FILM | Toronto After Dark Film Festival
Returning to its home at the Bloor Cinema, one of Toronto's top-rated film festivals returns for the 7th year, opening today. Toronto After Dark Film Festival features nine days of sci-fi, horror, action and cult films, including Sundance hit and opening gala film Grabbers as well as the Toronto premiere of the Ron Perlman film Crave. 20 features and 29 shorts will be screened at this year's festival, which runs until October 26th. Check out our top film picks at the 2012 After Dark Festival.
Bloor Hot Docs Cinema (506 Bloor Street West) 6:45PM $14

MUSIC | Dragonette
Toronto electro band Dragonette returns home after a large North American tour for a show at Sound Academy tonight, playing songs from their recently released third album Bodyparts. Wrapping up the home leg of their tour, Dragonette are joined by Toronto haute rock band Young Empires, who have accompanied Dragonette as they crossed Canada during the month of October. Doors open at 7PM and tickets are still available through TicketWeb, Soundscapes and Rotate This.
Sound Academy (11 Polson Street) 7PM $20

INNOVATION | Speaker Series: Ray Kurzweil
Entrepreneur, genius and ultimate thinker Ray Kurzweil might make you feel like an underachiever when you list off his achievements but the National Inventor's Hall of Fame inductee and author of four bestselling novels has a lot to teach from a lifetime of developing world-renowned inventions. Speaking at The Danforth Music Hall tonight, Kurzweil will discuss innovation, science and philosophy and their ties to the development of technology while covering his work in creating many "world's firsts" like the CCD flat-bed scanner, text-to-speech synthesizer, and print-to-speech reading machine for the blind (and many more). An event that will interest anyone, regardless of their background, be forewarned that tickets are on the pricey side and are available through Ticketmaster.
The Danforth Music Hall (147 Danforth Avenue) 8PM $45-$60

THEATRE | Honesty
If you find yourself shopping at Honest Ed's tonight, look for the store's most honest employee, actor Virgilia Griffith. Griffith will be "working" throughout the store, portraying 10 different types of employees that have sustained the business since it opened in 1948. The performance unfolds in two acts: first "Honest Work" will show Griffith performing the real duties of employees from 5-6:30PM and at 7:30PM, she will perform "Honest Stories," a series of monologues as the employees that leads the audience through the store. Stop by to chat or watch Griffith work in Honesty, which runs alongside regular Honest Ed's operations until November 4th.
Honest Ed's (581 Bloor Street West) 5PM Free

DIGITAL | Digifest 2012
Digital media creatives interested in mobile media, gaming, art and design take note: Canada's largest innovation and digital festival launches at the Corus Quay today. If workshops, demos, and interactive exhibits don't satisfy your need for digital healing, presentations by keynote speakers like Shane Williamson of Williamson-Chong, Claire Boonstra of Layar, and video game designer and author Chris Solarski will fulfill this year's speech themes of feel.hack.play. respectively. Check out the full schedule on Digifest's website for a rundown of the many interesting folks from digital media, local start-ups and innovation firms who will be speaking about their successes in the digital field throughout the festival. Digifest runs packed full-day schedules until October 20th.
Corus Quay (25 Dockside Drive) 8:30AM $60

OTHER EVENTS ON OUR RADAR:

• Debra DiGiovanni, Fraser Young and Primo feat. Kathleen Phillips
• Brazil Film Fest
• Pomegranate Film Festival
• Kizmet Debut Solo Exhibit

Have an event you'd like to plug? Submit your own listing to the blogTO Toronto events calendar or contact us directly.

For Toronto movie showtimes, view our Movie Listings section.

Photo by syfractal in the blogTO Flickr pool