ARTS
Good Kid, mad city
I meet the five members of Good Kid at The Starving Artist on College Street. Michael, who plays bass, tells me as we wait for our table that he bought some balloons earlier since their single hit 100,000 plays on Spotify. “We’re using them for a video on our Facebook ...
Let’s talk about ZAYN
Boy bands are dependent on staying the same. Part of their appeal is remaining static throughout their career, and this can lead to personality-free products. One Direction is perhaps the strongest contemporary example of this phenomenon. (As we monitor the band’s rumoured disintegration over the next few months, it’s going ...
Review: Mozart in the Jungle
Many Golden Globe viewers were surprised when favourite-to-win Jeffrey Tambor was unseated in the Best Actor in a Comedy Series category by Gael García Bernal for Mozart in the Jungle. Amazon’s comedy series centres on a transitional period for the New York Symphony Orchestra, when new conductor Rodrigo De Souza ...
TIFF Top Ten review: Les demons
With choices such as Andrew Cividino’s Sleeping Giant and Stephen Dunn’s Closet Monster, several of the films at this year’s Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival took audiences on a tour of the Canadian suburbs, highlighting the struggles of the children and adolescents growing up in them. Philippe Lesage’s Les démons ...
Violence in film is a problem, I guarantee it
Two years ago, I was flying back to Toronto on Air Canada, ready to watch Kill Bill Vol. 1. This movie, like many Quentin Tarantino films, has hit cult-classic status, so I felt that I should incorporate it into my film repertoire. About ten minutes into the film, I had ...
Choir! Choir! Choir! Co-Founder Nobu Adilman talks about the Toronto initiatives success
Daveed Goldman and Nobu Adilman are very busy these days. The community choir they founded in 2011, aptly (and enthusiastically) named “Choir! Choir! Choir!,” is amassing viral attention for their recent performance of the late, great David Bowie’s Space Oddity. The video of the event has been watched more than ...
Is the Joy of Reading Obsolete Because of School?
There is no doubt that university makes us better readers. It provides us with the skillset to analyze texts more efficiently and to become better critics in general. However, considering the quick pace at which we are expected to finish readings at the university level, one might argue that we ...
Environmental Issues and Theatre intersect
Broadleaf Theatre comprised of UofT’s student talent brings environmental consciousness to center stage There is nothing more inspiring than seeing UofT students take their school-based initiatives into the “real world.” University allows students the time and space to invent and create, as people are surrounded by hundreds of peers engaged ...
VCDS’ God of Carnage was a bloody good show
The program for the VCDS’s 2016 God of Carnage has the following note from director Ben Murchison: “In order to further showcase this play’s [sic] thematic elements, I decided to convert the entire Cat’s Eye into the Novak’s loft.” Had I read this before entering the Cat’s Eye, I would have ...
Mini Review: Soulpepper’s revival of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol
Michael Shamata’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, put on at Soulpepper Theatre, was a heartwarming testimony to the power of human redemption and compassion, even in a person as hostile and bitter as Ebeneezer Scrooge. Joseph Ziegler offered a nuanced, brilliant performance as Ebeneezer Scrooge—showcasing Scrooge’s contempt and coldness, while also portraying ...