“Darm mit Charme (‘Charming Bowels’) – which has sat atop the German paperback charts for the last eight weeks and shifted more than 200,000 copies in the process – may deal with defecation, constipation and other bowel movements, but its message is far from flippant: our gastrointestinal tract is not only the body’s most under-appreciated organ, but ‘the brain’s most important adviser’.”
William Forsythe Joins USC’s New Dance School
The USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance is bringing on internationally renowned choreographer William Forsythe to join the faculty as a professor in fall 2015 – just in time to greet the new school’s first batch of BFA dance majors.
In Defense Of ‘Star Wars’ (Yeah, It’s Not Great Art, But It Is History)
“In some ways, it did suck. The dialogue was awful, the acting was mediocre at best …, and there are some glaring plot holes. We can debate whether its ultimate influence was positive or malign, but even with its weaknesses, the film’s success, and its persistence, were no accident.”
Nul Points: The Eurovision Song Contest’s Greatest Train Wrecks
“Since Eurovision adopted its current voting system, where dozens of countries assign between one and 12 points to the competition’s entries via telephone voting, only 14 songs out of thousands have received the most dreaded rating of all: ‘Nul points’. … Its rarity is partly because of the competition’s scale: with so many countries voting, and so many geographical allegiances at play, your song has to be truly putrid to fail to collect one point from anyone.” (includes video hall of shame)
The Workshop That Produces Broadway Hits
“We don’t tell people what to write or how to write or even what style to write in. But we do teach and talk a lot about how musicals are put together.”
Six Degrees Of Disney (How The World Of Disney Animation Is All Connected)
“Welcome to the esoteric and frankly mind-boggling world of Disney fan theories, which posits that all of Disney’s animated movies take place in the same universe and characters from different films interact in ways you have to squint to see.”
Here Are This Year’s Turner Prize Finalists
There’s a strong Scottish connection. Three out of four of the finalists studied in Glasgow.
Christie’s Agrees To Return Looted Statue To Cambodia
“[The auction house] sold the statue, a 10th-century sandstone depiction of a mythological figure known as Pandava, to an anonymous collector in 2009, but bought it back earlier this year after officials determined that the sculpture had been looted” from an ancient Khmer temple during Cambodia’s 1970s civil war.