Upcoming Book to Screen Adaptations. Posted on April 11, 2022 These past few years in film and television we have seen an abundance of adaptations hit movie theaters and streaming sites alike. From video game adaptations such as Uncharted, to novel adaptations such as Normal People or Dune. There seems to have been a rise in interest for adapted stories. While I would argue that not all adaptations are for the stories’ best interest, it is hard to deny the intrigue surrounding how filmmakers take the words of others and turn them into a visual medium. Taking a story that […]

A Conversation With Toronto Prisoners’ Rights Project Posted on April 5, 2022 Image Credit: Toronto Prisoners’ Rights Project In my last blog post for SpiritLive, I wrote about a very educational conversation I had with a former inmate of Joyceville Institution in Kingston Ontario, Kevin Belanger. While incarcerated, Belanger had served as the Inmate Committee Chairman and had a lot to say about how the incarceration system was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. When I had initially reached out to Belanger, I had been referred to him by the Toronto Prisoners’ Rights Project. This is a volunteer organization that is […]

The Effects of COVID-19 on the Incarceration System Posted on March 11, 2022 Joyceville Institution Kingston Ontario | Image Credit: CSC Over the last couple of years, COVID-19 has forced our society to adapt to a new normal. We moved all socializing to online formats, we implemented social distancing measures, and we started wearing PPE. All in the hopes of keeping ourselves and our loved ones safe. But not everyone had the same privilege and access to resources that allowed our daily lives to continue in a new way. As this pandemic banded our society together, there was one group […]

The CoHo “Curse” Posted on February 9, 2022 This one’s for all the Book Tok readers out there. Over the past year I have been swimming in book recommendations, with screenshots of book covers cluttering my camera roll and titles written in random notes. But a couple of months ago I decided to try one of the ones that I had been seeing the most on my For You page, It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover. The pink cover I had seen over and over again being recommended by hundreds of book tok readers was seared into my brain. […]

Playing Where’s Waldo with the new Andrew Garfield film, Tick, Tick … BOOM! Posted on January 27, 2022 Tick, Tick … BOOM! Lin-Manuel Miranda, has done it again. As a playwright and actor, Miranda’s work in Hamilton was wildly successful and well-loved. But it’s not only the stage he has a knack for, because now that he has moved to the big screen in his directorial debut, he once again has blown people away. As I watched this film for the first time, I was immediately drawn to Andrew Garfield’s singing voice and stage presence. But the thing I loved […]

The Wonderful World of Sally Rooney Posted on December 7, 2021 Like many others, over the past year the Tik Tok algorithm has led me into the depths of Book-Tok. Leaving me with countless saved videos and screenshots of books to add to my Amazon wishlist. Among titles such as The Song of Achilles and Where the Crawdads Sing was the small romance novel Normal People. This novel written by Irish author Sally Rooney had me stuck to my couch from the moment I opened it to the moment I closed it. The first thing I noticed about this novel […]

Movies That Will Bring You Back to the Cinemas Posted on November 16, 2021 How long has it been since you sat in a partial-reclining chair surrounded by its leather material, eyes facing forward with a 90x30ft cinema screen flashing back at you? Sitting in eager anticipation for the opening credits of a film you’ve been waiting for to start rolling. How long has it been since you felt the explosion within a film through the surround sound system in your local cineplex? How long has it been since you’ve been to the movie theaters?  For me, it had been […]

This past year has been unconventional to say the least, and as Ontario moves into yet another shutdown I couldn’t help but think about all the different stages of lockdown we have been moving through over the past few months. When thinking about how we have moved between lockdowns, zones, and different restrictions, I was interested to hear what other people in different areas have experienced. So, I reached out to Ryerson students with a few questions regarding the topic, and here are some of the responses I got.  I started out by asking where, geographically, students were when the […]

The past year during this strange time of quarantine and social distancing, I, like I’m sure many others, have turned to streaming services for entertainment. But given it has now been a year of this pandemic, I am running out of things that interest me to watch. So lately I have been seeking out new books to read. My entire life I have always been drawn to fiction, in books, film and television. So as a child my favourite books were things such as Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Bone, and Geronimo Stilton. Then as I moved into my teenage […]

When I first moved to the city, one of the things I had to learn to adjust to was the sudden influx of people I was exposed to daily, that were dealing with issues of homlessness and drug addiction. Our campus sits in a very central part of Toronto, and we run into people who face these challenges every day, yet it is something we rarely speak about. Most Ryerson students are aware that we have a safe injection site not a block away from our student center, and most of us (in non-covid times of course) pass it on […]

As a media student here at Ryerson, I have always been interested to hear when there are new films shooting in and around Toronto. It is always exciting to hear when a big film or TV series has come to our city to film, fueling the industry and providing opportunity for the people of Toronto.  I can recall a night in my first year at Ryerson, going out with some friends and walking down Yonge Street looking for a place to eat when all of a sudden we had been transported back in time. We looked around us and the […]

We are officially one month into 2021. And as we were entering the new year, I wanted to reflect on some of the positive things to have come out of the past year with the COVID-19 pandemic changing our everyday lives. It has certainly been an adventure to watch the way the world has changed over the course of the virus. From work to school to our social lives, I’m not sure there’s a single person who has been completely unaffected by the new climate of our society. In my last blog post I talked about some of the films […]

Image Credit, Top-left clockwise: Variety, Variety, WonderlandMagazine, RogerEbert 2020 was a year full of new challenges, many of which most of us probably never expected to be facing. COVID-19 has changed the way our day to day society functions, from masks to online schooling. The climate of the workforce has also changed alongside society, most industries have been forced to adapt to this new normal. With the film industry as no exception. Most movie and television productions were forced to shut down until it was safe to reopen. And while it may seem like the pandemic paused the film industry, […]

Back in March when COVID-19 shut school down and all of us who were living in residence found ourselves scrambling to get home, I packed my things and moved 3 hours north to Muskoka. I found myself going from the never ending noise and movement of the city, to the stillness of cottage country. In the new climate of the world I went looking for ways to get out of the house without putting my family or others at risk. And so, when looking for things to do in Muskoka, the most logical thing to do is go looking in […]

Interactive Documentaries. Have you ever heard of them? Well, I hadn’t until I started taking an interactive storytelling class here at Ryerson. Of course we have all heard of interactive storytelling in one form or another, from video games to Black Mirrors Bandersnatch. The idea of technologies evolving to tell stories in a more immersive form is not a new concept. But I personally had very little experience with interactive stories. I’m not a huge fan of video games, so the concept of being immersed in the story of a video game had never really occurred to me. Banderstanch however, […]