Horoscope

Moon Alert: Avoid shopping (except food and gas) or major decisions from 2:45 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. After that, the moon moves from Aquarius into Pisces.

Aries (March 21-April 19)

You might meet someone unusual or avant-garde — someone who is different in some way. This person might be a new acquaintance or they could be a member of a group. Be careful not to be influenced in a way that you might later regret.

Taurus (April 20-May 20)

briefs

Lineup announced

for Burt Block Party

The annual outdoor concert series held outside the Burton Cummings Theatre has announced the bands for the four nights of the Aug. 13-17 event.

As usual, the Burt Block Party is grouped by genre: Thursday, Aug. 13, will see metalcore act Killswitch Engage perform; Aug. 14, features female indie-pop acts Beaches, Lights and Lolo; Saturday features Canadian classic acts Colin James and Streetheart; and Sunday it’s a ’90s flashback with Collective Soul, 54-40 and Paul Langlois of the Tragically Hip.

Chronicle of Nintendo and its games and platforms a history of a company committed to fun

If Silicon Valley likes to move fast and break things, Nintendo prefers to go slow and preserve its history. The Japanese game and console maker also always protects its “sense of fun,” Keza MacDonald explains in the spirited new history Super Nintendo: The Game-Changing Company That Unlocked the Power of Play.

Nintendo’s approach to developing games and devices over decades — from the Game Boy to the Wii to the Switch — make it a distinct foil to Big Tech. It’s a company that favours harmony over disruption, enjoyment over endlessly increasing profit. Even with the rise of realistic high-fidelity graphics from competitors and buzzy virtual-reality gaming experiences online, Nintendo has tended to avoid big risks and industry trends, an approach some say has made the company recession-proof.

MacDonald, the Guardian’s video games editor, retraces the company’s history from a humble playing-card manufacturer to video game behemoth. The lively book is structured around major franchises, including Donkey Kong, Pokémon and Animal Crossing, chronicling the game design and creative thinking behind each. MacDonald weaves together old and new interviews with Nintendo executives and gaming enthusiasts to reveal how these colourful, family-friendly games are first imagined and then remain so beloved for so long. Nostalgia abounds in Super Nintendo, not unlike when the company sells its own rebooted games.

Nintendo was founded in 1889 in Kyoto, when entrepreneur Fusajiro Yamauchi began producing wood and cardboard hanafuda, cards emblazoned with floral images for entertainment at home. These cards had been banned in Japan for several centuries for being “closely associated with gambling and, therefore, with organized crime,” and it was a savvy business decision to make them when the ban eased in the late 19th century.

tv talk shows

Jimmy Kimmel: Christina Applegate (above), Taylor Tomlinson, Arlo Parks

Jimmy Fallon: Tracy Morgan, Neve Campbell, Cooper Flagg, Twice

Stephen Colbert: Ray Romano, Chloé Zhao, Cory Wong

Seth Meyers: John Oliver, Ben Marshall

tv talk shows

Jimmy Kimmel: Nick Kroll, Wunmi Mosaku, Cory Wong

Stephen Colbert: Ian McKellen (above), I’m With Her, Laura Benanti

Vulnerable memoir chronicles Griffiths’ marriage to Salman Rushdie, the attempt on his life and the sudden loss of a friend

Poet and novelist Rachel Eliza Griffiths’s The Flower Bearers is an open wound of a memoir. In it we are introduced to a talented, fragile 42-year-old woman on the eve of her marriage to author Salman Rushdie. Griffiths writes that at the time she wanted “to be exposed and immersed in the name of a love that was as marvellous as the love of words and life itself we both shared.” Ecstatically, she proclaims: “Yes! I am in love — again.”

In the book’s opening scene, Griffiths revels in her wedding preparations, describing in sensual terms the experience of having her body decorated with henna: “Brown and slender, long arms stretch above their parallel shadows on the white sheet,” she writes. “The wrists, palms, and knuckles are embroidered with a hand-drawn world of diamonds and delicate curlicues. On my left palm, a man’s name has been inscribed.” She is giddy with joy, but that joy is tinged with foreboding: “When I whisper that I’m happy today,” Griffiths writes, “when I murmur that nothing can hurt us, I foolishly believe myself.”

Griffiths and Rushdie first met four years before, in 2017, at a literary soirée in Manhattan, and their attraction was immediate. Minutes into their conversation, Rushdie suggested they move to the terrace, where they could talk more easily. On the way out, Rushdie “collided with a massive plate glass door,” Griffiths recalls. “Hitting the glass at full momentum sent him immediately to the floor. He was sprawled there with blood flowing down his nose, his glasses cracked, and a sizable knot blooming on the dome of his head.” Stunned and embarrassed but not badly hurt, Rushdie attempted a hasty exit, but Griffiths insisted on accompanying him to his nearby apartment. There, she placed an ice pack on his head, and the two talked and laughed until the sun came up.

At the time, Griffiths was an aspiring poet and visual artist who struggled to make ends meet and was beset by anxiety and mental illness. She reports being plagued by “alters” — voices and visions that had tormented her since childhood. In her 20s and early 30s, she was hospitalized multiple times following a suicide attempt and other incidents of suicidal ideation. She initially resisted seeking psychological help because of shame and the view that “therapy was for white folks,” but at 30 she began regularly seeing a therapist and was ultimately diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder.

Different kind of identify crisis faced in secretly shot film

The latest film from Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi (The White Balloon, Offside, This Is Not a Film) is both morally serious — its political message made even more urgent by the arrest last weekend of the project’s co-screenwriter Mehdi Mahmoudian — and darkly, unexpectedly funny.

Winner of last year’s Palme d’Or at Cannes, Panahi’s film once again underlines the profound, humane and artful work being done by Iranian Third Wave filmmakers, who persist despite bans, censorship and the imprisonment of directors and actors by their country’s repressive regime.

Most of It Was Just an Accident (in Farsi and Azerbaijani, with English subtitles) was shot in secret, without an official government permit, with the footage then smuggled out of Iran and finished in France.

With origins in Panahi’s own prison experiences — he has been convicted for “propaganda activities” against the nation — the story centres on Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), a mild-mannered mechanic. A chance car breakdown leads to Vahid overhearing a man (Ebrahim Azizi) he suspects is a prison torturer.

Briefs

Neil Young gives his

music to Greenland

Neil Young is giving the people of Greenland the gift of song — his songs, that is.

The veteran rocker announced Tuesday on his blog that he is providing free access to his entire music catalogue to residents of Denmark’s semi-autonomous territory, whose futures have lately become a point of tension between the U.S. and NATO.

Extreme cold perfect for Operation Nanook

BRANDON — What do you get when you ask more than 40 troops with the 1st Regiment Royal Canadian Horse Artillery to load a pair of M777 Howitzers into the back of a C-130 Hercules amid extremely cold Manitoba temperatures?

The ideal conditions for Operation Nanook — an Arctic defence operation that has been in the planning stages for several months.

“It’s a conjoined effort with a multitude of different trades and elements throughout the Canadian military,” 1RCHA Sgt. Ethan Clunas said on Friday morning. “And it just displays how well everything operates when everyone comes together and has one solid goal.”

Troops with 1RCHA from CFB Shilo, along with members of the Royal Canadian Air Force and personnel from various military trades such as gunners and vehicle and weapons techs, showed up to the Brandon Municipal Airport on a frigid Friday morning — the temperature was a balmy -33 C with a wind chill pushing -40 C — shortly before 8 a.m.

Unparalleled Peru

I knew nothing of Peru before my November trip to this South American country that sits on the western edge of the continent. What I discovered was a place that’s knee-deep in all the things I love about travel: inspiring landscapes, cultures as diverse as those landscapes and of course, a cuisine scene that’s endlessly delicious. Come along to Peru!

Spectacular rainforest light

My adventure started as soon as I landed in Lima, which happens to be in the same time zone as Toronto and a direct overnighter from there. Destination: Puerto Maldonado, a city in the southeastern corner of the country and gateway to the Amazon rainforest. From the flight, it was on to a boat on the Tambopata River for a stay at Posada Amazonas Lodge, one of three of Rainforest Expeditions’ family of accommodations.

Time spent in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest is everything your imagination conjures — distant calls of exotic birds, oversized leaves dripping with moisture and an explosion of life on the forest floor. While life is in overdrive 24 hours a day here, it’s at sundown when magic truly takes over. Last light filters through the trees, creating a glow that makes all that lush greenery dance with a touch of gold. It’s a photographer’s dream, complete with sunsets over the river that compete with the best in the world.