Advertisement
TIFF can be the most exhausting event of the year—10 days of near constant drinking, schmoozing and stargazing, all, ostensibly, in the name of movies. Choosing the best parties requires insider intelligence and expert planning. Here, a highly discerning look at the festival’s hottest hot spots.
Read the rest of this entry »
Read the rest of this entry »
Documentaries once had a reputation for being sleepy, low-production affairs. That’s all changed in recent times, thanks in no small part to 18-year old Hot Docs, North America’s largest documentary film festival. The ten-day Toronto celebration announced its 2011 schedule today, listing 170 non-fiction flicks—some scintillating, some controversial and others thoroughly glitzy. This year’s festival runs from April 28 to May 8, and includes entries from from 35 countries. Here, our cheat sheet on some of the highlights.
(Image: Bruce LaBruce)
To say that Nina Arsenault looks like a cyborg Barbie is almost an understatement. At five-foot-11, with 36-26-40 measurements, pillowy lips locked in a permanent pout, and a cascading mane that changes colour according to her whims and wigs, she’s definitely not the girl next door. And she never aspired to be. Born male, she underwent 60 cosmetic procedures between 1998 and 2006, at a cost of $200,000, to re-sculpt her face and body into the woman she had always dreamed of being. Arsenault’s epic transformation is documented unflinchingly in The Silicone Diaries, her solo show that returns to Buddies in Bad Times Theatre this fall after a sold-out run last season. The piece kicks off when Arsenault is five years old, living in Beamsville’s Golden Horseshoe Trailer Park, and exploring her fascination with the flawless skin and arched brows of department store mannequins. It delves into the time she spent moonlighting for a porn Web site while working as an assistant prof at York; she marked students’ papers during her live sex shows. One of the funniest and saddest moments tells of an encounter at Ultra Supper Club on Queen West with former Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee, who tried to pick her up before realizing she had a penis. Delivered in a direct address format—Spalding Gray is an influence—Arsenault’s story features a raft of shocking details, from the illegal silicone injections that built her curvaceous figure to the horror story of a transsexual severely disfigured by a botched surgery. But provocation is not the piece’s raison d’être. At its core, The Silicone Diaries is a trenchant deconstruction of what it means to be a woman and what it means to be beautiful, from someone who has gone to considerable lengths to achieve both.
THEATRE
The Silicone Diaries
Nov. 25 to Dec. 11, Buddies in Bad Times
It was like a thousand stars in the hipster sky aligned when DJ Chilly Gonzales premiered his film Ivory Tower (a tale of sibling rivalry and chess) at Queen West screening room Camera Bar. The film boasts a cast that includes Gonzales, Montreal music man Tiga, Peaches and a cameo by Feist. Toronto scenester musician Gentleman Reg was an extra in one scene, and Germany’s Boyz Noize produced the soundtrack. Despite the way-cool pedigree, the film wasn’t an official TIFF selection; the powers that be deemed the flick too much of a mish-mash of genres. In a Q&A after the screening, Gonzales defended the fest’s decision, joking, “I don’t hold it against TIFF. Fucking assholes.” Gonzales, who arrived wearing a robe, slippers and carrying a suitcase, hot off a set at Festival Music House, declined a photo (“I just feel like shit. Sorry”) but chatted with fellow filmmaker Bruce LaBruce (who brought along posters of his film L.A. Zombie) and fervent fans before slipping off into the night.
= Find this story on our Celebrity Sightings Map, where we plot the locations of stars spotted throughout Toronto
The young, the old and the fugly
Woot! Woot! The exhaustive official guest list for TIFF has been released (James Franco! Jon Hamm! Uma Thurman!), meaning we can finally provide a definitive stargazing guide to the fest. Here’s a quick primer. See the full list after the jump.
The acclaimed Read the rest of this entry »
Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, Robert De Niro, Helen Mirren, Nicole Kidman, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Woody Allen, Catherine Deneuve, Harvey Keitel, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kevin Spacey, Martin Sheen, William H. Macy, Catherine Keener
French porn star François Sagat stars in the film (Image: L.A. Zombie)
Controversy-driven Toronto filmmaker Bruce LaBruce can’t understand why people don’t want to see his film. L.A. Zombie, about an alien zombie who finds dead bodies and has sex with them to bring them back to life, was scheduled to screen twice this week at the Melbourne International Film Festival but has been pulled due to concerns that it was too pornographic. LaBruce objects, stating the film is largely meant to be an allegory on homelessness and there aren’t any explicit shots of penetration—or at least no more than his last film Otto; Or, Up With Dead People, which was voted third most popular at the 2008 Melbourne film fest.
Read the rest of this entry »
Toronto filmmaker slash smarty-pants smut-monger Bruce LaBruce’s Q&A with designer Karl Lagerfeld in Vice has been circulating around the fashion media, even getting a mention in Shinan Govani’s column today. For the time crunched, nine highlights from the seven-page interview.
1. Lagerfeld opposes the idea of gay marriage: “I’m against it for a very simple reason: in the ’60s, they all said we had the right to the difference. And now, suddenly, they want a bourgeois life.” LaBruce agrees.
2. Lagerfeld doesn’t like to take off his glasses, which he calls “a burka for a man,” because he is nearsighted.
Advertisement
© 2013. All Rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part strictly prohibited. Toronto Life is a registered trademark of Toronto Life Publishing Company Limited
