Artemis II toilet acts up again as astronauts speed toward the moon to break Apollo 13’s record

Austen adaptation a handsome, delicate cinematic dance

Marianne (Esmé Creed-Miles) can look rather bedraggled in this new version of Jane Austen’s first published novel, which has once again ignited the “loose hair” controversy that has raged among Janeites since the casually coiffed 2005 reimagining of Pride & Prejudice.

Purists might be vexed, possibly even discomfited or discomposed by some of the details in this take on Sense and Sensibility, part of a wave of Austen adaptations and Austen-adjacent material released to mark the 250th anniversary of the writer’s birth.

Would prudent Elinor (Daisy Edgar-Jones) be penning letters to a man to whom she is not engaged? Would even spirited Marianne be running barefoot through the woods?

Possibly not. But if director Georgia Oakley (Blue Jean) and rookie screenwriter Diana Reid don’t adhere to the strict letter of Austen’s work, they catch much of its spirit. This is a vivid and deeply felt examination of the enduring power of sisterhood, which is at the core of not just the 1811 novel, but of Austen’s own life in the profound importance of her relationship with her sister Cassandra.

Half Pints Brewing out of bankruptcy, back on shelves

A pioneer of Winnipeg’s craft brewing scene has reopened under new ownership.

Misused ensemble, underconfident script keep Street Fighter game adaptation from landing its blows clean

Adaptations of fighting games come built-in with a major problem: how does one tell a coherent story about a game with no true protagonist?

Sadly, Street Fighter doesn’t know.

When it debuted in 1991, Street Fighter II (upon which most of this film is based) featured 12 “world warriors,” eight of them playable and with their own motives.

Managing such a cast requires a script capable of efficiently introducing them and then giving everyone decent reasons to interact — or homing in on a few and letting the rest be set dressing. Director Kitao Sakurai opts for the latter, focusing on Japanese warrior Ryu (Andrew Koji), American Ken Masters (Noah Centineo) and Interpol agent Chun Li (Callina Liang).

Health ministers meeting ends without long-term funding commitment from Ottawa

Canada’s health minister failed to deliver the promises of long-term funding increases that her provincial and territorial counterparts, who were gathered in Winnipeg this week, had been seeking.

Instead, Marjorie Michel reiterated the federal government’s commitment to working collaboratively towards renewing bilateral funding agreements and to meet again before the end of the year to discuss long-term funding.

“The decision we all agreed on is to have our public service… start the work on what will be the next step for the next negotiation on Canada Health Transfer and other agreements,” Michel said Friday at a news conference after meeting with the other health ministers.

When asked why the federal government couldn’t commit to maintaining funding levels geared, at a minimum, to the rate of inflation over the long term, Michel said that it’s time to update agreements signed a decade ago.

Diesel bill adds to cost-price squeeze on farm

Blessed with a week of good weather, most Manitoba farmers are now in the home stretch of harvest and beginning to assess whether their crop will earn enough to cover the cost of growing it.

Commodity market prices have surged well above the numbers used to prepare production budgets earlier this year, with the price of top-quality milling wheat up 27 per cent over a year ago. Canola and soybeans are up 36 per cent and oats by 14 per cent.

That’s a significant boost for the crops harvested in good shape before rainy weather shut down operations for a couple of weeks during the critical harvesting window. However, upwards of half of the province’s crop overall was affected by the bad weather, resulting in yet-to-be calculated yield and quality losses.

Then there’s the cost side of the balance sheet.