celebrity’s non-famous date to get out of a shot without being rude. This is what happened during Colin Farrell’s now-infamous red carpet debacle. A bunch of photographers wanted a solo shot of the brooding Irishman, so they all yelled at his date to get out of the shot during the frenzy. Farrell took offence because his date was his sister. Pictured is a clear shot of Paula Patton, snapped after Alan Thicke’s son stepped out of the way.

: Colin Farrell for saying “cheers” to every reporter at the Ondine press conference after a photo of him grabbing a photographer made the front page of The Sun.

: Tyler Perry, who made a beeline for the red carpet at the Precious premiere and didn’t even look at the fans.

: Nikki Beach. It was supposed to be a huge deal, attracting all kinds of celebs, but turned out to be packed with rather horny, smashed girls from Thornhill.

: Being one of the few photographers who snapped a photo, albeit a slightly blurry one, of Robert DeNiro at the Precious premiere.

: Michael Cera’s shyness pays his bills, but his one-word answers do nothing for reporters.

: The barrage of camera shutters at press conferences. They peak whenever a celebrity smiles or talks with their hands.

: “Oprah, we are all so grateful to you for helping the children in Africa. I was born in Kiev, Ukraine [pictured], and not many people know that there are 200 orphanages there and over 100,000 orphans. I just want to know if anybody reached out to you or approached you to help out the country.”

: A tie between Edward Norton’s and Oprah Winfrey’s. In both cases, the barricades we were standing behind started to lean forward as the celebs walked past. It took two security guards to push everyone back.

: Waiting two and a half hours for Megan Fox outside Cheval. She didn’t show up.

: A woman on the 501 streetcar gushing about how one time, she waved to Carla Collins outside the Hazelton and Carla Collins waved back! Because “stars are just normal people, you know?”

: Falling asleep on the sidewalk while waiting for Natalie Portman. For 10 minutes, we slept on the street.

: The fans sang “Smelly Cat” in hopes of luring Lisa Kudrow back to the barricades at the premiere of Love and Other Impossible Pursuits. It didn’t work.

: The men’s bathroom on the second floor of the Sutton Place Hotel; we saw director Atom Egoyan exiting, adjusting his belt.

: It’s a tie, and both involve Drew Barrymore (although neither was her fault). The first was at the Whip It press conference, when a reporter asked how her family felt about roller derby (Barrymore famously filed for emancipation at the age of 15). The second was a question about Patrick Swayze’s passing; the actor didn’t know about Swayze’s death until that moment.

: A journalist from a certain national news network asking Eva Avila to take a photo with him on the red carpet.

: The Axe body spray haze at Tryst during the PETA fashion party.

: Natalie Portman saying TIFF is more about the films than celebrities as a wall of photographers snapped away at her.

: Surprisingly, not the hangover. The biggest ache was in our feet after 10 days of standing and partying.

: “Do you have anything to say about the death of Patrick Swayze?”

: Notorious paparazzi hater and fame eschewer Edward Norton at the premiere of Leaves of Grass at Ryerson, where he proceeded down the entire line of fans with a big, unforced smile and posed for a lot of photos.

: The after party for The Men Who Stare at Goats. Not many people can say they were at a house party on the Bridle Path with George Clooney and Jeff Bridges.

: Oprah Winfrey for giving perfectly packaged quotes and knowing how to pose for cameras. Also, people clapped every time she said something at the press conference.

: Grovelling to kitchen staff by the back door vents of the Windsor Arms and basically begging them to sneak us into the InStyle party through the garbage room.

: Jessica Paré. Lips of velvet.

: Remington’s, the infamous gay male strip club on Yonge Street, holds the same party every year at the same time. Sure, it takes place during TIFF and is full of TIFF-goers, but they are in no way connected.