Plug In gallery’s new executive director happy to be leading ‘amazing institution’

It’s been a busy week for Nadja Pelkey, the newest executive director of the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art.

After landing in Winnipeg on Saturday, marking her arrival with an at-home banquet of Mexican cuisine and champagne, Pelkey was immediately thrust into the centre of civic conversation Tuesday, attending the Mayor’s Luncheon for the Arts on her second day on the job.

“It’s funny. I was talking to a couple friends of friends of mine at other organizations, and typically, when you come into a new organization, a new institution, there’s a sort of lull in which you can gain your footing and learn before getting very involved,” says Pelkey, who last worked as a programmer and curator with Art Windsor-Essex in Ontario.

Not only was Pelkey in mingle-mode within hours of starting on the Plug In payroll, but the organization’s 11th executive director’s first week also coincided with a “blockbuster” exhibition, Sarah Anne Johnson’s House on Fire, opening tonight at 460 Portage Ave.

Songwriter’s new EP is something to write home about

In an early May rehearsal for a UMFM studio session, CEC is the team captain.

The Manitoban producer and songwriter — a signee with Misfit Music Inc. & Odd Doll Records’ newly launched Misfit Live agency, alongside other LGBTTQ+ artists Kimmortal, Ralph, Quarterback Baby and Vivek Shraya — knows that net goals don’t happen without selfless assists.

Since entering semi-retirement from a hockey career that included stints at Dartmouth University and with the Spanish international team, Cec Lopez, who uses they/them pronouns, has had group projects in mind other than morning skate, and eyes on results other than the Walter Cup.

Returning to Winnipeg in 2024 after wrapping up graduate studies in Ottawa, CEC — whose mother Tamara played three years of volleyball and basketball at the Canadian Mennonite University — began the process of refining and refinding their idea of chosen community.

Theatre Projects Manitoba offers double the theatrics in ambitious new play

A city-based theatre company that’s devoted itself to new Prairie works since 1990 is doubling down on humankind.

Dry Cold Productions co-founder retires after 25 years of onstage merriment

A lifelong contributor to Winnipeg’s musical theatre world is taking a step back from his leadership role with Dry Cold Productions as the company marks its 25th anniversary.

In 2001, Reid Harrison, whose retirement from the role as co-artistic director was announced in December, was sitting at the Charterhouse restaurant with Donna Fletcher and Melanie Whyte commiserating over the city’s seeming reluctance to program work by American musical theatre legend Stephen Sondheim.

“We were just sort of whining,” recalls Harrison, who’s also the general manager of the annual Agassiz Chamber Music Festival.

So the trio decided to do something about it.

CNN founder Ted Turner, a brash and outspoken television pioneer, dies at age 87

NEW YORK (AP) — Ted Turner, a brash television pioneer who raced yachts, owned huge chunks of the American West and transformed the news business by launching CNN and introducing the 24-hour cable news cycle, died Wednesday. He was 87.

Turner died surrounded by his family, according to Turner Enterprises, the company that oversees his vast business interests.

Turner owned professional sports teams in Atlanta, defended the America’s Cup in yachting in 1977 and donated a stunning $1 billion to United Nations charities. He married three women — most famously actor Jane Fonda — and earned the nicknames “Captain Outrageous” and “The Mouth of the South.”

He once bragged: “If only I had a little humility, I’d be perfect.”

These are the finalists for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award

TORONTO - "Endling" author Maria Reva and "Small Ceremonies" writer Kyle Edwards are among the finalists for this year's Amazon Canada First Novel Award.

Last year, Reva took home the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize for her novel about the Ukrainian bride business and Russia's invasion of that country, and Edwards won the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction for his book about a team of Indigenous hockey players from north-end Winnipeg.

Also in the running for the $60,000 award, now in its 50th year, is Kate Cayley for "Property," which takes place over the course of a single day in a gentrifying Toronto neighbourhood.

Jon Claytor is a finalist for his graphic novel "Nowhere," about a 12-year-old boy who moves to a small town where zombies and monsters are commonplace.

In a low period for comedy films, these were the best of the last decade

NEW YORK (AP) — The last decade has not been good for big-screen comedies. Hollywood studios nearly stopped making them. Horror became the in vogue genre. Laughs were out. Good comedies have kept being made, of course — it's just taken a little more effort to find them.

This month marks the 10th anniversary of “The Nice Guys,” Shane Black's 2016 crime caper with Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe. No, it's not exactly the 50th anniversary of “Jaws.” But for a movie era where comedies went out of style, it's a moment worth marking.

In the past decade, comedies have largely become the stuff of cult: little seen at release but rediscovered on streaming or elsewhere. “The Nice Guys” flopped at the box office, but its afterlife is long.

So here are our picks for the best of the last 10 years, post-"Nice Guys.” We're leaving out the darker satires (“Parasite”), the acerbic dramas (“The Holdovers”) and the sequels that exist in their own glorious category entirely (“Paddington 2").

Ten years later, the cult of ‘The Nice Guys’ keeps growing

NEW YORK (AP) — When “The Nice Guys” debuted 10 years ago, the writing was on the wall for the big-screen comedy. It came out sandwiched between “Captain America: Civil War” and “X-Men: Apocalypse.” It opened against “Angry Birds.” The cartoon birds, Ryan Gosling has lamented, “just destroyed us.”

“They’re just so angry,” Gosling once sighed.

And yet, marking its upcoming 10th anniversary this month, “The Nice Guys” has established itself as one of the most beloved comedies of the last decade — a decade in which Hollywood studios largely left the genre for dead. A 1970s-set comic noir directed and co-written by Shane Black, “The Nice Guys” paired Gosling and Russell Crowe as private eyes in a Los Angeles crime caper that, a decade later, keeps getting better.

“There’s a lot of interest in ‘The Nice Guys’ today that wasn’t there when it opened. And the box office will attest to that,” Black deadpanned in a recent interview. “But people find these things. I think there’s kind of a joy of finding a movie on streaming or rental and then suddenly kind of realizing: How did I miss this? And ‘The Nice Guys’ was easy to miss.”

Ashley McBryde fell off the horse and went into the ‘Wild.’ Her new album is her most personal yet

NEW YORK (AP) — A few years ago, Ashley McBryde fell off the horse.

“That's not a figure of speech, sadly,” the country star told The Associated Press. “I was really, really badly hurt, and it was a bad enough injury that there was a chance that I wouldn’t have been able to perform ever again.”

It was 2021. She was riding in Montana, and fell, landing on her head. The accident — so severe that she ended up in an emergency room — resulted in a concussion and stitches to her scalp. At the time, she couldn't walk without assistance.

In the years since, McBryde thought about all of the songs she and her band rip through on stage but hadn't yet committed to record. “What if I keep letting them not be on records? What if something had happened and now somebody never hears “Water in the River”? Somebody never hears “Rattlesnake Preacher.” Somebody never hears “Creosote” because I let myself be discouraged in this way or that way from putting those on the record?”

Chile’s Raul Zurita to receive lifetime recognition award at Griffin Poetry Prize

TORONTO - Chilean poet Raul Zurita will receive the lifetime recognition award at this year's Griffin Poetry Prize ceremony.

Zurita is hailed as one of Latin America's most celebrated poets, who used his art as a form of political resistance during Chile's 17-year military dictatorship.

The lifetime recognition award comes with a purse of $25,000.

He will attend the ceremony and poetry readings at Toronto's Koerner Hall next month along with his translator Anna Deeny Morales.

Klimt ceiling paintings on display in Vienna theater’s daily scaffolding tours

VIENNA (AP) — For more than a century, only conservators and experts could catch a close-up glimpse of early works by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt in Vienna, but Klimt fans are now getting that opportunity on daily guided tours high up on scaffolding.

The 10 oil paintings, which are on the 18-meter-high (60-foot-high) ceilings of the renowned Burgtheater in Austria’s capital, are being restored because of water damage.

“The special thing about Klimt for me at least is that we only know about his later works,” said Hannes Höllinger, 60, who went on one of the recent Klimt tours and said it “was very interesting to see that already at age 24 he made these very beautiful paintings which I myself had not seen before.”

Klimt, famed for his bold, daring art nouveau paintings, was a key figure in artistic modernism at the start of the 20th century. His work has fetched some of the highest prices for any artist. Among his most famous paintings is “The Kiss” from 1907-1908, which shows a couple in a passionate embrace adorned with elaborate patterns and gold. The painting is on display at Vienna's Belvedere Museum.

Met gala guests deliver works of art on the human form

New York (AP) — Whether dressed in a jewel-encrusted skeletal form, sculpted breast plates or anatomy-evoking trompe l’oeil, Met Gala guests physically evoked the theme “fashion is art” Monday evening as they masterfully pulled from a kaleidoscope of references to embody living works of art.

“Everyone who attended the Met Gala this year really leaned into fashion is art, using your body as a canvas, and that really came across in some of the best-dressed looks of the night,” said Kevin Huynh, fashion director of InStyle.

Fashionable A-listers gave into the theme and had fun with it. First-time Met Gala attendees included actors Chase Infiniti and Hudson Williams, as well as Olympian Alysa Liu, all of whom commanded the carpet in dramatic ensembles. Infiniti, for example, donned an enchanting Thom Browne sequined gown using trompe l’oeil to depict the female form.

Meanwhile, Met Gala mega stars and repeat attendees rose to the occasion: Vogue red-carpet correspondent Emma Chamberlain playfully dressed in a dramatic long-sleeved gown that appeared dipped in a rainbow of color from indigo to the brightest yellow-gold. And after 10 years of skipping the Gala, Beyoncé arrived to reclaim her throne, wearing a glittering crown and radiant Olivier Rousteing silver gown designed in the shape of a skeleton.

Saskatchewan to use massive postcard mail-out to gauge citizens on internet controls

REGINA - The Saskatchewan government is promising a mass mail-out of postcards to gauge citizen opinions on whether to put fences around the internet.

Premier Scott Moe said the survey will hear from residents about a possible social media ban or limits for those under the age of 16.

The postcards ask whether there should be restrictions or some flexibility for parents to provide consent, he said Tuesday.

They also ask whether any social media platforms should be exempt from limits.

Mark Zuckerberg ‘personally authorized’ Meta’s copyright infringement, publishers allege

NEW YORK (AP) — Five publishing houses and author Scott Turow sued Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday, alleging the company illegally used millions of copyrighted works to train its AI language system Llama.

The class action lawsuit, filed in federal court in Manhattan, accuses the tech giant of copyright infringement and opens up a new front in the ongoing battle between the book community and developers of AI.

The plaintiffs allege that Zuckerberg and Meta “followed their well-known motto ‘move fast and break things’" by illegally drawing upon a massive trove of books and journal articles for Llama.

“Defendants reproduced and distributed millions of copyrighted works without permission, without providing any compensation to authors or publishers, and with full knowledge that their conduct violated copyright law,” the complaint reads in part. “Zuckerberg himself personally authorized and actively encouraged the infringement."

The Venice Biennale previews in chaos as war follows art into the world’s oldest exhibition

VENICE, Italy (AP) — The Venice Biennale previewed its 61st and most chaotic edition ever on Tuesday, just days after the unprecedented resignation of its jury over the participation of Israel and Russia undermined the very structure of the world’s oldest contemporary art exhibition.

Tensions were evident as Ukrainian artists stood by a truck that had brought a statue of an origami deer from the war-ravaged eastern front to the Biennale's storied Giardini. Just meters (yards) away, a handful of participants in the Russian Pavilion danced to house music played by an Argentine DJ.

At the same time, a group of Palestinians marched through the Giardini wearing the names of artists who have been killed in Gaza. More protests were expected as the preview week continued.

Chaos puts national pavilions in the spotlight