Results tagged “venice”

Whether we like it or not, some of us will be in Toronto all summer, with nary a trip or vacation elsewhere in sight. As a remedy, we've created Tourist. Every weekend morning, bright and early, of the summer we're featuring a photo (or two) from a globe-trotting photographer in the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Last night, the seats of Harbourfront Centre's studio theatre were packed with a mix of middle-aged art aficionados and well-coiffed hip, young homos all dying to see Francesco Vezzoli give a lecture and screen his notorious Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal's Caligula. Vezzoli is an Italian artist known for his work in video and embroidery (yes, embroidery) who set the art world ablaze a couple of years ago with his re-imagining of the infamous, semi-pornographic swords and sandals schlock-fest that actually was written by Gore Vidal. Vezzoli's trailer for an imaginary remake features Vidal as himself, as well as a ridiculously A-list cast, including original Caligula star Helen Mirren, Milla Jovovich, Justine Bateman, Karen Black, Gerard Butler, Benicio Del Torro and Michelle Phillips of The Mamas and The Papas fame. The title role is played by both Vezzoli himself and Courtney Love and the costumes are designed by Donatella Versace.

Where can you find popcorn lovers and peaceniks together? At a politically conscious film fest—in a park, no less!

The Spadina Expressway was probably the most high-profile megaproject in Toronto that was never built, but it's also just one of many. For his OCAD thesis project, David Kopulos has detailed a host of construction projects that were planned for Toronto, but that never materialized—both the reviled (such as the Expressway) and the intriguing—on his website, Toronto Pending. Each entry explains what the proposed structure would have been and why it wasn't built, alongside artist's renderings, photos and a map of the would-be site that cheekily states, "You aren't here." Some of the projects include:

David Altmejd’s art looks good on paper. First off, it’s about werewolves, and who can resist the cuddly therianthropes? From folklore to B-movies, the werewolf maintains a lasting hold on the popular imagination. However, Altmejd’s work is neither folksy nor campy. In the Montreal-born, New York-based sculptor’s elaborate installations, he starts off with the (usually fragmented, decaying) figure of the werewolf, and embellishes it with everything from crystals and jewellery, to S&M paraphernalia, to taxidermied animals, combining all this within modern display structures of mirror and Plexiglas. While the werewolf itself is a classic symbol of transformation, the addition of such disparate elements expands the metamorphic metaphor into a dialectic between beast and human, repulsion and beauty, decay and renewal, nature and artifice.

Today, the AGO was pleased to announce the donation of a Bernini sculpture by real estate developer Murray Frum. The sculpture, entitled Corpus, has an estimated value of $50-million.

The -ists this week had politics on the brain. And what goes better with politics? Partying-- that's two great tastes in one. Oh, and Kevin Federline...can't forget about Kevin Federline. That's three great tastes in one.

And so yet another day passes without incident, because we didn’t go to any parties or anything! We think, um, there was a Latin America party (or something) but we didn’t go. There was also, apparently, the OMDC Sales Cocktail Party, presented by the Ontario Media Development Corporation. We had to miss that, though, as we’d booked some time in the video library. Ah well! Not much in the way of star spotting today then, though we did bump into the lovely director of Sur La Trace d’Igor Rizzi, Noël Mitrani. Apparently the film had some real buzz about it at Venice, which is fantastic, as we really liked it.

Torontoist has a shameful confession to make. We have been known to, on rare occasion, read a book primarily because the movie based upon that book features someone kind of adorable. Shallow as this impetus is, it has led to some wonderful reading (how else would we have discovered the wonders of Edith Wharton, if not for our high school crush on Daniel Day-Lewis?), including John Berendt's excellent .

Dynamic dancer and choregrapher Marie Chouinard is presenting her company's latest work for one night only (November 3rd) at the Hummingbird Center. bODY_rEMIX/gOLDBERG_vARIATIONS was created this past summer at the Venice Biennale's International Festival of Contemporary Dance. We have a pair of tickets that we will give to the first person who e-mails us with the answer to this skill-testing question:

Descanter Mark sends us this post about the literary mag's swish fundraiser tonight:

Individual tickets for shows at the festival go on sale today, and Torontoist will admit that we’re a little behind on our TIFF programme previews (who puts a festival straight after Labour Day, eh?) So we’re going to speed it up a bit, with coverage of the ‘big’ films – the Galas and Masters today and we’ll clear up the rest over the next couple of days. If you seriously fancy any of the films we’re mentioning here you can easily pick up tickets online at the Toronto International Film Festival home page, but we’ve got no idea if there are any tickets left. So if you’ve got your heart set on something and they’re all gone, keep it in mind most of the films below will eventually come out and cost ordinary cinema prices, so maybe check out something that might not instead?