Favorites of the week – culture

Gods of Carnage: Studio 666

Foo Fighters-CEO Dave Grohl has massive writer’s block. After all: Happens to the best. So that the band’s tenth album can still be completed, the management sends him and the band to a remote house in Encino, California. legitimate idea. However, the first roadie is soon electrocuted there, and things develop from there the movie “Studio 666” to a kind of “Spinal Tap” gone splatter movie grotesque – staged by dumb and dumber. Grohl discovers a mystical cellar, some old tapes, a new key (L major) and subsequently a great affinity for raw meat and chainsaws. In supporting roles: the members of the Foo Fighters playing men who play the members of the Foo Fighters. Fascinatingly, the whole thing isn’t quite as daft as it could be. But much more brutal. Jacob Biazza

Beautiful waste: Dior in Berlin

It was not without controversy, partly because of its enormous consumption. For his famous “Mexique” robe from the 1951/52 winter season, a single cosmic sparkle, Christian Dior had thousands of pearls expended. The glitter is said to be reminiscent of his childhood in Normandy. Since the Second World War was already years behind and with it the simple fashion of that time, Dior was already known as the innovator with new lines and lavish drapery.

With its exhibition “How to Dior” the intoxicating Mexique, which is one of the most recent acquisitions and has been extensively restored, but also the beginnings of Dior after the war, the apparently simple dresses with a narrow waist, round shoulders, wide skirts, which nevertheless went back to complicated cuts. It no longer had to saved, and you could see that, the “New Look” corresponded to the spirit of the new time. Not very much was suitable for day use, why should it be, but visitors can enjoy three dresses owned by Olivia de Havilland, model by model watch the line evolve under Dior’s successors, including the most famous, Yves Saint Laurent.

He joined Dior from Algeria at 18, became creative director at 21, straightened the waist, shortened skirts and was inspired by youth fashion. “How to Dior” (until June 26) not only shows Laurent’s cyclamen evening dress, but also the creations of the following heads, after Gianfranco Ferré, above all John Galliano, whose exuberant pomp could already be guessed at in a denim overall with heart pockets and later inspired Lady Di. All this is enviably bombastic, but also: historical. The interpretations of young designers on the floor below are all the more interesting. Students at the Macromedia Fashion Design College not only reprocessed original cuts from Dior, but also the image of women and genders of the time. You see a lot of bulges, including plastic. Cis femininity is clearly no longer an issue for young designers. The headdress made of peacock feathers adorns every gender. Sonja Zekri

Every Parent’s Dream: Latin Wordle

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Hardly any online game has recently spread as quickly as the word puzzle Wordle. Six attempts, five letters – you’re looking for a word. And because you can only play once a day, there is no risk of addiction. Now there is Wordle too in Latin, dream of every parent whose children prepare for life in the intellectual boot camp of a humanistic high school. Because of course it is a completely different challenge to compete with a game than with the curriculum. Educational added value and pleasure are balanced. And that is just the beginning. The game has only been around for two and a half months, but by last count it’s in 137 languages. So if you want to learn Mandarin, Urdu or Icelandic, you can now “gamify” your efforts. And yes, there is also ancient Greek. Andrian Kreye

100 Movies of the 2010s

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What a book, but also: What a decade! As soon as the 2010s are halfway over, Taschen-Verlag heaves this Wackerstein onto the table, the most massive volume to date in the series published by art historian Jürgen Müller on the various decades of cinema. And rightly so: because what if it was the last decade of classic cinema? What you see here in an almost exuberant museum full of film stills that have already become iconic are ten years of fundamental changes – from digitization to networking to the attack of the identity fetishists. Tarantino basically touched on everything in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Now you have 900 full pages to work on: almost as beautiful as the cinema itself. Peter Richter

Glamorous cabbage and turnips: Vienna Philharmonic

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Apart from the eccentric art of the packaging engineer, which meant that the individual CDs could only be ripped out of the packaging with brute force at the risk of destroying them, one can approach this edition of the Vienna Philharmonic with joyful curiosity. One is almost urged to make a direct historical comparison when, for example, one hears Karl Böhm, James Levine and Herbert von Karajan conduct an overture, the Alto Rhapsody and the First Symphony by Johannes Brahms on a CD. The differences are huge. Böhm attaches great importance to maximum precision, Levine pokes around in inconclusive concepts in the alto rhapsody, but cast the singing role with Anne Sofie von Otter quite wrongly, and Karajan senses an even more exalted drama in each movement of the symphony than in the previous one. That is the most convincing. It is never wrong to understand music as sound theatre. And Joseph Krips? Yes, who remembers the one who had a decisive influence on Viennese musical life after the end of the war. Here he kneels in Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony and finds the right balance of clarity and sensuality, so to speak between Böhm and Karajan. Just right for Tchaikovsky’s exuberant sound visions.

It’s become a bit of a drag, of course a few contemporary works had to be included, you don’t want to come across as too old-fashioned. So Semyon Byschkov will conduct René Staar’s “Time Recycling”, Claudio Abbado works by Rihm and Ligeti, Andris Nelsons a triple concerto by Iván Eröd and André Previn his own “Diversions”. Business card that – well, to whom – is strongly recommended. The most interesting recordings in this edition are purely historical treasures, such as Lorin Maazel’s take on Richard Strauss’s “Der Bürger als Edelmann”, with Friedrich Gulda on the piano, the violinist Willi Boskovsky and the cellist Emanuel Brabec. A 1966 recording that showcases Maazel’s peculiar combination of wit and elegance. Conductors like Rafael Kubelik, who are easily overlooked in the glamorous retrospective, also come into their own here. With great seriousness and a great overview he performs Beethoven’s Seventh, which is hardly heard in the concert halls anymore. Because it demands more than just functional drama, as Kubelik impressively demonstrates. Helmut Mauro