Hollywood
Filipino festival cancels feature competition for lack of funds
NEW DELHI: The Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival has cancelled plans for a feature film competition this year.
Organisers blame the decision on the late approval of this year’s budget, which was only confirmed in December.
Indications had come in November of the potential cancellation of this year’s New Breed competition section after CCP vice president Chris Millado raised the possibility at a forum in Vietnam.
In place of its competition section, this summer’s 11th edition- held 7 to 14 August, 2015- will host a retrospective of selected features from its first 10 years. The competition will return in 2016 without the New Breed section.
For its 12th edition, Cinemalaya will increase its grants from 500,000 to 750,000 ($17,000). The ten finalists — who will have 12 months to produce their films — will be announced at the closing ceremony of this year’s festival.
The festival will remain at the Cultural Center of the Philippines | Sentrong pangkultura ng Pilipinas despite interest to relocate the event in Metro Manila’s Quezon City by its mayor. Additional screenings will be hosted at regular partner malls in Makati City and Quezon City within Metro Manila.
Earlier this month, film director Laurice Guillen was appointed president of the Cinemalaya Foundation. She previously held the position of competition chairman.
Hollywood
Remembering Chuck Norris: the man, the myth, the legend at 86
From martial arts legend to internet folklore, fans honour his final level up
KAUAI: The world lost a legend on 19 March 2026, when Chuck Norris died aged 86. For a man long treated as immortal in internet folklore, the news felt almost unreal. Yet in true Norris fashion, the farewell has been less about mourning and more about myth-making.
Just days before his passing, on his 86th birthday, Norris shared a video from Kauaʻi, Hawaii, showing him sparring under the sun. His caption was characteristically wry: “I don’t age. I level up.” It now reads like a final wink to fans who had spent years elevating him to near-superhuman status.
His death followed a sudden medical emergency while on holiday. He passed away peacefully, surrounded by family, who described him not just as a global symbol of strength, but as a devoted husband, father and grandfather.
Online, grief quickly gave way to tribute in the language Norris helped popularise. Social media filled with one last wave of “Chuck Norris Facts”, the tongue-in-cheek myths that turned him into a digital demigod. The jokes wrote themselves, as always. Death did not take Norris, it finally dared to meet him.
Behind the humour, however, lies a formidable real-world legacy.
Long before the memes, Norris was Carlos Ray Norris, a decorated martial artist. After serving in the US Air Force, he rose to become a six-time world professional middleweight karate champion. His on-screen duel with Bruce Lee in Way of the Dragon remains one of cinema’s most iconic fight sequences.
Through the 1980s, he became the face of action cinema with films such as Missing in Action and The Delta Force, embodying a stoic, no-nonsense hero. In the 1990s, he reached living rooms worldwide as Cordell Walker in Walker, Texas Ranger, blending Western grit with martial arts flair.
Off-screen, his work carried equal weight. His foundation, Kickstart Kids, continues to teach martial arts to at-risk youth, focusing on discipline and self-worth. He also founded Chun Kuk Do, a martial arts system that trained thousands.
What made Norris unique was not just his strength, but his willingness to laugh at it. When the internet transformed him into an exaggerated symbol of invincibility, he embraced the joke. In doing so, he bridged generations, from cinema-goers to meme-makers.
His passing marks more than the loss of an action star. It signals the fading of a rare cultural crossover, where genuine athletic prowess met Hollywood heroism and early internet humour.
For many, remembering Chuck Norris means recalling a time when heroes were simple, punches were decisive and the internet still felt like a playground of shared jokes.
And if the myths are to be believed, this is not quite the end. It is simply Chuck Norris moving on to his next level.
