Archive for the 'film' Category

Episode 19 » March 11, 2009

Published
by
Blair
on March 16, 2009
in city, comedy and film
. 0 Comments

This is a bit late getting to the blog, but it’s finally up. Episode 19 took Katherine and I to the Bloor Cinema to see a documentary called Guest of Cindy Sherman, part of the Doc Soup series of documentaries (a program run by Hot Docs). To give you an idea about the film, we found this trailer for it:

You will see what we thought of the film at the end…  It sure was provocative!  It got Katherine quite ticked off, that’s for sure.  At its core, it is really two stories rolled into one.  One being the New York art gallery scene from the 80’s until now, and the other being the story of a man who is with a woman who is much more successful and talented than him.  It sure is a lot of things, but definitely worth a look, especially if you want to know a bit more about Cindy Sherman and her amazing work as an artist.

We got a chance to talk to Sean Farnel, Director of Programming at Hot Docs to talk about the upcoming festival and what Doc Soup is. If you love documentary films, and you haven’t been to Doc Soup or Hot Docs, you’re missing out on one of the best film festivals in Toronto. And it’s pretty darn cheap to see some fantastic stories from around the world.

The second part of our evening took us down to Bread & Circus in Kensington Market to see The Carnegie Hall Show:

… an Improvised meta-variety show that satirizes the gala retrospective not unlike The Lincoln or Kennedy Centre Honours.  After getting a suggestion from the audience of “an event to celebrate” the tuxedo and boa-clad cast (Matt Baram, Chris Gibbs, Ron Pederson and Naomi Snieckus) take the audience on a timeline retrospective of the greatest improvised scenes based on that event as they make them up from scratch before their very eyes. That’s why we can say we offer the greatest Improvised scenes of all time!

For a night of “Pay-What-You-Think-It’s-Worth” comedy, this was a great evening of improv. We got a chance to sit down (or stand) with Chris Gibbs, one of the stars of the show, to talk to us about the beginnings of The Carnegie Hall Show. If you’re ever in the area on a Wednesday night and looking for something off the beaten path to check out, may we highly suggest having a drink and a laugh with some of Toronto’s finest improvisers (for a quick clip, click here).

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That Night in Toronto has a Bad Day

Published
by
Katherine
on October 26, 2008
in TNIT, Visual art, art, city, film, music, new media, photography and theatre
. 1 Comment

Click above for the video……

Hey y’all,

So Blair and I have been super busy and we have plans coming up, so you will see an episode soon enough!  In the meantime, check out the video above.  It is the first one that I did on my own, and with the slowness of my computer, might be the last for a while.  I went to the launch of the second issue of Bad Day Magazine at Studio Gallery .  You can check out the art until mid-November there, so please check out the gallery’s website for hours and such things.

I have been working nuts hours these days, but I still got to see Scratch at Factory Theatre.  If you are a woman/girl/lady person, you must see this play.  It will bring you back to when you were a pre-teen/teen and no one ‘got’ you, and you were really going through lots of ’stuff’.  If you are a man/boy/gentleman person, you should see it too.

For next week, there is tons going on…. almost every night is booked.  I’ll try to take pics and stuff and tell you about it next week.

Monday - Fu-Gen Theatre’s Gala

Tuesday - Rest (maybe make a bean salad for lunches)

Wednesday - The night I have been waiting for!!!!   Trouble the Water as part of the first Doc Soup of the season (as you will find out soon viewers, I am the hugest fan of Hot Docs Fest and Doc Soup series) then….  SHARON JONES and the DAP KINGS at Kool Haus!  Blair will be there too, but I am sure Sharon won’t let us take pics.  If you don’t know Sharon Jones, click on her name anywhere on this blog and the internets will take you to her.  She is a massive talent - soul to the limit!  Best band ever too!

Thursday - I have rehearsal, but there’s lots going on in the city

Friday - I am seeing The Black Rider at Tarragon but for the rest of you it is Halloween.  (you will also learn that Halloween is not my scene and I do everything I can to avoid it.  I hate halloween.)

See you dudes next week -

k

Episode 13 - October 4-5, 2008

Published
by
Blair
on October 7, 2008
in Visual art, city, dance, film, music, new media, photography and theatre
. 1 Comment

12 hours. What a night! We started our journey at 6:30pm at City Hall and our heads didn’t hit the pillow until 6am the next morning …

There is so much to cover from this years Nuit Blanche in Toronto. So much in fact that it’s best if you watch the video! :) But here are some of the highlights that we saw on our travels:

Zone A:

  • Stereoscope, City Hall
    An amazing installation turning the windows of City Hall into a giant ping pong game and lighting canvas
  • Our interview with Mayor David Miller
  • Conversation #2, 900 Wellesley Street
    12,000 books laid together to create a beautiful sculpture. The different coloured spines even created moasic images wrapped around the sculpture.

Zone B:

  • r u part of the art?
    An interesting mobile installation - subscribe to a texting service and receive updates throughout the night with various things to do like sing the song from The Muppets (Menamena do do dee do do …). We didn’t see many other people doing it, but it was fun to randomly do stuff during the night.
  • Le Labo, Distillery
    A very calming video/sound installation (for the first while we were there) at Le Labo or Le Laboratoire d’art - a “francophone media and integrated arts lab offering opportunities in production, training & showings.”
  • Higgs Ocean, Distillery
    While they weren’t part of the ‘official’ Nuit Blanche schedule, this installation in one of the alleyways of the Distillery, was a highlight for us as it featured many elements from our youth - Lite Brite, a Big Bird lamp, and old films on video projectors! Unfortunately we couldn’t find any info on the group online - so if you guys see this posting, let us know where to find you!

Zone C:

  • Overflow, Liberty Village
    A smaller scale installation by Michel de Broin of a waterfall coming out the window of a 3 storey building and crashing into discarded furniture on the ground.
  • Imagine Peace, Liberty St. & Jefferson Ave.
    Yoko Ono continues to spread the message of peace with this installation. The public is given tags to write a wish on and the hang on the trees lining the street creating weeping willows of wishes, as it were.
  • I Promise It Will Always Be This Way, Lamport Stadium
    At 5am, watching mascots run wild to mid-90’s techno music was a lot of fun - and a great way to end the night.

We took tons of photos that night and we’ll be posting them in our Facebook Group as well as setting up a flickr home soon for you to view.

What were your highlights? What did you think of the 2008 Nuit Blanche?

Be sure to check out our friends over at Dear Toronto and their coverage of Nuit Blanche!

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Special Pre Toronto Nuit Blanche Edition

Published
by
Blair
on September 30, 2008
in TNIT Info, Visual art, city, dance, film, literature, music, photography and theatre
. 2 Comments

4 days left until at 6:52pm on Saturday October 4th, Toronto awakens for an all night contemporary art thing called Scotiabank Nuit Blanche. If you haven’t been yet … where have you been!? For the past two years, the popularity of this phenomenal free chaotic art frenzy has exploded - hundreds of thousands of Torontonians take to the street and experience art in Toronto like never before.

For those of you who have never been, Katherine and I have put together a little guide - 7 tips on how to survive Nuit Blanche and make the most of your night.

We are prepping for an all night vlogging thing and we want you to be a part of it. We’ll be heading from Zone B to A to C on our bikes. If you want to join us along the way and be a part of our evening, email us at info@nightintoronto.com and we’ll let you know where we are. You can also send us some tips if you know of a great installation we should feature on TNIT!

After we catch up on our sleep, we’ll be posting a vlog from each zone so be sure to sign up to our RSS feed to see the results! Oh, and we’ll also be teaming up with our friends at Dear Toronto to do some cross vlogging - should be a lot of fun.

Enjoy!

- Blair

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A followup to Episode 2

Published
by
Blair
on June 23, 2008
in comedy and film
. 0 Comments

Hey kids,

Just because we missed out on Kathleen’s show in our last episode, doesn’t mean you can’t partake in some of her comedy. Thanks to the brilliance of the inter-web, we bring you a little slice of Kathleen Phillips! You can check out her YouTube page for more hilarious videos.

Episode 2 - June 19, 2008

Published
by
Blair
on June 23, 2008
in film and photography
. 5 Comments

Hey everyone,

We’re in widescreen! I figured out how to film on the video camera in 16:9 ratio … yay!

Last Thursday Katherine and I headed out on the town to see if we drink up some more culture in Toronto. We had it all planned out and it started off really well at Prefix. We grabbed some food and then chaos ensued …

Okay, not really chaos, but we certainly had to improvise. You’ll have to watch the episode to figure out what happens!

We’re really ecstatic about the response we’ve had from our first episode. There are so many events coming up in the summer, I doubt we’ll have any trouble finding new events to attend. But if you know of an event coming up that you think we should take a look at, contact us and let us know! We’ll try and fit it into our schedule!

Formats available:MPEG-4 Video (.m4v), Flash Video (.flv)
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Episode 1 - June 10, 2008

Published
by
Blair
on June 15, 2008
in film, music, photography and theatre
. 9 Comments

Our first vlog!

Katherine and I are really excited to show you our first attempt at putting our first video blog together!

On June 10, 2008, we began our night at the Mille Femme exhibit at Brookfield Place, biked up town to see Black Watch at Varsity Arena, stopped off at Hart House to observe Slow Dance, grabbed a bite to eat at Queen and Spadina before rockin’ out at The Horseshoe Tavern with Sebastien Grainger And The Mountains.

Here’s how much we spent tonight: approximately $47.

Unfortunately we couldn’t take any footage of the Black Watch performance - lucky for us though, there’s a great preview on YouTube - check it out here:

We hope you enjoy the first of our vlogs about culture in Toronto. Do you know of an event or exhibition or show we should check out? Give us a shout!

Did you see one of the events we saw? What did you think of it? Leave a comment!

Also check out us out at iTunes!