25 books, movies, TV shows and more to get you through the last of winter - The Globe and Mail

Illustration by Elijah White

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Visual Arts

The Grass Grows Deep, by Meryl McMaster.Courtesy of the artist

Three Black Cats, by Maud Lewis.The Canadian Press

Artistic styles are creatures of fashion and in an era where art is intensely political and often documentary, it can be bracing to consider previous and opposing trends. For an exhibition entitled Hard Edge, the Vancouver Art Gallery is showing geometric abstraction of the 1960s and 1970s, those canvases of lines so clean they often required masking tape to paint them.

From the VAG permanent collection, curator Richard Hill is assembling classics by Canadians including Jack Bush, Roy Kiyooka, Guido Molinari, Takao Tanabe and Joan Balzar as well as the American painter Frank Stella. Some of the works have never been shown since the VAG first acquired them. Opening March 4 at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

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Film

Keri Russell as Sari in Cocaine Bear, directed by Elizabeth Banks.PAT REDMOND/UNIVERSAL PICTUREs

Great news: Our days are getting longer, brighter and happier. Even better news: There are a wealth of great new (and new-ish) movies to lift your winter blues and help power you through these cold-comfort days.

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Television

Nicholas Braun (left) and Matthew Macfadyen will return in season 4 of Succession, airing on HBO in March.Macall B. Polay/HBO

Gary and his Demons, created by Mark Little.Blue Ant Media

Nothing beats the winter blues like spending two to 10 hours watching other people solve problems that are much worse than your own. This TV season brings us plane crashes, demon battles, zombie apocalypses, a loosely connected series of murders and the threat of a media baron selling his kids’ futures away. With apologies to the eternal optimism of Ted Lasso, here are five (plus one) new shows and seasons to make you realize real life isn’t all that bad.

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Books

Efforts have been made to make February more palatable, but there’s no getting around the fact that the month, its relative shortness and occasional leaps notwithstanding, is a slog. If you don’t have the coin to escape to sunnier climes, then consider easing yourself through these final weeks with a bask under your reading lamp’s gentle rays. Here are some ideas to start with.

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Music

Punk-rocker Iggy PopVincent Guignet/Handout

On Feb. 5, the Grammy Awards ceremony emerged from its burrow and saw its shadow, which means five more weeks of music until the Juno Awards on March 13. With the help of the following concerts and albums, we might just make it.

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25 books, movies, TV shows and more to get you through the last of winter - The Globe and Mail
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