BAGHDAD, 2006 Iraq’s August sun blasts waves of heat like a blow-dryer to the skin. Under palm tree shade, Suroosh Alvi and Eddy Moretti are surrounded by a motorcade of film crew and AK-47–toting security. They’ve paid $1,500 a day for a bulletproof suv, another car without armour, two drivers, two shooters and a translator… Continue reading Vice Goes Global
Category: Summer 2011
Urban Guerilla
Graffiti Alley is one of Matthew Blackett’s favourite places in Toronto. Tucked behind a kilometre-long stretch of one of the city’s liveliest neighbourhoods, Queen Street West, the area is saturated with art. As he walks past the spray-painted brick walls, he comments on the stencils and scribbles that colour the laneway, identifying artists from their… Continue reading Urban Guerilla
Do Anchors Still Matter?
“Welcome home, Dawna Friesen.” Transmitted through television screens, printed in newspapers and plastered across public spaces, the phrase echoed across Canada as the summer of 2010 came to a close. Global Television and Canwest’s $1 million-plus promotional blitz for Friesen, its new national news anchor, was especially intense in Toronto. A tight shot of her… Continue reading Do Anchors Still Matter?
Three Tales From the Trenches
Compilations. For Rolling Stone it means “The Most Annoying Songs of All Time,” forCosmopolitan it means “Funniest Sex Stories Ever Told,” for LIFE Magazine it means “Photos of the Year” and for New York Magazine it meant “Tales of New York.” For years, journalists have written, shown, spoken about or organized the stories of others… Continue reading Three Tales From the Trenches
Thumbs Down
Globe and Mail culture reporter Kate Taylor has a flair for the dramatic, which she proved again one evening when she made a rather perplexing analogy: a respectable film critic should possess the same omniscient authority as celebrity handyman Mike Holmes. She was speaking at the University of Toronto’s Innis Town Hall, where a group… Continue reading Thumbs Down