1. José Angel Santana, a 58-year-old former professor at NYU, says that he lost his job after giving James Franco a D in “Directing the Actor II,” and is now suing the university. Apparently the bad grade was attendance related; Franco only showed up for two of the fourteen classes. [via Vulture]

2. Now that Grinderman is “over,” Jim Sclavunos reports that Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds could be releasing a follow up to their 2008 album Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! as early as next year. [via NME]

3. Maya Angelou, who recently collaborated with Common on a track that appears on his forthcoming album, The Dreamer, The Believer, was “surprised and disappointed” to find out that the song “used the ‘N’ word numerous times.” His response? “I told her what ‘The Dreamer’ was about and what I wanted to get across to people. I wanted young people to hear this and feel like they could really accomplish their dreams.” [via ArtsBeat]

4. This weekend’s Jimmy Fallon-hosted installment of Saturday Night Live scored the show’s highest ratings of the season so far. No doubt appearances by former castmembers — including Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Tracy Morgan, and Rachel Dratch — as well as a Jude Law cameo (who seemed to be channeling Michael Stipe in that hat), helped out. [via Deadline]

5. Pulling in a respectable $40 million, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows topped the weekend box office, followed by Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked ($23.5 million), and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol ($13 million). When you consider that Mission: Impossible was only playing at around 425 IMAX theaters, that number seems a lot more impressive. [via Digital Spy]

Bonus Buzz: 8 Tyrannical Dictators Still Alive And In Power

1. Ben & Jerry’s has officially launched its new Schweddy Balls flavor — based on the famous Saturday Night Live skit starring Alec Baldwin — and it’s purportedly “loaded with fudge-covered rum and malt balls.” Says Baldwin: “For a long time, I thought that ‘Here Lies Pete Schweddy’ would end up on my tombstone. Now, thanks to Ben & Jerry’s, the goodness of the Schweddy family recipe won’t go with me to the great beyond.” [via Time]

2. ABC plans to adapt Candace Bushnell’s 2008 book One Fifth Avenue into a new series that’s being described as “Sex and the City meets The Good Wife,” with Gossip Girl executive producer Josh Safran on board to write the script. [via THR]

3. An 84-year-old driver ran into Reese Witherspoon yesterday morning while she was jogging in Santa Monica, but luckily the Oscar-winning actress only suffered mild injuries. [via MTV]

4. Apparently Ryan Gosling feels bad for breaking up that art heist/street fight in the East Village because the thief really loved the work of art that he was trying to swipe. “…he finally steals the painting and he’s getting his ass kicked by his hero, and then the guy from The Notebook shows up and makes it weirder. The whole thing, nobody wins. Nobody won.” [via Vulture]

5. South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker delivered a surprise guest lecture at a class called “Storytelling Strategies” at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts yesterday. Watch a brief clip here.

Bonus Buzz: The Dog With The World’s Longest Ears

Other than a tiny dust-up with Bruce Vilanch, things have been strangely silent on the James Franco front post-Oscars. That is until today’s announcement that he will be teaching a third-year grad class on “adapting poetry into short films” at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. “He’s here to teach because he really knows something about directing that he can share with our students,” John Tintori, chair of the graduate film program at Tisch, told the New York Post. “He’s incredibly prolific, and that comes from a real work ethic — and that’s another thing to impart to our students.” Hmm… Considering that NYU is the same institution where Franco will be awarded an MFA in film production come May, maybe this is some extreme form of extra credit?

Fans of director Woody Allen (especially, we find, those who think Annie Hall is too mainstream) absolutely die for Manhattan, the 1979 romantic comedy wherein Allen’s character romances a 17-year-old. Today we came across an update of Allen’s film, bearing the all-too-appropriate-for-2009 new name, Brooklyn. The trailer absolutely nails the opening montage with classical accompaniment. A very cool idea, we must concede, but how does it stack up to another offshoot of Manhattan we found a few months ago? That one starred Muppets. Check out both videos after the jump, and voice your opinion in the comments.
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On Friday afternoon we received a tip from Thomas Prevot about a Thriller flashmob that he’d helped organize in Washington Square Park for that night at dusk — suitable music would be provided and fedoras and glitter gloves were strongly encouraged. “We were just inspired by the idea of a tribute to Michael Jackson, in the form of people getting together to dance to his music,” he told us. “This was done in other capitals of the world as well, so we just decided on a time and place, and asked all our friends to talk about it on Facebook, Twitter, and on their networks.”

The viral promotion drew a truly eclectic crowd: NYU students, 30-something parents, homeless people, confused tourists, and French cinephiles. Everyone danced. It was awesome. Click here to view a photo slideshow and find some video we shot on BlackBerry after the jump. Read More »

For this week’s installment, we really have only one: How in the world did Hannah Montana manage to rake in $34 million dollars this weekend? OK, make that two: Does this have anything to do NYU Tisch School of the Arts student Kacie Kinzer and her adorably frightening army of “tweenbots” (see the video after the jump). For your reference, Fast & Furious came in second place with $28.78m; Monsters vs. Aliens was in third with $22.61m; Observe & Report opened in fourth place with $11.14m; and Nic Cage’s Knowing held strong held strong in fifth place with $6.67m. Read More »

Courtesy of DanceBrazil

You know a dance form has officially infiltrated the mainstream when it starts showing up in gyms as a fitness trend. We’re referring not to pole dancing but to capoeira, the Afro-Brazilian dance/martial art that arrived in the U.S. in the mid-1970s and has since spawned a devoted following of aspiring capoeiristas in gyms and studios across the country.

Capoeira’s current status as a revered art form and fitness regimen is a far cry from its roots as a survival tactic. Several centuries ago, African slaves in Brazil developed it as a way to disguise their martial arts practice as dance, and eventually used it to free themselves.

Capoeira in its traditional form is both fluid and acrobatic, often performed within a circle, or roda, of dancers, singers and musicians. New Yorkers have a chance to see the real thing this weekend at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at NYU, where DanceBrazil is presenting its 2009 season.

The company’s artistic director, Jelon Vieira, was one of the first capoeira masters to bring the art form to this country. After the jump, he talks about starting the company (with a little help from Alvin Ailey) and using capoeira as a way to keep kids out of trouble.

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