Arts & Entertainment – Winnipeg Free Press

It’s a quiet box office weekend as ‘GOAT’ edges ‘Wuthering Heights’

Lindsey Bahr, The Associated Press 4 minute read Updated: 12:50 PM CST

It was a battle of the holdovers at the North American box office this weekend, with the family friendly film “GOAT” edging out the R-rated “Wuthering Heights.”

Sony Pictures Animation’s “GOAT” took in $17 million, while Warner Bros.’ “Wuthering Heights” earned $14.2 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. Both films are in their second weekend.

Overall, it was a quiet weekend at movie theaters around the country, with new offerings all opening under $10 million. Those results applied to the faith-based sequel “I Can Only Imagine 2,” the Glen Powell black comedy “How to Make a Killing” and the horror film “Psycho Killer,” which currently has a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. One bright spot in theaters was Baz Luhrmann’s immersive documentary “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert,” which earned $3.3 million from only 325 locations in its limited IMAX release. That film expands to nationwide distribution on Feb. 27.

“These somewhat slower weekends can be a land of opportunity,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the head of marketplace trends for Comscore.

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From abdication to Diana, Harry and ex-Prince Andrew. A look at major British royal scandals

Pan Pylas, The Associated Press 7 minute read Preview

From abdication to Diana, Harry and ex-Prince Andrew. A look at major British royal scandals

Pan Pylas, The Associated Press 7 minute read Yesterday at 11:13 PM CST

LONDON (AP) — Holding prestige but not power, Britain’s monarchy is finely tuned to public sentiment.

That's been evident with the disgrace of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, the former prince who was arrested and held in custody for nearly 11 hours Thursday on suspicion of misconduct in public office.

Police are investigating whether Mountbatten-Windsor shared confidential trade information with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein when the then-Prince Andrew was a U.K. trade envoy. The arrest is unrelated to allegations related to Epstein’s sex trafficking.

Mountbatten-Windsor has consistently denied any wrongdoing in his association with Epstein but has not commented on the most recent allegations, which stem from the release of millions of pages of Epstein files by the U.S. Justice Department.

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Yesterday at 11:13 PM CST

An Egyptian Goose walks on the pavement in front of Buckingham Palace in London, Friday, Feb. 20, 2026 after Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested and held for hours by British police on suspicion of misconduct in public office related to his links to Jeffrey Epstein.(AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Winners of the 2026 British Academy Film Awards, or BAFTAs

The Associated Press 2 minute read Preview

Winners of the 2026 British Academy Film Awards, or BAFTAs

The Associated Press 2 minute read 2:48 PM CST

LONDON (AP) — Winners of the 2026 British Academy Film Awards, announced Sunday:

Film — “One Battle After Another”

British Film — “Hamnet”

Director — Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another”

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2:48 PM CST

Robert Aramayo poses with the EE rising star award and the award for leading actor for 'I Swear' at the 79th British Academy Film Awards, BAFTA's, in London, Sunday, Feb. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

NBC’s big Olympics bet looks smarter as Milan audience up 94% from Beijing

Joe Reedy, The Associated Press 5 minute read Preview

NBC’s big Olympics bet looks smarter as Milan audience up 94% from Beijing

Joe Reedy, The Associated Press 5 minute read 11:47 AM CST

Many wondered four years ago if NBC’s 2014 decision to secure U.S. media rights to the Olympics through 2032 for $7.75 billion was a bad business deal.

With NBC having its most-watched Winter Games in 12 years, those concerns appear to have quieted.

According to Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, NBC averaged 24 million viewers across its prime afternoon coverage (2-5 p.m. EST) and Primetime in Milan (8-11 p.m. EST and PST) through Friday. That is a 94% improvement over the 2022 Beijing Games.

This is the second straight Olympics where viewers have returned in large numbers. The 2024 Paris Summer Games were up 82% from 2021 in Tokyo.

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11:47 AM CST

United States' goalie Connor Hellebuyck celebrates after the United States beat Canada in overtime in the men's gold medal hockey game at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

“One Battle After Another” wins 6 prizes including best picture at Britain’s BAFTA film awards

Jill Lawless, The Associated Press 5 minute read Preview

“One Battle After Another” wins 6 prizes including best picture at Britain’s BAFTA film awards

Jill Lawless, The Associated Press 5 minute read Updated: 2:26 PM CST

LONDON (AP) — Politically charged thriller “One Battle After Another” took six prizes, including best picture, at the British Academy Film Awards on Sunday, building momentum ahead of the Oscars next month.

Blues-steeped vampire epic “Sinners” and gothic horror story “Frankenstein” won three awards each, while Shakespearean family tragedy “Hamnet” was named best British film.

Jessie Buckley, as widely predicted, won the best actress prize for playing a grieving mother, and wife of William Shakespeare, Agnes Hathaway, in “Hamnet.”

In a major upset, Robert Aramayo took the best actor prize for the British indie film “I Swear,” beating stars including Leonardo DiCaprio and Timothée Chalamet.

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Updated: 2:26 PM CST

A completed British Academy Film Awards mask sits on a workbench at the FSE Foundry in Braintree, England on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Québécois director Dulude-De Celles wins Berlin Silver Bear for screenplay

The Canadian Press 2 minute read Preview

Québécois director Dulude-De Celles wins Berlin Silver Bear for screenplay

The Canadian Press 2 minute read Yesterday at 4:31 PM CST

Québécois director Geneviève Dulude-De Celles has won the Silver Bear for best screenplay at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival for her film "Nina Roza."

The film follows a Bulgarian art conservator living in Quebec who returns home to assess the work of an eight-year-old painting prodigy.

Visibly nervous on stage, Dulude-De Celles thanked collaborators from Belgium, Italy and Bulgaria, and highlighted the importance of preserving Canadian and Quebec cultural identity amid U.S. influence.

She also spoke in support of immigrants and exiles navigating multiple identities.

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Yesterday at 4:31 PM CST

Director Genevieve Dulude-de Celles, winner of the Silver Bear for best screenplay for 'Nina 'Roza', poses for photographers at the winners photo call during the International Film Festival, Berlinale, in Berlin, Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi).

Willie Colón, architect of urban salsa music, dies at 75

The Associated Press 4 minute read Preview

Willie Colón, architect of urban salsa music, dies at 75

The Associated Press 4 minute read Yesterday at 4:23 PM CST

Willie Colón, the Grammy-nominated architect of urban salsa music and social activist, died Saturday. He was 75.

Over his decades-long career, the trombonist, composer, arranger and singer produced more than 40 albums that sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. He collaborated with a wide range of artists, including the Fania All Stars, David Byrne and Celia Cruz.

His celebrated collaboration with Rubén Blades, “Siembra,” became one of the bestselling salsa albums of all time, and the pair were known for addressing social issues through the genre.

Colón's family and manager confirmed his death through social media posts.

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Yesterday at 4:23 PM CST

FILE - Singer and musician Willie Colon performs at The Climate Rally, an Earth Day concert, on the National Mall in Washington, April 25, 2010. Colón, considered by many to be the

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Brontë film sumptuous fanfic… and that’s just fine

Jen Zoratti 5 minute read Preview

Brontë film sumptuous fanfic… and that’s just fine

Jen Zoratti 5 minute read Yesterday at 2:01 AM CST

I saw Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” — quotation marks intentional and, it turns out, crucial — and therefore my Instagram algorithm is now filled with many, many takes because I posted a single story saying I liked this zany fanfic based (very, very loosely) on Emily Brontë’s 1847 classic.

Right from the trailer, the Charli XCX soundtrack and the casting — Margot Robbie as Cathy and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff — it was clear this movie was going to be a problem. And I absolutely agree with some of the criticism: I do not defend the casting choices, for example. While I’m cool with Cathy being played by a grown woman, I am in full agreement that Heathcliff should have been played by an actor of colour.

What I don’t quite understand are the people who were expecting, like, a six-part BBC miniseries from the lady who made Saltburn. This is “Wuthering Heights” by the lady who made Saltburn. It’s precisely what I expected. Actually, I think she pulled her punches a bit. It could have been weirder and hornier.

It is a sumptuous, visual spectacle laced with much viscous — and, frankly, vaginal — imagery. It is not subtle. It is not period. It is absolutely not faithful. It’s like if a teenage girl’s bedroom collage were a movie (complimentary). It’s pure fanfic. It’s Brat Summer: The Moors edition. It’s the pure id of desire. It’s also very, very sad.

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Yesterday at 2:01 AM CST

Warner Bros. Pictures
Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi, left) and Cathy (Margot Robbie) could have been hornier.

Gas Station Arts Centre gets $600K from feds

Conrad Sweatman 4 minute read Preview

Gas Station Arts Centre gets $600K from feds

Conrad Sweatman 4 minute read Yesterday at 2:01 AM CST

The Gas Station Arts Centre is receiving a $600,000 investment from the federal government in support of its ongoing renovations.

The news was announced by Madeleine Chenette, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, at a news conference in the Osborne Village theatre on Friday.

The Gas Station is in the midst of multi-year redevelopments. So far, this has included new seating, new carpeting, improved house lighting and ongoing upgrades to the courtyard, which, when complete in the spring, will feature new greenery, a performance area and permanent fencing being installed as a response to public safety concerns in the area.

Executive director Nick Kowalchuk says the additional federal funding will further empower the organization to expand its lobby, open a new café and wine bar, and create upgraded gender-neutral washrooms in the coming year.

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Yesterday at 2:01 AM CST

Gas Station Arts Centre gets $600K from feds

Comic collection skewers power dynamics while finding hope amidst characters’ struggles

Reviewed by Nyala Ali 4 minute read Preview

Comic collection skewers power dynamics while finding hope amidst characters’ struggles

Reviewed by Nyala Ali 4 minute read Yesterday at 2:00 AM CST

Like a high-efficiency wood chipper, service jobs can chew people up and spit them out.

The Woodchipper, a standout collection of short comics from Governor General’s Literary Awards finalist Joe Ollmann, follows a diverse cast of characters who inevitably find themselves out of their depth, both on the job and in their personal lives. With acerbic wit and the comedic timing of a veteran cartoonist, Ollmann skewers power dynamics and class hierarchies while mining everyday struggles for heartbreak and hope.

Amid disasters of varying scale, The Woodchipper’s characters also contemplate their place in the world, often feeling as boxed in by personal circumstances as they do by job-induced ones. In Nestled All Snug, bookseller Sasha experiences both, as she ends up trapped in a bathroom at her workplace right before closing the shop for the holidays. Even after nodding off from exhaustion, Sasha dreams of not of sugar plums, but of microaggressions from her boyfriend’s family; not even on Christmas Eve is there is peace to be found.

Ollmann crafts the palpable unease in these five slice-of-life-comics through their duelling narratives — what’s happening outwardly (a lot of the time, seemingly nothing) and what’s happening on a character’s face and, by extension, in their head (numerous overlapping anxieties and traumas).

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Yesterday at 2:00 AM CST

Antarctic novel’s glacial pace turns frenetic

Reviewed by Zilla Jones 5 minute read Preview

Antarctic novel’s glacial pace turns frenetic

Reviewed by Zilla Jones 5 minute read Yesterday at 2:00 AM CST

Quan Barry is a Vietnamese-American novelist, poet and playwright, born in Saigon of mixed Vietnamese and African-American heritage, adopted by a white American family and raised in Massachusetts.

She is currently the Lorraine Hansberry professor of English at the University of Madison-Wisconsin and has won multiple awards, particularly for her four books of poetry. The Unveiling is her fourth novel.

The book’s main character is Striker, a Black woman from New York working as a film scout, who is in Antarctica at Christmas to research a location on the Weddell Sea. She’s part of a tour with a group of wealthy tourists from the U.S. and Europe, and in the first few pages we meet the group boarding two Zodiac boats to visit a nearby island.

Other tourists and the tour guides are introduced in quick succession, a total of 13 people mostly referred to by Striker using nicknames that indicate their wealth and privilege, such as “Baron,” “Grand Dame” and “Tech Titan Taylor.”

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Yesterday at 2:00 AM CST

Filmmaker’s poignant recollections of late husband a profound pleasure

Reviewed by Douglas J. Johnston 3 minute read Preview

Filmmaker’s poignant recollections of late husband a profound pleasure

Reviewed by Douglas J. Johnston 3 minute read Yesterday at 2:00 AM CST

This is a memoir about a love found, a love lost, a love found again and a love lost yet again. Which sounds like a recipe for chick lit.

But not so.

Rather, it’s an extraordinarily fine story that in fact transcends genre or, for that matter, gender appeal.

In 1972, 17-year-old Canadian Shelley Saywell met and fell in love with American classmate Daniel Peterson at a Canadian-run high school in Kobe, Japan.

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Yesterday at 2:00 AM CST

Reva racks up more book prize nominations

Ben Sigurdson 4 minute read Yesterday at 2:00 AM CST

Maria Reva’s debut novel Endling has landed on the long list for the 2026 Dublin Literary Award, a prize that comes with a 100,000-pound (about C$161,000) payout.

The novel follows a snail scientist in Ukraine who teams up with a pair of sisters to break up the mail-order bride industry in the country before Russia’s invasion throws them all for a loop.

Alongside the Ukraine-born, Vancouver-raised Reva on the 20-book long list, announced on Feb. 17, is Montreal’s Éric Chacour, whose much-lauded debut novel What I Know About You (translated by Pablo Strauss) also made the cut.

Other authors in contention include Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for Dream Count, Sally Rooney for Intermezzo, Rachel Kushner for Creation Lake and Ocean Vuong for The Emperor of Gladness.

Wong’s corpse-bride novel a spellbinding, darkly funny horror story

Reviewed by Keith Cadieux 5 minute read Preview

Wong’s corpse-bride novel a spellbinding, darkly funny horror story

Reviewed by Keith Cadieux 5 minute read Yesterday at 2:00 AM CST

University of Winnipeg creative writing professor Lindsay Wong fully embraces horror and ancient Chinese magic in her first novel for adults, Villain Hitting for Vicious Little Nobodies.

Even before the release of this very buzzy novel, Wong was a writer about whom there has been a great deal of excitement. Her debut memoir, The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug Raids, Demons, and My Crazy Chinese Family, was a finalist in 2019 in CBC’s annual Canada Reads competition — no small feat for a first book. She has also published a young adult novel, My Summer of Love and Misfortune, as well as a short story collection, 2023’s Tell Me Pleasant Things About Immortality.

Locinda Lo lives in Vancouver. Even with six roommates, she is barely able to scrape together the $1,500 a month needed to rent her tiny closet-sized room. On top of this, Locinda’s sister and grandmother are being threatened by a Chinese triad that is demanding an exorbitant sum be paid in 42 days in order to keep Locinda’s family alive. While combing Craigslist for fast-paying cash gigs, Locinda comes across the Joyful Coffin & Co., a matchmaking service that provides corpse brides to wealthy families.

In a detailed afterword and throughout the novel, Wong explains the Chinese superstition of corpse marriage, or míng hun. It’s considered very unlucky and brings shame on the family line for a someone, especially men, to die without being married. So families would steal corpses or, more disturbingly, buy or kidnap women to be buried alive with a corpse so that they would be married in the afterlife. The Joyful Coffin & Co. corporation provides matchmaking for corpse spouses, and a premium is paid to the surviving family of spouses willing to be buried alive.

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Yesterday at 2:00 AM CST

Shimon Karmel photo
Beneath its magical, otherworldly elements, Lindsay Wong’s latest is a grounded exploration of late-stage capitalism and the impossible choices foisted upon marginalized minorities.

Children’s books: Jamaican girl ready for a big, scary move

Harriet Zaidman 4 minute read Yesterday at 2:00 AM CST

Moving is nerve-racking, even for young children. In The Last Last by Wendy J. Whittingham (Groundwood, 32 pages, hardcover, $22), written for children ages 3-6, a little girl tries to memorize every sensory experience that’s precious about the home in Jamaica she’s leaving, as illustrated with rich colours by Brianna McCarthy.

At first the girl is nervous in her new home, but curiosity takes over, and soon she becomes interested and fascinated by the new (and colourful) world around her.

● ● ●

Wind, Stop Blowing! by Laura Alary (Skinner House, 32 pages hardcover, $28) shows a young boy who spends his life running from the wind because it disturbs his idea of perfection. When the wind doesn’t listen, his efforts become more extreme until he’s living in isolation. Finally, Benjamin realizes that when the wind (or life) makes a mess of your plans, he should take a breath and sometimes have fun.

As the Arctic landscape evolves, global powers jostle for control in the North

Reviewed by Barry Craig 5 minute read Preview

As the Arctic landscape evolves, global powers jostle for control in the North

Reviewed by Barry Craig 5 minute read Yesterday at 2:00 AM CST

Like moving chimneys, deck hands breathe out frosty clouds as their vessel splits the polar ice into huge chunks that desperately climb atop each other, as if to swallow the ship.

This is a typical icebreaker at work above the Arctic Circle, the fastest-warming place on Earth, a worrying environment that is changing and disappearing alarmingly fast. Much of it is an unfriendly desert of ice covering roughly four per cent of the earth. It is the U.S., China, Russia and Canada shadowboxing for supremacy, in whole or in part.

Kenneth R. Rosen’s Polar War is an outstanding, in-depth, well-researched explanation of what lies ahead for the Arctic Circle — and it isn’t encouraging. Rosen believes that conflict over possession of this area may lead to world war.

“Nations near and far from the region have seen the warming as an opportunity for expansion and military dominance and what they have cooked up is a conflict teetering toward full-blown war,” he writes.

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Yesterday at 2:00 AM CST

February 22, 2026

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