NEW YORK — What do you get when you take a 70-page melodrama at the center of "War and Peace" and turn it into a musical? Now layer dance music onto the traditional Russian folk music. Now put it in a tent. While you're at it, throw in a meal and strobe lights. Read more

NEW YORK — As "The Office" airs its series finale after eight years on NBC, the time feels right to salute the show that spawned it. Read more

WASHINGTON — The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has a new process to select artists who receive one of the nation's top arts prizes, the Kennedy Center Honors, after an outside group last year said Latinos have been largely excluded. Read more

CANNES, France — Sofia Coppola was just 8 years old when she first came to the Cannes Film Festival. Her father, Francis Ford Coppola, was there to premiere a work-in-progress cut of a film he had spent years wrestling with: "Apocalypse Now." Read more

The CW network's prime-time schedule for the fall: Read more

LOS ANGELES — Ticketmaster has agreed to settle claims for up to $23 million over a lawsuit affecting more than a million people who, after buying a ticket online, were enrolled in a rewards program that cost $9 a month but never gave them any benefits. Read more

NEW YORK — "The Vampire Diaries" is known for its twists and turns, and one of its stars, Ian Somerhalder, says Thursday night's season finale won't be any different. Read more

LONDON — Nobel Literature laureate J.M. Coetzee has called on Spain to abandon plans to protect bullfighting, making a rare public appeal against what he called "an archaic form of entertainment." Read more

LOS ANGELES — Jane Lynch doesn't mind being upstaged by her latest co-star, Olivia - after all she "has no bad side, she is always ready to pose and she sits perfectly still when you put her in your lap. Read more

LAS VEGAS — O.J. Simpson's former lawyer said Friday he was surprised when the former football hero told him over dinner at a Las Vegas hotel that he and several other men were planning a "sting" to take back items he believed had been stolen from him in Los Angeles. Read more

AUSTIN, Texas — The guys in Vampire Weekend changed how they wrote songs, how they record and what an album of theirs even looks like - the cover for "Modern Vampires of the City" is not another artsy old Polaroid, but a 1966 black-and-white photo of a smoggy New York skyline. Read more

BOSTON — Andris (AHN'-driss) Nelsons has been named music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Read more

The Hollywood Reporter's list of its 10 best stories of the week: Read more

CANNES, France — Emma Watson is reveling in her post-"Potter" freedom at the Cannes Film Festival, relishing a Valley Girl role far from her wise-beyond-her-years Hermione. Read more

Amy Grant, "How Mercy Looks From Here" (Capitol Christian) Read more

LOS ANGELES — With a flawless voice that recalled past "American Idol" finalist Jennifer Hudson and a sense of determination after not making it in previous seasons, Candice Glover did the one thing Hudson wasn't able to do: She won the title of "American Idol." Read more

BERLIN — It probably wasn't the reception Barbie was hoping for at the start of her European tour. Read more

What are you doing after the apocalypse? Read more

NEW YORK — The CW network is bringing a popular radio music series to television and is going heavy on escapist fare in its new programming for next season. Read more

CANNES, France — Cannes has been the birthplace of many a star, and the latest candidate to shine is Marine Vacth, who plays a teenager confronting the complexities of adolescent sexuality in Francois Ozon's "Jeune et Jolie" ("Young and Beautiful.") Read more