The non-festival film generating the most buzz is Traitor, starring Don Cheadle as a former US Special Operations officer who may or may not have begun working on behalf of one of the many terrorist organizations with which he has built up connections. Eye’s Kieran Grant gives it three stars, saying that "right from the get-go, the movie dares to blur the line between good and bad in its treatment of jihadists vs anti-terror agents… it’s refreshing to feel a twinge of sympathy for a potential mass-murderer and simultaneously cheer on government agents for whom ‘acceptable loss’ is a playbook go-to.” The Star‘s Linda Barnard isn’t won over by Traitor though, saying that, "unsure if it’s a thriller or a political drama, it doesn’t do a very good job of being either." But NOW’s Norman Wilner praises the film for its nuance and originality, lamenting its absence from the TIFF line-up. Wilner suggests you steer clear of the trailer, though, which gives away a major plot twist.

Also opening today is College, about three high school guys who spend a weekend visiting a college campus and have, like, the best time ever! There were no advance press screenings for this movie ("presumably so we couldn’t warn you in advance not to see it," says The Star), but the trailer checks all the identikit boys-have-a-crazy-time-at-college-movie boxes: frat parties; almost getting laid; getting, like, really drunk. And check it out, on the movie’s website you can create your own fake ID! Bitchin’.

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What is the 3 Day Novel Contest, you ask? Well, it’s exactly as horrifying as it sounds. It’s Vancouver’s answer to NaNoWriMo, except instead of having to hammer out 1,000 words a day for an entire month, you get it all over with in 72 frantic, hysterical hours, during which contestants spew out an average of 100 pages each. Whether they’re any good is secondary; what matters is that you switch off your internal editor, stop making excuses, and write like a maniac.

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Turning cars will no longer have to compete with pedestrians, but the main advantage is to the pedestrians themselves, who—while they may have to wait longer for their turn—will be able to cross diagonally instead of waiting twice. Pedestrians also won’t be bothered by cars turning into their midst while crossing.

The most iconic intersection of this type is its busiest incarnation at Shibuya in Tokyo (perhaps best known to Westerners for its appearance in Lost in Translation). But they are also widely in use in some cities around the UK, where cars are never permitted to turn on a red light.

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But Sun Media’s technology writer Steve Tilley was less than impressed to receive a pie from Rogers this week to announce the arrival of the iPhone in Canada. (Get it? Apple (p)i(e)phone. Apple iPhone! No? Nevermind.) Because of the pie’s transit time, Rogers’ advertising gimmick meant the press release didn’t arrive at the Sun offices until the day after Apple made the announcement.

What kind of a person, we couldn’t help but ask, gripes about free pie, even if it does come with a side of day-old press release? Then again, we wouldn’t eat a pie that came from Rogers either. Apple, Rogers, take note: when the iPhone actually launches this side of the border, we at Torontoist would much prefer a free iPhone with our press release.

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It turns out that “portrait” is a surprisingly accurate description of what she ended up with. From Jane’s Brand Timeline Portrait, we discover that Jane is a woman who flosses, who has a cat, who turns on her TV before she leaves for work in the morning. Jane is a woman who lives in Toronto and takes public transit to work, who drinks beer on a Friday night before going home, smoking up and getting down. There’s been some debate in the comments thread of her post over whether the LG logo followed by several Durexes indicates that she used her phone to make a booty call soon after 10 p.m. Fortunately, the BTP still leaves some details to the imagination.

In the manner of those LiveJournal memes nobody can resist filling out (the ones that ask you what you had for breakfast and what you keep on your nightstand), the Brand Timeline Portrait has spread all over the internet.

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Marinoiu’s son Simon is one of an ever-growing number of children on the waiting list for a government program called Intensive Behavioural Intervention (IBI), designed to give autistic kids the social skills to lead a more normal life. The program, which provides 20-40 hours per week of one-on-one therapy, specially tweaked for each individual child, is incredibly effective and phenomenally expensive. And, with autism on the rise (the US Centre for Disease Control estimates that around 1 in 165 children are autistic, up from around 1 in 500 a decade ago), the waiting times are getting longer and longer. Some, like Simon, wait years for treatment.

Simon was denied access to the program because he reached the age cut-off for service while still on the waiting list. The age restriction has now been lifted, but researchers insist that for speech and behavioural therapy to make a real difference, it needs to start when the children are young. In his YouTube video, Stephan Marinoiu says that he is making a stand not just for his own struggle, but for all the children who stand to benefit from the IBI program.

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In honour of the urban visionary who died in 2006, May 3 and 4 this year will see the second annual Jane’s Walk held throughout Toronto. Jacobs was born in Pennsylvania but made Toronto her home in 1968, having declared it the perfect city. She did much to keep it that way during almost 40 years of residency; amongst other things, she helped ensure we never ended up with a Spadina Expressway.

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We spend a lot of time talking about the TTC: worrying that it’s going to be shut down by strike action, complaining that the buses don’t run on time, trading opinions on whether the drivers are saints or crotchety demons.

Recently though, the Queen Street fire put us in mind of another of the city’s essential services, one we don’t necessarily notice until something goes wrong. Toronto’s fire department is the largest in Canada and the fifth largest in North America, with some 3,000 people currently employed. Of that 3,000, only 150 are female.

We spoke to two women who weren’t put off by those numbers, by working 24-hour shifts, or by the prospect of walking into burning buildings: Firefighters Julie Petruzzellis and Stacey Hannah.

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Torontoist was impressed by A.M.’s 2006 album, Underground, which sampled the many sounds of the TTC, including the door chimes and the cacophony of the train screeching into the station. For his fourth album, dubbed Let’s Spend the Day Together, he’s planning something more ambitious. He’s calling for people around the world to make an audio recording of some aspect of their lives on May 23—be it walking the dog, sitting in rush hour traffic, or whatever. Moore will use his favourite clips to build a song based on that person’s day.

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Where were we? Right. There are over 100 bands playing tonight, and you can barely take two steps in any direction downtown without falling into a concert. So, once again, CMWist is here to tentatively nudge you in the direction of awesomeness. Tonight, awesomeness takes the form of Woodhands and Arkells.

Nerdy Toronto two-piece Woodhands will be bringing their distinctly un-nerdy psychedelic synth-pop to the Drake Underground at 12:45 a.m. as part of Paper Bag Records’ epic showcase, which runs from 9 p.m. until 1:30 a.m. Woodhands are joined by Huckleberry Friends, Tropics, Laura Barrett, Slim Twig, Winter Gloves, and Skratch Bastid. And at the bargain price of $5 (all wristbands accepted), this is as close to value-for-money entertainment as it gets on a Friday night. CMWist caught up with Dan Werb yesterday afternoon.

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