The posse of Torontonians who’ll invade this summer’s London Olympics is determined to return with more medals than ever. Here, five of our top-calibre athletes assess the sacrifices they’ve made on the climb to the podium.
All stories relating to Michael Cera
Reasons to Love Toronto: No. 2, because we’re pumped for gold
Arrested Development will not be available to Canadians in 2013 (not legally, anyway)
Tobias and Michael (Image: Arrested Development screengrab)
Michael Cera may have officially signed on for the rebirth of Arrested Development, but apart from downloading the 10 new episodes using questionable practices, the series will only be available for purchase on American Netflix. Netflix’s vice-president of corporate communications Steve Swasey made the announcement this week, and frankly, the only people who are upset are the people who don’t know how to use the Internet.
Arrested Development returns in 2013, complete with Michael Cera (who presumably realized that George Michael was his greatest role to date)
Tobias (never-nude) and Lindsay from Arrested Development (Image: screengrabs)
After years of rumours, delays and vague announcements, it’s been confirmed that the entire original cast of Arrested Development will reunite for its return next year. Plans to continue the beloved but ratings-deficient sitcom have been brewing since its cancellation in 2006, but they were put on hold while the cast members were rounded up. The final holdout was Brampton boy Michael Cera, who was presumably too busy playing ever more hip incarnations of his nebbish George Michael character in Juno and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. But writer Dean Lorey announced on his blog this weekend that the original cast—everyone from Will Arnett to Jessica Walter—has been assembled and the next season of the series will be shooting this year (it’ll air on Netflix in 2013). We’re guessing Cera finally realized he’d made a huge mistake.
The Arrested Development movie receives the green light—for what feels like the eighth time—long after fans stopped caring
Since he played the iconic George-Michael on the short-lived (come on, Fox let Unhappily Ever After last five seasons) cult classic, Arrested Development, Brampton native Michael Cera has gone Hollywood. With the film version ready to begin production for a projected 2012 release, Cera remains the lone holdout among cast members. It seems as though fans have been asking when the Arrested Development movie will be made since the moment the show got the ax from the folks at Fox way back in 2006. During its three seasons, Arrested Development inexplicably failed to secure any kind of meaningful viewership, despite a loaded cast featuring Cera, Will Arnett, David Cross, Jason Bateman, Portia de Rossi, Tony Hale and Jeffrey Tambor—although it has become the TV box set equivalent of a Criterion Collectable in recent years.
Well, it took five solid years of will it/won’t it speculation, but last week Arnett took to Marc Maron’s WTF podcast to confirm that, yes, the Arrested Development movie will happen, and it will happen soon. It’s hard to imagine a Bluth family without George-Michael, so we expect that creator/producer/writer Mitch Hurwitz will get it together in time. But until then, whet your appetite with some of our favourite Arrested Development moments after the jump.
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Michael Cera ♥ Who’s the Boss: awkwardlicious star spotted eating fro-yo with Tony Danza
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Yesterday, WENN got its hands on some photos of local boy Michael Cera catching up with a highly unlikely pal (the shots are re-published by Lainey here). Okay, so we can’t say for sure that they’re pals, but we can say that Cera and Tony Danza were spotted going for fro-yo yesterday in L.A. They were accompanied by that weird guy who played the bearded stoner in Knocked Up (a.k.a. Martin Starr). WTF? Or, to put it in Tony-speak: Eh-oh, oh-eh?
Gape at Celine Dion’s shoes, for a good cause
(Image: Roel Schroeven)
The Manulife Centre Ron White store is set to become a regular Bata Shoe Museum at 1 p.m. tomorrow with the unveiling of a display of signed and donated shoes from Celine Dion, David Foster, Paul Anka, Nikki Yanofsky and Charice (familiar to Gleeks as Sunshine Corazon). The event kicks off the Ron White Foundation’s 15th annual shoe drive, which has given more than 21,000 shoes and boots to the needy over the years. Also on display will be shoes from such past donors as Matt Damon, Robert Kennedy Jr., Mia Farrow and Michael Cera. To participate, bring a pair of lightly used winter shoes to any Ron White location or to the Avenues level of the Royal York.
Michael Cera is playing bass on Mister Heavenly tour
Cera in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Image: Universal)
Mister Heavenly has recruited Michael Cera to play bass for their upcoming West Coast tour. Already part of the band are Man Man’s Honus Honus, Islands’ Nick Thorburn and Modest Mouse’s Joe Plummer. Cera played a bassist in both Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, but if you want to see him play live, you’ll have to go as far as Seattle. No word on whether Cera will be joining the band permanently.
• Meet Mister Heavenly’s Bass Player [Line Out]
• Michael Cera Joins Mister Heavenly [Pitchfork]
The app kings: meet the army of tech genius millionaires who are turning Toronto into the new Silicon Valley
Why bother with a boring office job when you can share code at networking parties, design games for smartphones and sell your idea for a fortune?
Peter Kieltyka and Jeff Brenner NuLayer makes Crowdreel, an app that collects and categorizes photos uploaded onto Twitter. Photos processed: 100 million.
A 20-something dressed in jeans and a T-shirt enters a stern, early-20th-century brick building near King and Yonge and gets on an elevator. He stands beside suits who spend their days plying commercial real estate and trading securities. The man-boy stops at the sixth floor and enters a cloud blue–coloured lobby, pulls a magnetic security card from the wallet in his jeans and swipes his way in. He removes his ear buds, drops his backpack at his desk and picks up a bagel in the kitchen, passing the room with the ping-pong and foosball tables and another room with the staff Xbox. Then he returns to his desk and becomes one face in a sea of young, so-nerdy-they’re-cool Michael Cera types, though many of these Michael Ceras are Asian, and a few are female. They sit at rows of computers organized by platform, like a really cliquey junior high lunchroom at the world’s smartest school: there’s the BlackBerry row. Android. IPhone. The room reverberates with chatter that sounds, to an outsider, like the kind of talk on a TV medical drama that makes no sense but communicates urgency through tone: “Fleshing out the photo imaging…test for download…integrated platform…” Read the rest of this entry »
Conan O’Brien returns to late night with Canadian stars aplenty
Team Canada for Coco
For Conan O’Brien fans, NBC’s unceremonious dumping of the ginger-topped comedian was pure sacrilege. But if you thought Coco was gone for good, you were wrong. Along with sidekick Andy Richter, Conan returns to the airwaves tonight, and this time, he’s got a beard. He’s also brought a gaggle of Canucks along for the ride.
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See “sleeper hit” Scott Pilgrim vs. the World for free tonight
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This August, comic book nerds across the city flocked to opening-night screenings of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, eager to catch a glimpse of their favourite local comic book given the big-screen treatment. Unfortunately for the film’s producers and its star, Michael Cera, local packed houses were the exception, not the norm. The adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley‘s comic about a Toronto kid who must do battle with his crush’s exes was one of this summer’s notable box office flops. It brought in around $45 million, far short of its $60 million production budget.
Michael Cera vs. Jesse Eisenberg: is this the end of the lovable geek?
The great geek-off
Ever since he stole our hearts as the Tommy Bahama–bedecked George Michael Bluth on Arrested Development, Brampton boy Michael Cera has been Hollywood’s go-to geek. Not since Lewis and Gilbert took their revenge has any actor done so much to make dorks look cool. He did it in Superbad, then he did it in Juno, then in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, and so on. For a while, Cera ruled supreme over all things dweeb, but some recent developments in movieland—namely Jesse Eisenberg’s amazing performance as ruthless Facebook über-geek Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network—have us wondering whether Cera and the era of the lovable Poindexter is officially over.
To settle the debate, we ask that you vote for your preferred geek, but first, a few points to consider.
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Sixteen things to do in Toronto before summer’s over
(Image: Benson Kua)
The leaves may be changing and drunken freshmen may be stumbling around the streets again, but summer isn’t officially over until September 22. Instead of whinging about the inevitable end of the warm weather, make full use of the remaining lazy, hazy days with our list of 16 things to watch, eat, do, see and buy before it’s time to break out the scarves and jackets.
1. Go to Sugar Beach. The Claude Cormier–designed park is the newest addition to Toronto’s ongoing waterfront rejuvenation project, with quartz-speckled sand, pink umbrellas and grassy knolls. The beach is nestled between the slick Corus Entertainment building and the Redpath Sugar Factory, and the Muskoka chairs are a good vantage point from which to contemplate Toronto’s past and present or work on a late-summer tan. Jarvis slip, lower Jarvis St. and Queens Quay E.
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Outrage of the day: Scott Pilgrim limps to finish fifth at box office
Scott Pilgrim vs. The Expendables
That must hurt worse than exploding into a handful of coins: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World opened to a paltry $10.5 million this weekend, behind The Expendables, Eat Pray Love, The Other Guys(???) and Inception. With a gross that anemic, it’s difficult to see the Toronto-based geekfest making back its $60 million budget at the box office. If a fun, video game-besotted romp around some of Toronto’s greatest landmarks can’t bring the crowds to a theatre—especially after the whole Chloe thing—it’s possible Toronto is going to have to go back to playing, oh, every other vaguely post-industrial city in North America.
So what have we learned from this whole affair?
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Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: the drinking game
Fanboy pulses everywhere quickened when it was announced that Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novels about Scott Pilgrim, a bass-playing Toronto trouble magnet, were being made into a movie. When Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright signed on, fangirls swooned. And when geek god Michael Cera (holla, Brampton!) was cast as the shaggy-haired slacker destined to do battle with his new love’s seven evil exes, you could practically hear brains explode. To top it off, the comic-book adaptation to end all comic-book adaptations is set right here at home (eat it, New York!), just as it should be. Straight-edge Scott quaffs Coke Zero all around town (nice product placement, Universal), but for those who prefer a bit of bite, our Scott Pilgrim drinking game, after the jump.
Tourism Toronto goes geek: now targeting Scott Pilgrim fans
(Image: seetorontonow.com)
So there’s this film called Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (based on the Toronto comic book series) and it’s got everyone excited because it’s actually set in Toronto—as in, the city is playing itself on-screen for a change, as opposed to standing in for Chicago or New York. Settings include Sneaky Dee’s, Casa Loma, Sonic Boom, Lee’s Palace and TTC buses (see an interactive map of all the places mentioned in the comic here). Aside from residents getting giddy about the city getting international play, the local government is hoping this will bring in some major tourist dollars just like how that movie about sparkling vampires made Forks, Washington into the Twilight zone.
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