The news Friday that the much-diminished Village Voice fired three of the last remaining writers on staff before the New Times’ hostile takeover in 2005, set the media world on fire. It was bad enough that veterans, theatre critic Michael Feingold and food critic Robert Sietsema were both axed. But it was the news that longtime gossip columnist Michael Musto—who has been writing a column since 1984—was laid off that was the biggest shock.

The New Yorker’s Philip Gourevitch wrote on Twitter: “The ‪@villagevoice firing ‪@mikeymusto amounts to ‪@villagevoice firing itself: auto-da-fé.”

Merida, the heroine of Pixar’s Brave, isn’t your typical Disney princess (no offense, Sleeping Beauty). She has frizzy hair; she beats off potential suitors with her archery skills; and (spoiler alert) she rides off on a horse without a prince in the end. So fans were baffled this week when Disney decided to give her a sexy makeover after adding her to their line of princess dolls. The new Merida had a slimmer waistline, beachy waves instead of untamed curls, and worst of all, no trademark bow and arrow. The new look caused such an uproar that it led to a Change.org petition with thousands of signatures to restore Merida’s original look—and Disney listened, sheepishly pulling the new Merida from its website. The heroine’s creator, Brenda Chapman, talks to Caroline Linton about what happened to the character modeled after her own daughter—and why it sends a bad message to girls. 

Now that the dust has settled, it's easier to get a larger picture of what's going on for next season. The numbers: 51 scripted series have been ordered by the broadcast networks for the 2013–14 season. There are 29 new dramas for next season and 22 comedies. Thirty-one shows will launch in the fall, and 20 are being held for a later date, should some of the fall offerings fail to enflame the public's imagination. On the network level, ABC picked up 12 new scripted series; CBS ordered eight; NBC issued series pickups to 14, while Fox did the same for 12 scripted series. The CW claimed five new scripted shows.

Ratings are in a free fall. The judging panel was a $40 million bust. Viewers are exasperated over predictable themes and performances. Culture blogs are flooded with obituaries for American Idol. Confetti rained on Candice Glover Thursday night as she tearfully warbled her coronation song, winning the 12th season of the veteran singing competition. But was she singing at its funeral?

“It’s more like that body at the beginning of Monty Python and the Holy Grail who cries, ‘I’m not dead yet,’” Michael Slezak, senior editor at TV Line and longtime Idol expert, tells The Daily Beast. “Idol is like that leper. It might be mistaken for dead, but it’s not dead yet.”

The scene in an English pub on Thursday:

Football Fan No. 1: “Hey, did you hear David Beckham’s retiring from professional football?”

At 23, Marine Vacth is already a veteran model. Spotted by a scout at the age of 15, she became the face of Yves Saint Laurent’s “Parisienne” fragrance in 2011, a job previously held by Kate Moss. After small roles in films by Cédric Klapisch and Alexandre Arcady, Vacth will doubtless receive more attention after the release of François Ozon’s Jeune et jolie (Young and Beautiful), which premiered on Thursday as part of the Cannes Film Festival’s Official Competition.

Ozon’s film is considerably less straightforward, and more puzzling, than Vacth’s seemingly smooth career trajectory. Yet by the end of the film, it’s abundantly clear why the director (whose films range from the frothy 8 Women to thrillers like Swimming Pool) wanted her for the central role of a morose teen prostitute. Instead of the usual case study of a good girl gone bad, a genre long cherished by Hollywood, Young and Beautiful is a thoroughly nonmoralistic, rather clinical, film about the opaque Isabelle, a 17-year-old from a well-heeled family who becomes a part-time hooker for pleasure instead of money. Perhaps the most radical—and most disturbing—aspect of the film is Ozon’s refusal to give the audience access to Isabelle’s interior life; this is not a character study in which a protagonist’s behavior is explained with the help of psychological talking points.

Vacht’s low-key approach to acting, in which emotions only register on her face in the subtlest fashion, is perfectly suited to the demands of a film that, quite perversely for some audience members, depicts an adolescent’s sexual experimentation without analyzing it. Interestingly enough, Ozon lucidly explains his casting of Vacth by arguing that he “realized it would be better to work with an actress who was slightly older than the role, someone with maturity and distance … The moment I met her, I was struck by an impression of extreme fragility and, at the same time, strength … Her obvious physical beauty holds a mystery, a secret. It arouses our curiosity, we want to know more.”