Art News

The Toronto International Film Festival is welcoming Hollywood celebrities back to the red carpet as organizers look to revive the event’s big-screen magic in spite of pandemic precautions.

TIFF kicked off with the premiere of musical Dear Evan Hansen at Roy Thomson Hall on Thursday night, ringing in a return to theatres after the COVID-19 crisis largely limited last year’s festival to digital and drive-in screenings.

But even as the global glitterati once again graced Toronto, the 10-day hybrid festival seemed to lack some of the star-powered fanfare of previous years.

Director Stephen Chbosky said he’s had a special relationship

Michael Constantine, an Emmy Award-winning character actor who reached worldwide fame playing the Windex bottle-toting father of the bride in the 2002 film My Big Fat Greek Wedding, has died. He was 94.

Constantine died Aug. 31 at his home in Reading, Pa,, of natural causes, his family said. The news was confirmed to The Associated Press on Thursday by his agent, Julia Buchwald.

Constantine made appearances on such TV shows as My Favorite Martian, The Twilight Zone, Bonanza, Hogan’s Heroes, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Fugitive, Quincy, M.E., The Love

Miriam Toews, Omar El Akkad and Katherena Vermette are three of the 12 writers longlisted for the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

The $100,000 award annually recognizes the best in Canadian fiction.

Toews is being recognized for her novel Fight Night, El Akkad is nominated for his novel What Strange Paradise, while Vermette made the list for her novel The Strangers.

Three short story collections made the list: The Octopus Has Three Hearts by Rachel Rose, A Dream of a Woman by Casey Plett and Glorious Frazzled Beings by Angélique Lalonde.

No previous winners cracked the longlist, but

Canada’s tight-knit art world is reeling after the death in Victoria of multimedia artist Jeremy Gordaneer, in what police are treating as a homicide.

Police said in a release that officers and paramedics were called to a residence in the 1000-block of Carberry Gardens, in the city’s Rockland neighbourhood, around 5 a.m. PT on Aug. 31, where they found a man suffering from life-threatening injuries.

The man died at the scene, police said, and the Vancouver Island Integrated Major Crime Unit is now handling the investigation.

Police have not released any other information, but several neighbours reported hearing popping sounds

U.S. actor Michael K. Williams, who as the rogue robber of drug dealers Omar Little on The Wire created one of the most popular characters in television in recent decades, died Monday.

Williams was found dead in his Brooklyn penthouse apartment on Monday afternoon, New York City police said. He was 54.

His death was being investigated as a possible drug overdose, the NYPD said. The medical examiner was investigating the cause of death.

Little, a “stick-up boy” who only robbed drug dealers was based on real figures from Baltimore, and was probably the most beloved character among the devoted

On what’s traditionally one of the sleepiest weekends at the movies, the Marvel film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings smashed the record for Labour Day openings with an estimated $71.4 million in ticket sales, giving a box office reeling from the recent coronavirus surge a huge lift heading into the fall season.

The Friday to Sunday gross for the movie, Marvel’s first film led by an Asian superhero, ranks as one of the best debuts of the pandemic, trailing only the previous Marvel film Black Widow ($80.3 million US in July). Overseas, it pulled in $56.2 million

A newly-released song tells a story that Windsorites might to relate to.

Riverside Rose is about two young people who met and fell in love in the city in 1964:

On the banks of the Detroit River
I was looking into your eyes
We had the heartbeat of modern America
Rushing by our sides

And I met you in the summertime
The air was hot, you were on my mind
And I asked you would you be my rose tonight?
Would you be my Riverside rose tonight?

The song is based on a true story, singer-songwriter Josh Geddis explained, a