I moved to Toronto a few years ago to pursue my masters degree in film studies which I've since wrapped up. Since then I've been busy discovering Toronto's best-kept and well-known secrets: great restaurants, bars, pubs, music halls, unique grocery shops, vintage stores, parks, galleries, neighbourhoods, movie theatres and film fests.

I am passionate about culture in its various forms: film, art, music, food, languages, design, traditions, etc. I tend to have a frequent need to plan - then execute - a trip.

I have a great network of friends in the city but am curious what great guys are here and am looking to be exposed to their great haunts as well. This is the first profile of this type that I've ever written but I think that for the above reasons there might be no better time to give it a go!

I'm a cultural programmer; currently working on history programming during the day and running a couple of small film festivals on the side. It makes for a busy life at times but generally a pretty rewarding one.

Remembering things - both the trivial and the important in equal measure, winning board games with beginner's luck, arriving exactly on time but rarely a minute early, stretching my dollar to live better, planning trips, using my sense of orientation (and getting frustrated when I get off a subway in a foreign city and haven't yet figured out which way's north)...

My friends are too generous in their praise of my cooking (and I think they're just happy to be fed at all) but I do love to cook and host parties and guests, which I suppose is beginning to make me good at it.

The movies list is endless but here are some of the current leaders:
A Single Man, Amelie, Before Sunrise / Before Sunset, Best of Youth, Bicycle Thieves, Blue Valentine, Chasing Amy, Casablanca, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, 400 blows, The Godfather, Godfather II, It's a Wonderful Life, In America, I'm Not There, I Vitelloni, Le Mepris, Mean Streets, On the Waterfront, Out of Sight, Raging Bull, The Royal Tenenbaums, Sabrina, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Taxi Driver, Vertigo

Fellini, Godard, Truffaut, Scorsese, Todd Haynes, Ang Lee, Anthony Minghella, Baz Lurhmann, Wong Kar-wai, Alfred Hitchcock, Wes Anderson, Terrence Malick, etc

Recent Favourites: Blue Valentine, Drive, Kid with a Bike, Shame, Take This Waltz, Wasteland, Shut Up and Play the Hits, The Master
Top TIFF 2012: Stories We Tell, Amour, The Hunt

Current TV favorites are Band of Brothers, Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, Southland, the Office, Arrested Development, Homeland and The Wire.

The books list is too long and varied, but anything good in fiction/non-fiction, art historical or in film theory, etc. And lots of cookbooks.
I've been on a Cormac McCarthy kick lately as far as fiction is concerned.

Music, again the short version:
Arcade Fire, Andrew Bird, Bahamas, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Born Ruffians, Broken Social Scene, Bruce Springsteen, Calexico, Dan Mangan, DeVotchKa, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Feist, Fleet Foxes, The National, New Pornographers, Nina Simone, Rufus Wainwright, The Shins, Wilco

Food:
Mmm, I'll try anything new. Food, and cooking, make me happy. I love every part of it, when it's good; deciding what to feed myself, creating it, eating eat, sharing it.
Above others though: Italian, Thai, French, Spanish, Lebanese, Mexican, Greek...
Coffee, chocolate, pasta, shrimp, duck, cheese, pears

-Good coffee and chocolate (counting as 1).
-A good night's sleep and sleeping in.
-Travel (and Europe).
-Great conversation and relationships.
-The feeling of uncontrollable laughter.
-Sunshine and hot days/evenings.

Out for dinner, having drinks with friends, picnicking or patio-ing on a hot evening, at a movie, at a live show, hosting friends for dinner or just curling up and watching a movie.

My first love was Christian Bale... in Little Women, circa 1994.
Not much has changed.