“WHAT DO YOU see?” That’s a question put forth in the first trailer for this December’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi—and trust us, you’ll want to watch the above clip plenty of times, just to take everything in. Picking up where 2015’s The Force Awakens left off, the Rian Johnson–directed Last Jedi clearly focuses on the relationship between the now-grizzled Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and the upstart Rey Westilldontknowherlastname (Daisy Ridley). In the trailer, we watch as Rey takes her first steps toward fully understanding the Force—in one memorable shot, she practices her lightsaber skills on a cliff overlooking the sea—and we listen as Luke tells her the “one truth” about the future of the Jedi. (Hint: It ain’t too promising!)

But there’s plenty more dazzling Star Wars imagery to absorb here, from a TIE-blasting Millennium Falcon to lightsaber-wielding Kylo Ren to a brief shot of Carrie Fisher as the late General Organa. Oh, and Finn’s here, too! And Poe! And, of course, the still-rollin’ BB-8! We’ll find out how they’re all faring in that galaxy far, far away when Star Wars: The Last Jedi opens December 15.

Perhaps more than any other feature of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, the stage and space designed by the Los Angeles-based Do Lab gives fans the impression of a mirage wavering in the dusty desert heat.

Tilted, rickety-looking towers made of wooden pallets defined the Do Lab’s creation one year. Another time, rainbow-striped fabric spiraled up trumpet-shaped frames that doubled as sculptures and sun shades.

On Friday, April 14, Coachella-goers were greeted with a new design: an origami-like dome with eight triangular openings, rising to a sort of smokestack in the center and stretched with blue, orange and yellow fabric.

 

 

Founded by twins Josh and Jesse Flemming and their younger brother Dede, the Do Lab is back for a 13th year at the ever-expanding music festival at Indio’s Empire Polo Club.

And the aesthetic they absorbed on visits to Burning Man has added a touch of fantastic chaos to the well-oiled machine Coachella has become.

The festival gates opened Friday to 125,000 people for the first of two weekends of large-scale art installations, culinary offerings such as Peruvian burritos and artisanal marshmallow s’mores, and wide-ranging musical performances including Friday-night headliner Radiohead, with Lady Gaga and Kendrick Lamar to follow on Saturday and Sunday, respectively.

 

 

Even with the weather at a manageable high-80s level for opening day, the Do Lab was crowded with people seeking the annual ritual of dancing ’til they broke a sweat, then basking in the spray of water guns fired from the stage.

 

EVOLVING EXPERIMENT

 

 

The idea for the Do Lab was born around 2004, when the Flemming brothers – Pennsylvania transplants looking for creative careers in Los Angeles – realized their TV production jobs weren’t stimulating, Dede Flemming said.

Jesse played in a band, Josh worked on lighting and then set designs for his shows, and Dede helped.

 

 

“We were always just trying to go the extra mile and just make things more visually appealing,” Dede said.

Meanwhile, they were going to festivals and drawing inspiration from the creative anarchy of Burning Man, which creates an ephemeral city of art in the Nevada desert.

The Do Lab’s first year building at Coachella was 2005, when the brothers made what they considered an art project, a 60-foot geodesic dome with sculptures and water misters that was a place to cool off.

But since they bring music wherever they go, Jesse Flemming said, “It kind of turned into this little party inside the middle of the festival.”

 

Coachella invited them back, and they began experimenting with different types of building materials and bigger structures. Meanwhile, the Do Lab became known as a stage for not just music but performance art, with the audience as part of the act.

People wear glitter, sequins and fur, and everybody dances with abandon, said fan Heidi Hernandez, 32, who comes from Las Vegas to attend the festival.

“Everywhere you turn something new and cool is happening,” she said. “You literally just turn into like a wild animal there, but you don’t feel weird about doing it.”

 

 

That’s what the Do Lab is aiming for: an immersive experience, Jesse said.

“We always enjoyed it when the show was kind of surrounding you and performers were popping up all over the place and things got really weird, and it kind of gave people the freedom to express themselves.”

The Do Lab’s evolution from a simple shady space wth a DJ to a work of art you can dance in somewhat describes what has happened to festival culture at large. And many of the artists who have started at the Do Lab have graduated to spots on Coachella’s other stages. Others come back to do hotly anticipated “surprise” sets at the Do Lab.

 

 

Coachella now features major art installations and an array of food offerings in addition to a varied menu of music, and other events compete to give fans something memorable and unique.

“Festivals have recognized that it is the (overall) experience,” said Tucker Gumber, of Los Angeles, an avid fan who created a festival smartphone app FestEvo and by this summer will have clocked 10,0000 hours at festivals.

“Every minute of every day needs to be fun, not just the headliners,” he said. “It needs to be an adventure.”

In a rare display of unity in their ethnically divided country, Bosnians reveled Monday, in the success of director Danis Tanovic, whose film "No Man's Land" won this year's Oscar for best foreign language movie. Both in the Muslim-Croat and Serb regions of the country, ordinary people, politicians and Tanovic's fellow film-makers said for once everyone had a reason to celebrate after the devastating war which raged between 1992 and 1995. Foreign Minister Zlatko Lagumdzija said 33-year-old Tanovic's success had projected a new image of Bosnia "not as a country of problems but as a country which has a future, because it has talented and determined people." "The crown of this success is the Oscar, and Tanovic showed with his example that determination and talent never lose a battle," the minister said. The film by the Sarajevan, who now lives in Paris, tells a tragi-comic tale of three soldiers -- two Serbs and a Muslim -- trapped in an open trench during the Bosnian war. One of them is lying on a mine that will explode if he is removed. The United Nations (news - web sites) peacekeepers who get involved are shown as powerless, a view shared by many in Bosnia based on their own wartime experiences. On a snowy day in the war-scarred capital Sarajevo, taxi driver Mevludin Rakic said he was proud of the film's success. "I am so excited about the Oscar award and especially about the fact that Tanovic said this is also an Oscar for Bosnia," he said, referring to the director's victory speech. "MEANINGLESSNESS OF WAR" In Banja Luka, capital of Bosnia's Serb Republic, taxi driver Dragan, 44, also praised the film. "It shows the meaninglessness of the war here and that ordinary people suffered in it," he said. Tanovic, who ran the Bosnian government army's film archive during the war before leaving for Brussels to finish film school, shot his debut work with a budget of $1 million raised from several European producers. Professors and colleagues from Sarajevo university's school of acting and directing said they were overwhelmed by his win. "The only thing I can say now is 'Thank you, Danis'. He is a legend," Srdjan Vuletic, who studied with Tanovic before and during the war, told Reuters after a modest victory ceremony at the Bosnian film-makers' association. "This marks the beginning of a new era in Bosnian film-making," said Vuletic, who has won international awards for short movies and hopes to start shooting his first feature soon. Vuletic said he hoped Tanovic's success would give an opportunity to other budding film-makers to make movies in Bosnia instead of trying to find funding abroad.