Toronto: In the Media and Pop Culture

[koolio]

LOL yeah the song is pretty addictive. I've been listening to it for weeks now. Just Saw the video Yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to see it shot in Toronto

[Taller, Better]

Great song; normally I don't like Swedish music as it is so often bland derivative pop.

[koolio]

Swedish DJs have taken over the electronic dance music scene over the past couple of years. They are monopolizing the industry like the British people have monopolized the boy band industry.

[Taller, Better]

boy bands make me ill.

Interesting about Swedish dance music of late; traditionally they just seemed to plug out the same old pop drivel over and over again.

[MissyC]

Originally Posted by koolio

Swedish DJs have taken over the electronic dance music scene over the past couple of years. They are monopolizing the industry like the British people have monopolized the boy band industry.

So right. Like Loreen whose song " Euphoria" made it to all charts across Europe for weeks and is still being played on radio's & music channels. I like her too.

Sweets are quiet people hardly capable of expressing their feelings. They do only so when they sing and that is why singing in large groups all together at party's and festivals is so widely accepted and rooted in their culture.

That unique aspect of their culture has made them produce some great singers.

[vid]

Actually, us ethnic Swedes tend more to poetry. I'm descended from a considerable line of well-known Swedish poets, and several in my family continue the tradition today.

But poetry is a quiet expression.

[MissyC]

I hate auto correct in my phone. I meant: Sweeds! LOL or Swedes

[Taller, Better]

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/new...s-fills-391843

Former Toronto Film Studios Reopens, Fills Stages With Hollywood Shoots

3:38 PM PST 11/18/2012 by Etan Vlessing
The downtown soundstages, once home to productions of "The Incredible Hulk" and "Jumper," have relaunched as part of the Revival 629 complex.

TORONTO – The former Toronto Film Studios is back in business as the Revival 629, with Ken and Linda Ferguson back running the complex.

The film studio at 629 Eastern Avenue in downtown Toronto, which served as a temporary jail during the riotous 2010 G20 Summit, has reopened as the city’s film and TV production boom continues.........

read it all here:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/new...s-fills-391843

[Taller, Better]

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment...lm-now-100-000

Award for top Canadian film now $100,000


By Peter Howell Movie Critic

When the Toronto Film Critics Association was created in 1997, the prize for the group’s Best Canadian Film honours was a plaque and a warm handshake.

That was then and this is wow: this year’s winner will receive $100,000 from Rogers Communications, making the Rogers Best Canadian Film Award by far the country’s richest film prize.............

read it all here:
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment...lm-now-100-000

[ACT7]

Toronto 2012, where the concerts never seem to stop

Published on Friday November 30, 2012

The growth of Toronto’s live-music market has been steady at the highest levels. Riley O’Connor, chairman of Live Nation Canada, has been able to report nothing but expansion for the past three years, even as his U.S. counterparts feel the sting of the ongoing downturn in North America’s economic fortunes. Indeed, while Live Nation’s operations in the States were coming out of a wobbly four quarters at the end of 2011, the Canadian office — hot off a 20,000-strong sellout for Deadmau5’s homecoming at the Rogers Centre last December — was proudly announcing the establishment of its EDM-focused Electronic Nation division, which went on to draw crowds in the tens of thousands for its start-up Digital Dreams and IDentity festivals last summer.

“Our secret,” says O’Connor, “is the fact that Toronto has been expanding, population-wise, for the past 10 years. We’ve been building beyond anything you see in any other city ... The economic vitality of this market is remarkable.”

The diversity of Toronto’s exponentially expanding population is also key. Forget the distance between such internationally recognized Toronto exports as, say, Drake and Feist and F---ed Up and Deadmau5; there’s an entire, ethno-specific, multicultural underground most of us haven’t a clue about.

“Nashville can make lots of claims about being Music City, but we all know what that music is,” notes Music Canada president Graham Henderson. “In Toronto, it means something very different. If you say Toronto is ‘my music city,’ it can be anything to anybody.”

Without trying, Toronto has organically evolved into the third-largest music market in North America. It’s not surprising, then, that the music-industry lobby group Music Canada — which has been scrambling since the 21st-century collapse in record sales to find more reliable revenue streams for working Canadian musicians — is trying to sell City Hall and the province of Ontario on marketing Toronto as a “music-tourism” destination.

For now, as veteran booking agent Ralph James puts it: “There doesn’t seem to be any sign of it letting up. At a certain point, the traffic will exceed the demand, I suppose. But my wife doesn’t go out to shows that much and she went and saw Melissa Etheridge the other night only to find out that Annie Lennox was at Roy Thomson Hall while she was at Massey Hall.” He notes that acts can sell out with out being broadly promoted, so “big shows come (and) you just don’t know about (them).”

With heavy volume comes heavy competition and heavy expectations, too. Although the trend is by no means specific to this city, indie promoter Amy Hersenhoren, part of the Collective Concerts crew, has noticed a lot more unproved acts coming to Toronto anticipating bigger crowds and bigger paydays since the collapse of the traditional major-label recording industry put everyone on the road, all the time.

“I think there is a ceiling,” she says. “While I would much rather be doing this in Toronto than, let’s say, in Montreal or Vancouver, where the ceiling seems to be much lower, I find if you come back more than once in a year Toronto audiences don’t like that, unless it’s something that’s really hot.”

Toronto has a few standards, then. As expat promoter Elliott Lefko, now in Los Angeles working with Goldenvoice, points out, the city’s never been hurting on the live front.

“I found this book at a garage sale called Impresario, by the legendary concert promoter Sol Hurok, who used to promote Isadora Duncan and the Monte Carlo Russian Ballet. He’s telling all these stories about promoting classical music and ballet and all this stuff, and his three big cities were New York, San Francisco and Toronto — and that was in the ’30s. And I don’t think anything’s changed since then.”

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment...r-seem-to-stop

[monkeyronin]

[Taller, Better]

Poor little guy... must have been very frightened.

[isaidso]

He's lucky he didn't get run over.

[Izzy Hungwell]

caught this on the "fuck yeah Toronto" site... for anyone that likes their pop bubble gum flavoured:

[Taller, Better]

Bubblegum perhaps, but nice to see someone who is proud of his neighbourhood!

[StEC]

Originally Posted by Izzy Hungwell

caught this on the "fuck yeah Toronto" site... for anyone that likes their pop bubble gum flavoured:

Song actually isn't that bad but the video was a fantastic showcase for the city, loved it!

[koolio]

That picture of the monkey looking out the door just cracks me up every time.

[waldenbg]

Best streetcar ever!

[vid]

How is he the best? It runs on a track, he just controls speed. Do street cars turn fast and hit cars that are stopped to close to their right of way on a regular basis?

[Taller, Better]

Did you not catch the rhythm he created with his horn and his bell? He was gittin' down and gittin' funky.

Streetcars never turn fast, or they would derail. I think occasionally a speeding car will hit a turning streetcar, though.