Eric Veillette
@veilletteinto.bsky.social
Arts writer & media producer | Globe & Mail, Toronto Star, CBC Arts, Radio-Canada, Severin Films | Writing a book about going to the movies in Toronto (In the Dark, ECW Press, 2027) | Editor: The Downtown Theatre | Franco-ontarien
Was really touched by this NYT obituary for Monty Roberts, who pioneered a non-violent method for training horses www.nytimes.com/2026/08/02/s...
Monty Roberts, Horse Trainer Who Preached Kindness, Dies at 91
His approach ran counter to centuries of conventional wisdom, and it won the enthusiastic approval of Queen Elizabeth II, with whom he became friends.
nytimes.com
Derek @derekbjenkins.bsky.social and I are doing a night of films and poetry in Boston on Saturday, Aug. 15! agxfilm.org/events/2026/...
Elaborate Procedures: Films & Poems by Derek Jenkins and Eugenia Zurosk — AgX Film Collective
AgX is pleased to host an evening of films and poems with Derek Jenkins and Eugenia Zuroski
agxfilm.org
Ken Russell’s The Devils will screen as part of TIFF Classics in September, nearly fifty-five years after it premiered at the Uptown Theatre on Yonge Street on August 27, 1971.
This week, a dive into the late silent era, when gangsters, booze & Colleen Moore collided with one of the strictest censorship boards. Along the way: banned German films, Laurel & Hardy & the challenges posed by the arrival of talking pictures. thedowntowntheatre.substack.com/p/flappers-f...
Flappers, flasks and talking pictures: Ontario film censorship in the 1920s
When films were banned for being “low-toned stories of youthful excess.”
thedowntowntheatre.substack.com
Here’s a neat @letterboxd.social list I created tracking films that drew the ire of the Ontario Board of Censors. boxd.it/KszCg
Film meets Regulation: The Ontario Board of Censors
This list is a companion piece to The Downtown Theatre Instagram account and newsletter. From 1911 until 2019, the Ontario Board of Censors (or the Ontario Censor Board, later the Ontario Film Review...
boxd.it
Robert Downey’s Putney Swope opened at the Towne Cinema in Toronto on January 9, 1970. Plays today as a launch event for the incredible new book Truth and Soul: A Robert Downey Sr. Reader, edited by @kierlajanisse.bsky.social & Clint Enns & featuring the work of some extremely talented folk.
There are now seventy articles about Toronto cinemas and our moviegoing history up at The Downtown Theatre. Here's a list of the articles by theatre: thedowntowntheatre.substack.com/p/theatres
Theatres Index
The following is a comprehensive list of all the cinema and moviegoing spaces documented in The Downtown Theatre dispatches.
thedowntowntheatre.substack.com
Every three or four years, the most obnoxious people on these platforms become aspect ratio experts.
In 1929, the police banned Yiddish at the Standard Theatre. What followed was labour organizing, political protest, burlesque history & Chinatown cinema. I trace the extraordinary lives of one of Toronto’s most important theatres. thedowntowntheatre.substack.com/p/the-many-l...
The many lives of the Standard Theatre
How one forgotten theatre became a stage for civil rights, labour organizing, burlesque, censorship, rock music and Toronto's Chinatown.
thedowntowntheatre.substack.com
From 2010, a look at Ontario film classification in the pre-streaming era, where I interviewed then-Ontario Film Review Board Chair Janet Robinson & filmmaker John Porter thedowntowntheatre.substack.com/p/film-censo...
Film censorship in Ontario: The day Shakespeare was banned
There was a time in Ontario when film versions of Shakespeare’s greatest plays were too violent or too racy for the public good.
thedowntowntheatre.substack.com
Happy to see this Sam Fuller collection get an HD upgrade. One of Vincent Price's most unhinged performances in The Baron of Arizona. www.criterion.com/boxsets/499-...
Eclipse Series 5: The First Films of Samuel Fuller
His films have been called raw, outrageous, sensational, and daring. In four decades of directing, Samuel Fuller created a legendarily idiosyncratic oeuvre, examining U.S. history and mythmaking in we...
criterion.com
WE DID IT — thanks to you, we’ll be restoring four films that we think you’re really going to love. Since we’ve still got a full week left, we want to take things further: if we can raise another $10k, we’ll be able to strike a new 35mm print of PUMPING IRON II. www.kickstarter.com/projects/mus...
Something to consider when you get squeamish about attacking this guy’s sexuality. He made life very difficult for the LGBTQ community and he was used and willing to be used for this purpose for reasons that I’m sure will be along shortly now that he can’t prevent them from getting out
Coffee Indiana@coffeeindiana.bsky.social · 3w agoLindsay Graham used his power in the Senate to oppose equal rights to the LGBTQ community, by doing things like trying to enact a law requiring marriage be between only a man and a woman and by preventing gay people from adopting children. glaad.org/gap/lindsey-...
Can we please have Sam Neill back as a little treat
Toronto Outdoor Picture Show’s Summer 2026 season "Going Places" runs until August 23! 🗓️ Don't miss these CFMDC shorts: July 16: Ballet Jazz by Maxime Robin with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. July 26: paradise falls, new mexico by Christina Battle with O Brother Where Art Thou. buff.ly/gT0ZcFO
Lots of new stuff at The Downtown Theatre in the last week: thedowntowntheatre.substack.com
The Downtown Theatre | Eric Veillette | Substack
The ongoing history of film exhibition in Toronto. Click to read The Downtown Theatre, by Eric Veillette, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.
thedowntowntheatre.substack.com
RIP Sam Neill. THE FINAL CONFLICT opened at the Varsity & other Canadian Odeon houses on March 20, 1981.
The only cut required by Ontario censors was on Reel 2: “Allow first view only of man hitting head with metal bar and blood oozing out.”
Jesse Hawken@jessehawken.bsky.social · 4w agoMy parents took me to see Phillip Kaufman’s INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS as a kid: rated PG by the MPAA as well as in Ontario
Recently wrote about the content advisories and rating Jaws received in Ontario. thedowntowntheatre.substack.com/p/waiting-fo...
Waiting for Jaws
The lineups were legendary. Revisiting the Toronto release of Jaws, the cinema-management techniques that kept crowds moving, and the film’s enduring bite on audiences.
thedowntowntheatre.substack.com
Max Covill@maxcovill.com · 4w agoI think a lot of it was that there wasn’t a PG-13 yet. But I also don’t understand how it wasn’t an R
“A burdensome regulation that is outdated, costly and unfairly punishes movie theatres.” This week’s newsletter looks at film classifications in British Columbia, an update to my Globe investigation from last summer. thedowntowntheatre.substack.com/p/film-class...
Film classification in the streaming era
As provinces move out of film classification, why is B.C. doubling down?
thedowntowntheatre.substack.com
Every disc you bring home is a statement of purpose.
Silent Beauties@silentbeauties.bsky.social · 4w agoAbout physical media and people purchasing books, DVDs, blue rays and CDs again. Finally, there's a positive trend in the internet. Please, keep going on legally owning the things you like. If possible, share it on line. We do need this positivity in this insane world #physicalmedia
Happy Fourth of July! I wrote about the enduring perfection of JAWS last year, you should read it. It's a nice distraction from ... well, you know
The Greatest White
In which Norm spins up Universal's glorious 50th anniversary edition of JAWS.
shiny-things.ghost.io
At every screening I've ever attended, this shot always gets at least one scream.
Daniel Dockery@dandock.bsky.social · last yr.JAWS turns 50 this year and while it's full of effective examples of suspense filmmaking, I would argue that this particular shot is one of the most terrifying things ever captured in cinema.
The Swift wedding is answering the question, "Can you stage a version of Caligula that feels like a megachurch youth group is putting it on at a talent show?"
Big Trouble in Little China opened 40 years ago today, July 2, 1986, in 70mm at the Hollywood at Yonge & St-Clair & several other Famous Players houses across Metro Toronto.
From Bob & Doug to Matt & Jay, and every Canadian dreamer in between: Presenting @theglobeandmail.com’s 100 Best Canadian Films — and No. 1 might surprise you! Bonus: Canada’s top directors pick their own homegrown favourites. www.theglobeandmail.com/culture/film...
At the Downtown Theatre, I wrote about David Secter’s Winter Kept Us Warm, its Toronto circulation, its fragile nature & its boldness. thedowntowntheatre.substack.com/p/david-sect...
David Secter's Winter Kept Us Warm
This pioneering queer film was made in Toronto in 1964, when being gay was a crime.
thedowntowntheatre.substack.com
For years I’ve been fascinated by "The Censor," a hilarious 1980 claymation satire of the Ontario Board of Censors. This week’s column tracks the film's history, my search for its creator, Gordon Lawson, and the remarkable story I found along the way. thedowntowntheatre.substack.com/p/gordon-law...
Gordon Lawson's "The Censor"
The story of Gordon Lawson and the six-minute claymation classic that skewered Ontario’s censors.
thedowntowntheatre.substack.com