Category: 5. Entertainment

SAN DIEGO – Comic-Con fans pulled out their lightsabers on July 27 to welcome Star Wars (1977 to present) creator George Lucas to the prominent pop culture convention for the very first time.

Attendees lined up for hours to grab a seat inside the 6,500-person capacity venue, San Diego Convention Center, in San Diego, California, to see the legendary American director behind the Indiana Jones (1981 to 2023) franchise speak at the event on its final day.

Comic-Con, which draws some 130,000 attendees, has become an important platform for movie studios and their stars to showcase the latest film and television offerings, especially those with a genre fan base.

“We’ve been waiting five decades for this,” said panel moderator and American actress-rapper Queen Latifah, who oversaw the discussion by Lucas and other film-makers.

Instead of discussing his film works, however, he graced the convention to preview his latest project, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art – opening in Los Angeles in 2026 – which he co-founded with his wife, businesswoman Mellody Hobson.

A first-of-its-kind institution dedicated to illustrated storytelling across time, cultures and media, the almost 4.5ha campus in Exposition Park will include a green space and a 300,000 sq ft building with galleries, two theatres, a library, restaurant, cafe, and retail and community spaces.

“I’ve been collecting art since I was in college,” Lucas, 81, told the crowd, adding that he has amassed tens of thousands of pieces in his collection. “I’ve been doing this for 50 years now, and then it occurred to me ‘what am I going to do with it all’, because I refuse to sell it.”

“I could never do that, it’s not what I think art is – I think it’s more about an emotional connection,” he said.

In his description of the museum, Lucas said the institution will feature a blend of works.

They include illustrations by Norman Rockwell, Jessie Willcox Smith and N.C. Wyeth; artworks by Frida Kahlo, Jacob Lawrence, Charles White and Robert Colescott; and pieces by cartoonists and artists like Winsor McCay, Frank Frazetta and Jack Kirby.

“This is sort of a temple to the people’s art,” he said in summation.

The museum, housed in a sleek, curved building, will also feature items from Lucas’s films and other exclusive pieces.

For the Star Wars mastermind, the space aims to be a tribute to the importance of narrative art.

“When you’re born, the baseline is fear. And as you go through life, you’re curious about things, but you’re especially curious about things you don’t understand, and therefore that’s a threat to you.

“And as a result, you make up stories to make it feel good,” he continued.

“Science fiction is a myth… but we’ve made it real because of science-fiction books and art.”

Among the other members of the panel were Oscar-winning Mexican director Guillermo del Toro and American production designer Doug Chiang, who shaped the aesthetic of the Star Wars universe for decades.

“What’s remarkable about George is that he leads from the heart, and this museum is him,” Chiang said.

Del Toro, who will release his latest film Frankenstein in November, said many of the museum’s pieces will celebrate freedom of speech.

“We are in a critical moment in which one of the things they like to disappear is the past, and this is memorialising a popular, vociferous, expressive and eloquent moment in our visual past that belongs to all of us,” Del Toro said.

He also described comics as a medium with “a lot of social conscience” and joked that comic artists “were the first one to punch a Nazi” in their works.

“What a panel,” gushed attendee Jesse Goldwater, who travelled to San Diego from Los Angeles. “They are the embodiment of Comic-Con itself – without them, Comic-Con wouldn’t exist.” AFP/REUTERS

Medha Rana has been cast as the female lead opposite Varun Dhawan in Bollywood epic “Border 2,” the follow up to J.P. Dutta’s 1997 war blockbuster “Border.”

Set in 1971, “Border” was headlined by Sunny Deol, and took place along the border region of Longewala, where a small battalion of Indian soldiers fought a large Pakistani strike force.

“Border 2” is directed by Anurag Singh who previously helmed Akshay Kumar-starring “Kesari” (2019), based on the Battle of Saragarhi in which an army of 21 Sikhs fought against 10,000 Afghans in 1897.

Gulshan Kumar and T-Series and Dutta’s J.P. Films are presenting “Border 2.” Produced by Bhushan Kumar, Krishan Kumar, J.P. Dutta and Nidhi Dutta, the film is due to release on Jan. 23, 2026, during the Republic Day holiday frame.

“Border 2” also features Deol alongside Diljit Dosanjh. Despite the title, the film is not a sequel to “Border” because its not a continuation of the earlier film, the characters are new, its a new war and Deol does not play the same character that he played in the earlier “Border,” according to the producers.

Rana’s previous credits include Amazon MX Player series “Ishq in the Air,” Netflix film “Friday Night Plan” and Voot series “London Files.” She hails from an Army family and was selected for her command of regional dialect and emotional range, according to producer Bhushan Kumar.

“It was imperative for us to find someone who could naturally embody the dialect, spirit, and rooted essence of the region,” Kumar said. “Medha impressed the team not just with her raw talent, but with her effortless command over the regional dialect and her emotional range as an actor.”

Producer Nidhi Dutta added: “‘Border 2’ is not just a film; it’s an emotion. Every choice we’ve made, from the director to the cast, is driven by our vision to tell a story that feels honest, powerful, and relevant. Medha Rana opposite actor Varun Dhawan will bring freshness and sincerity that aligns beautifully with the tone of the film.”

J.P. Dutta is Bollywood’s war specialist. During the first half of his career, he focused on stories about western India’s Rajput community and then trained his sights on military films with “Border.” His “LOC: Kargil” (2003) recreated the 1999 Kargil War and “Paltan” (2018) was set during the 1967 India-China border clash.

Tom Lehrer, the math prodigy who became an influential musical satirist with his barbed views of American social and political life in the 1950s and 1960s, has died at the age of 97, according to news reports.

Lehrer died at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Saturday (July 26, 2025), his longtime friend David Herder told the New York Times. No cause of death was specified.

A well-calculated move: On Tom Lehrer

Lehrer’s career as a musician and revered social commentator was little more than a happy accident that began with composing ditties to amuse classmates at Harvard University. His heyday lasted about seven years and, by his own count, produced only 37 songs before the reluctant performer returned to teaching at Harvard and other universities.

“There’s never been anyone like him,” Sir Cameron Mackintosh, the Broadway producer who created “Tom Foolery,” a revue of Lehrer songs, told BuzzFeed in 2014. “Of all famous songwriters, he’s probably the only one that … is an amateur in that he never wanted to be professional. And yet the work he did is of the highest quality of any great songwriter.”

As the U.S. nestled into the post-war complacency of the 1950s, the liberal-leaning Lehrer was poking holes in the culture with his songs while maintaining an urbane, witty air.

Some of his works reflected his mathematical interests – “New Math” about subtracting 173 from 342 and “Lobachevsky” about a 19th-century Russian mathematician – but his meatier songs were deemed by some to be too irreverent and shocking. In 1959 Time magazine lumped him in with groundbreaking comics Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl as “sicknicks” who had “a personal and highly disturbing hostility toward all the world.”

The song “I Wanna Go Back to Dixie” looked at racism in the South (“The land of the boll weevil where the laws are medieval”) while “National Brotherhood Week” took on hypocrites (“It’s only for a week so have no fear / Be nice to people who are inferior to you”). “Be Prepared” exposed the dark side of a Boy Scout’s life, “I Got It from Agnes” was about venereal disease, and “We Will All Go Together When We Go” addressed nuclear Armageddon.

“If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while,” Lehrer wrote on the notes that accompanied one of his albums.

Ode to elements

Thomas Andrew Lehrer was born on April 9, 1928, in New York. He grew up in the Big Apple listening to musical theater and one of his first works was “The Elements,” a recitation of the periodic table set to a Gilbert and Sullivan tune. He enrolled at Harvard at age 15 and his “Fight Fiercely, Harvard” with the line “Won’t it be peachy if we win the game?” became a popular spoof of the school’s sports fight song.

He performed at campus functions and, while in graduate school, compiled enough material to record an album in a Boston studio. He sold “Songs by Tom Lehrer” around campus and it developed a word-of-mouth cult following around the country.

After serving in the U.S. Army from 1955 to 1957, Lehrer began performing and recorded more albums but was losing his zest for music. By the early 1960s, working on his doctorate – which he never finished – and teaching became greater concerns, although he did contribute songs to the TV news satire show “That Was the Week That Was” in 1963 and 1964.

Lehrer taught math at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and musical theater at the University of California-Santa Cruz.

He said he found math and songwriting to be similar – both a matter of fitting the pieces together in search of a proper and satisfying outcome. When asked why he abandoned musical satire, he said cultural changes had created issues such as abortion and feminism that were too complicated to satirize.

Famously, he quipped that “political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize” after the award was given to the controversial secretary of state in 1973.

Lehrer, who never married, also said the things he once found to be funny were now scary.

“I often feel like a resident of Pompeii who has been asked for some humorous comments on lava,” he told People magazine in 1982.

Lehrer’s impact lasted decades after he stopped performing. His work was often featured on the syndicated Dr. Demento radio show and “Harry Potter” star Daniel Radcliffe dazzled a talk show audience by doing “The Elements” on a television show in 2010. The rapper 2 Chainz sampled part of Lehrer’s “The Old Dope Peddler” in a 2012 song.

Published – July 28, 2025 10:45 am IST

Primary school pupils are preparing to perform at an annual folk-rock festival.

Oxfordshire County Council’s music service is helping the pupils of Cropredy Church of England Primary School in Oxfordshire to learn about local history through music connections ahead of a performance at the Fairport’s Cropredy Convention.

Preparing for the event, which takes place 7-9 August, part of head teacher Will Reeves’s plan to give the school’s curriculum a musical theme.

Mr Reeves said the pupils had been “missing an opportunity” by not learning about folk music and he “was determined to change that”.

The council said pupils had been learning about local history through subtle music connections, such as Red and Gold by British folk-rock band Fairport Convention.

The lyrics are about the Battle of Cropredy Bridge in 1644, during the English Civil War, when parliamentary soldiers failed in their attempt to capture King Charles I.

The humanities have been transformed too, with children learning about the canal system that flows through the village.

“Our young people were missing an opportunity by not learning about folk music, which is a huge part of the Cropredy community. I was determined to change that,” Mr Reeves said

“Supported by the county council’s brilliant peripatetic folk teacher and singer, Katie Harris, I shared my dream of the school’s children playing at a major event.”

He added that thanks to their contacts and shared vision, some of their pupils would be performing in front of more than 6,000 people at the festival.

Sean Gaul, the council’s cabinet member for children and young people, said the school had taken music education “to another level”.

“Here music is central to the whole learning and development experience,” he said.

“I congratulate the head teacher and his team for having the foresight and determination to turn a vision into reality for the benefit of young people.”

Piper Perabo says there has been “some discussion” about a sequel to Coyote Ugly.

The actress visited The Hollywood Reporter’s suite at San Diego Comic-Con to promote her upcoming spy-thriller series Butterfly, alongside cast members including Daniel Dae Kim, who stars in and executive produces the Prime Video series.

The film, which was released 25 years ago next month, stars Perabo as an aspiring songwriter who moves to New York to pursue her dreams and winds up taking a job at a trendy bar, Coyote Ugly. The cast also includes Adam Garcia, John Goodman, Maria Bello, Izabella Miko, Tyra Banks, Bridget Moynahan and Melanie Lynskey.

THR’s Tiffany Taylor interviewed Perabo at Comic-Con, noting that there has been talk of a sequel over the years and asked what the status is.

Kim interjected, jokingly, with a suggestion for a title: “Coyote Uglier?” Quipped Perabo: “Coyote-er Ugly?”

Choosing her words very carefully, Perabo then confirmed that “there has been some discussion about that. Some things are being discussed. I can’t really say, but people that were doing it are talking about some stuff.”

“So the conversations are back on, it sounds like,” Taylor noted, to which Perabo replied: “Among the necessary — and some people that were like, well, we don’t necessarily need, they’re like, ‘Oh, well I wanna be in it.’ So, there’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen right now, but things are moving around.”

As for whether there is a script, Perabo demurred.

“I can’t say anything about that, but I will say that people that were integral to making it are in communication about how to do something more,” she said.

The movie pulled in $114 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo, not adjusted for inflation, and received mixed reviews. However, it’s become a bit of a cult classic in the years since its release.

It also spawned a LeAnn Rimes hit, the Diane Warren-penned “Can’t Fight the Moonlight.” 

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By Wayan Vota on July 28, 2025

Filed Under: Funding
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Wayan Vota co-founded ICTworks. He also co-founded Technology Salon, Career Pivot, MERL Tech, ICTforAg, ICT4Djobs, ICT4Drinks, JadedAid, Kurante, OLPC News and a few other things. Opinions expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of his employer, any of its entities, or any ICTWorks sponsor.

In an industry where box office numbers often define a film’s legacy, Mohit Suri’s Saiyaara has etched its name in the annals of Hindi cinema by becoming the 26th highest-grossing Hindi film ever. With an India net collection of Rs 248.43 crore in just 10 days, the film has outpaced major star-driven releases like Shah Rukh Khan’s Dunki (Rs 227 crore) and Ajay Devgn’s Singham Again (Rs 247.86 crore).

Starring newcomers Ahaan Panday and Aneet Padda, Saiyaara was initially viewed as a promising debut vehicle. But what followed was a box office phenomenon that not only defied expectations but also reaffirmed the power of storytelling and music-driven romance. Under the deft direction of Mohit Suri and backed by a hauntingly beautiful soundtrack, Saiyaara struck a chord with audiences across metros and mass belts alike.Released with solid buzz, Saiyaara opened with an impressive Rs 21.5 crore on its first Friday. What truly stunned the trade was the film’s phenomenal growth over the opening weekend — Rs 26 crore on Saturday and a massive Rs 35.75 crore on Sunday. With a Week 1 total of Rs 172.75 crore, the film had already entered blockbuster territory. What followed in its second weekend cemented its status as a bonafide hit. On Day 8 (2nd Friday), Saiyaara held steady with Rs 18 crore, followed by a major jump on Saturday to Rs 26.5 crore, and then an estimated Rs 31.18 crore on Sunday. The 10-day total stood at a staggering Rs 248.43 crore, just enough to inch past Singham Again and Dunki, which had the backing of massive star power and franchise value.What makes Saiyaara’s feat more remarkable is that it achieved this position with debutant actors in lead roles,something of this stature was seen about 25 years ago when Hrithik Roshan made his debut with Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai which had made about Rs 44 crore back in 2000. If inflation is adjusted it would made about Rs 200 crore now. Saiyaara has gone past some heavyweights like Dunki which boasted the return of Rajkumar Hirani and Shah Rukh Khan’s post-Pathaan and Jawan outing, and Singham Again brought back the reliable Ajay Devgn–Rohit Shetty duo, Saiyaara relied purely on content, emotional depth, and soul-stirring music.This surge also places Saiyaara ahead of films like Drishyam 2 (Rs 239.67 Cr), The Kerala Story (Rs 239.05 Cr), and Krrish 3 (Rs 231.79 Cr), all of which were declared blockbusters or higher. Notably, it’s also breathing down the neck of URI: The Surgical Strike (Rs 244.14 Cr), which was termed an “All Time Blockbuster.”With the release of two films in Dhadak 2 and Son of Sardaar on 1st August and one can expect Saiyaara to lose some steam. But the film is fully capable of entering the Top 25 hits of the Hindi cinema by the end of the day.

The Hong Kong Tourism Board has partnered with artist and author Kasing Lung, creator of Labubu, and Ocean Park Hong Kong to launch a limited-edition Labubu x Panda Twins birthday collectible. This figure marks the first birthday of Hong Kong’s giant panda twins, Jia Jia and De De, born at Ocean Park in August 2024.

The collectible features a bamboo-green Labubu wearing a polka-dot party hat and holding the panda twins. It is presented in a custom gift box along with a handcrafted birthday card designed by Lung, a Hong Kong native whose Labubu characters enjoy international appeal.

“I am delighted to collaborate with the HKTB and design this Panda Twins birthday special edition of LABUBU to share Hong Kong’s joyful energy with fans worldwide, and to play a part in promoting our city,” Lung said via statement.

The birthday edition coincides with a monthlong celebration across Hong Kong aimed at panda fans and visitors. From 25 July, guests at Ocean Park can pre-register online at oceanpark.com.hk for a lucky draw running throughout August. Winners will receive one of about 300 gift boxes containing the Labubu collectible and a birthday card. Additional boxes will be available during the celebrations from Aug. 15 to 17.

Ocean Park will serve as the main venue for the festivities, offering attractions such as the Panda Friends Summer Splash featuring Line Friends characters, water games, themed photo spots and panda-themed decorations. Evening programming features the Gala of Lights — Panda Birthday Edition, which includes projections, dancing fountains and music. Special panda merchandise, including plush toys dressed in kindergarten uniforms, and exclusive ticket packages are also part of the event.

Beyond Ocean Park, the panda birthday is celebrated citywide with panda-themed MTR station designs and decorated road signs. These public displays create opportunities for photo-taking and encourage tourist engagement throughout Hong Kong.

Created in 2019 by Pop Mart and inspired by Lung’s “The Monsters” storybook, Labubu reached a new peak in popularity in 2025, as search interest for the plush dolls surged exponentially on Google, and celebrities began to adopt Labubu as an accessory. Due to its popularity, the Chinese-based company has released an extensive list of collaborations, including the Labubu x Kow Yokoyama Ma. K Series, the Labubu Coca-Cola Series, and partnerships with Uniqlo and the Chinese label Pronounce.