The Weeknd and Shakira will headline Global Citizen Festival supporting energy access and the Amazon
Global Citizen announced Tuesday that the pop stars behind such hits as 'Blinding Lights' and 'Hips Don't Lie' will be joined by Tyla, Ayra Starr and Mariah the Scientist at the concert on Sept. 27. Hosted by actor Hugh Jackman, the annual event highlights the anti-poverty nonprofit's selected humanitarian priorities and urges attendees to collectively tackle those issues through direct support.
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Winnipeg Free Press
15 minutes ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
George Lucas finally comes to Comic-Con to give a preview of his new museum
SAN DIEGO (AP) — George Lucas is finally coming to the stage at Comic-Con. And while 'Star Wars' is sure to get a mention, the 81-year-old is making his debut appearance at the San Diego pop cultural extravaganza for a more earthbound reason: a preview of his long-in-the-works Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles. The Sunday panel discussion in Comic-Con's vaunted Hall H will act as a relatively quiet closing act to the four-day festival that brought its usual series of big, bombastic looks at upcoming sci-fi and superhero projects. The museum-centered session is also meant to be a broader discussion of the new institution's subject matter: the histories and traditions of narrative art across time and cultures. Lucas will be joined by fellow filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro and art director Doug Chiang, who has worked on a steady series of 'Star Wars' films starting with the Lucas-directed prequels in 1999. Queen Latifah will act as moderator. Lucas is easily on the Mount Rushmore of figures whose work has had the greatest inspiration on the kind of films and other pop cultural celebrated annually in Hall H at Comic-Con. But the convention wasn't a common showcase for blockbuster films when he was directing them himself. He sold 'Star Wars' and Lucasfilm to The Walt Disney Co. in 2012, and Disney has used different venues to make big splashy presentations about its properties. Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. The museum founded by Lucas and his wife, businesswoman Mellody Hobson, is set to open next year in Exposition Park, near the Los Angeles Coliseum, several of the city's other museums, and the University of Southern California. The 11-acre campus and 300,000-square-foot building designed by architect Ma Yansong includes galleries, two theaters and related spaces.
Winnipeg Free Press
4 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Tom Lehrer, song satirist and mathematician, dies at 97
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Tom Lehrer, the popular song satirist who lampooned marriage, politics, racism and the Cold War, then largely abandoned his music career to return to teaching math at Harvard and other universities, has died. He was 97. Longtime friend David Herder said Lehrer died Saturday at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He did not specify a cause of death. Lehrer had remained on the math faculty of the University of California at Santa Cruz well into his late 70s. In 2020, he even turned away from his own copyright, granting the public permission to use his lyrics in any format, without any fee in return. A Harvard prodigy (he had earned a math degree from the institution at age 18), Lehrer soon turned his very sharp mind to old traditions and current events. His songs included 'Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,' 'The Old Dope Peddler' (set to a tune reminiscent of 'The Old Lamplighter'), 'Be Prepared' (in which he mocked the Boy Scouts) and 'The Vatican Rag,' in which Lehrer, an atheist, poked at the rites and ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church. (Sample lyrics: 'Get down on your knees, fiddle with your rosaries. Bow your head with great respect, and genuflect, genuflect, genuflect.') Accompanying himself on piano, he performed the songs in a colorful style reminiscent of such musical heroes as Gilbert and Sullivan and Stephen Sondheim, the latter a lifelong friend. Lehrer was often likened to such contemporaries as Allen Sherman and Stan Freberg for his comic riffs on culture and politics and he was cited by Randy Newman and 'Weird Al' Jankovic among others as an influence. He mocked the forms of music he didn't like (modern folk songs, rock 'n' roll and modern jazz), laughed at the threat of nuclear annihilation and denounced discrimination. But he attacked in such an erudite, even polite, manner that almost no one objected. 'Tom Lehrer is the most brilliant song satirist ever recorded,' musicologist Barry Hansen once said. Hansen co-produced the 2000 boxed set of Lehrer's songs, 'The Remains of Tom Lehrer,' and had featured Lehrer's music for decades on his syndicated 'Dr. Demento' radio show. Lehrer's body of work was actually quite small, amounting to about three dozen songs. 'When I got a funny idea for a song, I wrote it. And if I didn't, I didn't,' Lehrer told The Associated Press in 2000 during a rare interview. 'I wasn't like a real writer who would sit down and put a piece of paper in the typewriter. And when I quit writing, I just quit. … It wasn't like I had writer's block.' He'd gotten into performing accidentally when he began to compose songs in the early 1950s to amuse his friends. Soon he was performing them at coffeehouses around Cambridge, Massachusetts, while he remained at Harvard to teach and obtain a master's degree in math. He cut his first record in 1953, 'Songs by Tom Lehrer,' which included 'I Wanna Go Back to Dixie,' lampooning the attitudes of the Old South, and the 'Fight Fiercely, Harvard,' suggesting how a prissy Harvard blueblood might sing a football fight song. After a two-year stint in the Army, Lehrer began to perform concerts of his material in venues around the world. In 1959, he released another LP called 'More of Tom Lehrer' and a live recording called 'An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer,' nominated for a Grammy for best comedy performance (musical) in 1960. But around the same time, he largely quit touring and returned to teaching math, though he did some writing and performing on the side. Lehrer said he was never comfortable appearing in public. 'I enjoyed it up to a point,' he told The AP in 2000. 'But to me, going out and performing the concert every night when it was all available on record would be like a novelist going out and reading his novel every night.' He did produce a political satire song each week for the 1964 television show 'That Was the Week That Was,' a groundbreaking topical comedy show that anticipated 'Saturday Night Live' a decade later. He released the songs the following year in an album titled 'That Was the Year That Was.' The material included 'Who's Next?' ponders which government will be the next to get the nuclear bomb … perhaps Alabama? (He didn't need to tell his listeners that it was a bastion of segregation at the time.) 'Pollution' takes a look at the then-new concept that perhaps rivers and lakes should be cleaned up. He also wrote songs for the 1970s educational children's show 'The Electric Company.' He told AP in 2000 that hearing from people who had benefited from them gave him far more satisfaction than praise for any of his satirical works. His songs were revived in the 1980 musical revue 'Tomfoolery' and he made a rare public appearance in London in 1998 at a celebration honoring that musical's producer, Cameron Mackintosh. Lehrer was born in 1928, in New York City, the son of a successful necktie designer. He recalled an idyllic childhood on Manhattan's Upper West Side that included attending Broadway shows with his family and walking through Central Park day or night. After skipping two grades in school, he entered Harvard at 15 and, after receiving his master's degree, he spent several years unsuccessfully pursuing a doctorate. 'I spent many, many years satisfying all the requirements, as many years as possible, and I started on the thesis,' he once said. 'But I just wanted to be a grad student, it's a wonderful life. That's what I wanted to be, and unfortunately, you can't be a Ph.D. and a grad student at the same time.' Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. He began to teach part-time at Santa Cruz in the 1970s, mainly to escape the harsh New England winters. From time to time, he acknowledged, a student would enroll in one of his classes based on knowledge of his songs. 'But it's a real math class,' he said at the time. 'I don't do any funny theorems. So those people go away pretty quickly.' ___ Former Associated Press writer John Rogers contributed to this story. Rogrers retired from The AP in 2021.
Winnipeg Free Press
5 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
‘Fantastic Four: First Steps' scores Marvel's first $100 million box office opening of 2025
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Marvel's first family has finally found box office gold. 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps,' the first film about the superheroes made under the guidance of Kevin Feige and the Walt Disney Co., earned $118 million in its first weekend in 4,125 North American theaters, according to studio estimates Sunday. That makes it the fourth biggest opening of the year, behind 'A Minecraft Movie,' 'Lilo & Stitch' and 'Superman,' and the biggest Marvel opening since 'Deadpool & Wolverine' grossed $211 million out of the gate last summer. Internationally, 'Fantastic Four' made $100 million from 52 territories, adding up to a $218 million worldwide debut. The numbers were within the range the studio was expecting. The film arrived in the wake of another big superhero reboot, James Gunn's 'Superman,' which opened three weekends ago and has already crossed $500 million globally. That film, from the other main player in comic book films, DC Studios, took second place with $24.9 million domestically. 'First Steps' is the latest attempt at bringing the superhuman family to the big screen, following lackluster performances for other versions. The film, based on the original Marvel comics, is set during the 1960s in a retro-futuristic world led by the Fantastic Four, a family of astronauts-turned-superhuman from exposure to cosmic rays during a space mission. The family is made up of Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), who can stretch his body to incredible lengths; Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), who can render herself invisible; Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn), who transforms into a fiery human torch; and Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), who possesses tremendous superhuman strength with his stone-like flesh. The movie takes place four years after the family gained powers, during which Reed's inventions have transformed technology, and Sue's diplomacy has led to global peace. Both audiences and critics responded positively to the film, which currently has an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes and promising exit poll responses from opening weekend ticket buyers. An estimated 46% of audiences chose to see it on premium screens, including IMAX and other large formats. The once towering Marvel is working to rebuild audience enthusiasm for its films and characters. Its two previous offerings this year did not reach the cosmic box office heights of 'Deadpool & Wolverine,' which made over $1.3 billion, or those of the 'Avengers'-era. But critically, the films have been on an upswing since the poorly reviewed 'Captain America: Brave New World,' which ultimately grossed $415 million worldwide. 'Thunderbolts,' which jumpstarted the summer movie season, was better received critically but financially is capping out at just over $382 million globally. Like Deadpool and Wolverine, the Fantastic Four characters had been under the banner of 20th Century Fox for years. The studio produced two critically loathed, but decently profitable attempts in the mid-2000s with future Captain America Chris Evans as the Human Torch. In 2015, it tried again (unsuccessfully) with Michael B. Jordan and Miles Teller. They got another chance after Disney's $71 billion acquisition of Fox's entertainment assets in 2019. Top 10 movies by domestic box office With final domestic figures being released Monday, this list factors in the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore: 1. 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps,' $118 million. 2. 'Superman,' $24.9 million. 3. 'Jurassic World Rebirth,' $13 million. 4. 'F1: The Movie,' $6.2 million. 5. 'Smurfs,' $5.4 million. 6. 'I Know What You Did Last Summer,' $5.1 million. 7. 'How to Train Your Dragon,' $2.8 million. 8. 'Eddington,' $1.7 million. 9. 'Saiyaara,' $1.3 million. 10. 'Oh, Hi!,' $1.1 million.
