1. It has been announced that Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Melissa McCarthy will be among the presenters at this year’s Golden Globe Awards, which airs this Sunday night at 8pm on NBC. So, there you go, that’s three celebrities who aren’t afraid to be in the same room with the evening’s host, Ricky Gervais. [via EW]

2. Exciting news for contemporary art lovers: Yesterday, The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s board approved the hire of Sheena Wagstaff, the chief curator at the Tate Modern in London for the past ten years, to oversee a new department at the Met that will be devoted entirely to work from the 20th and 21st century. [via Daily Intel]

3. Apparently director Alexander Payne already has a lead actor in mind for Nebraska, his black-and-white followup to The Descendants, but the person who he wants hasn’t even read the script for the father/son road trip comedy yet. Any guesses who it could be? [via The Playlist]

4. Diplo has a picture book called 128 Beats Per Minute: Diplo’s Visual Guide to Music, Culture, and Everything in Between coming out in April on Universe Publishing, a Rizzoli imprint. He also thinks that this year’s Coachella lineup looks pretty lame. [via Pitchfork]

5. In case you missed this yesterday, the very intense first five minutes of Steven Soderbergh’s excellent new action flick Haywire are streaming on Hulu. We’ve seen the entire film, and promise you that it’s definitely worth checking out in theaters when it opens on January 20th.

Bonus Buzz: The Original Keyboard Cat Has Been Found

“World music” is a ridiculous label for any number of reasons, but perhaps the most pernicious is its us-and-them implication — the idea there’s our music and there’s their music, and never the twain shall meet. In fact, music is a constantly flowing and evolving thing, and the ever-increasing flow of Western culture to the rest of the world — and vice versa — has made for some fascinating musical hybrids, as well as some entirely new sounds. Some of these are well-known, but others have languished in relative obscurity over the years. So here are some of our favorite unexpectedly awesome genres from around the world, past and present.

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One of the more enjoyable things we came across on the internet this morning was this 8-bit remix of the Game of Thrones theme, and it got us thinking about how 8-bit music and culture has slowly threatened to work its way into the mainstream over the last few years. In a way, it makes sense — the generation who grew up with Commodore 64s and NESes are in their 30s now, and very much a target market for retro chic. Systems like the C64 and NES were amongst the first genuinely affordable home computers, and they had rudimentary sound hardware that could create simple and distinctive sounds. Musicians soon started to explore how these sounds could be used, and in the years since, 8-bit music has grown to encompass everything from the world of chiptune — which faithfully uses vintage hardware to create new music — to a selection of artists who take 8-bit influences and work them into hybrid sounds. So here’s an exploration of 8-bit sounds past and present.

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Just when it looked like the ongoing storm over MIA’s MAYA might finally have died down, along comes Diplo to stir it all up again. Lynn Hirschberg’s infamous hatchet job for the New York Times did MIA’s image a great deal of harm, but not because of the truffle fries controversy – if anything, the most damaging quotes came from her ex-collaborator and ex-boyfriend, who dismissed her “whole terrorism gimmick.” He’s expanded on his views this week in an interview with WWD, where he suggests that she “glamorize[d] terrorism” with the album – despite his entreaties not to do so – and that “when it comes to die-hard, facts-on-the-ground politics, she’s at zero. She’s nothing.”

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1. The 2011 Oscar nominations are in, with The King’s Speech dominating the pack with 12 nods. The Academy Awards will air live on ABC on February 27th. [via THR]

2. According to Diplo, Beyonce and Sleigh Bells guitarist Derek Miller have been in the studio together working on new material, but it’s unclear whether it will ever be released. [via NME]

3. Steve Morrison, the CEO of All3Media, the British-based company behind Skins, is shocked that so many companies have pulled their advertising from the show; yesterday afternoon, Schick became the sixth advertiser to drop the series. [via THR]

4. Last night on The Daily Show, Fox News commentator Megyn Kelly — who denied on-air that her network uses Nazi rhetoric— got served by Jon Stewart. Big time. Check out the cliphere.

5. Joe Magnaniello, who plays the hunky werewolf Alcide on True Bood is reportedly one of the frontrunners for the role of Superman in Zack Snyder’s upcoming reboot. [via io9]

Bonus link: This Is What Really Hides In Taco Bell’s “Beef”

Today at Flavorpill, we wished that we had a job that required more pretty pencils. We celebrated the sartorial greatness that is Forever 21. We listened to Lil’ Kim diss Nicki Monaj in a track entitled “Black Friday.” We made a mental note to DVR Bob’s Burgers, a new animated series featuring two of our favorite comedians, Eugene Mirman and Kristen Schaal. We wondered if the Google/Groupon rumors were true. We learned that the Strokes scrapped the original studio recording of songs for their upcoming album. We added some interesting new blogs to our RSS readers. We discovered that back in 1957, Donald Duck co-hosted the Oscars. We watched the Diplo-directed clip for Robyn’s “Dancehall Queen.” We sorted famous film and TV characters into Hogwarts houses and decided that we’d definitely want to be in Ravenclaw with Liz Lemon. And finally, we wanted to go for a ride in one of the 100 best movie spaceships — specifically Discovery One from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

It’s been two decades since Matt Black and Jon More, aka Coldcut, founded iconic UK label Ninja Tune, and they’re celebrating with one of the most drool-worthy box sets ever.

Including six CDs, six 7-inches, two posters, and a hardcover edition of the retrospective book Ninja Tune: 20 Years Of Beats & Pieces, the Ninja Tune XX box is a collector’s dream. The set features new tracks and remixes from Roots Manuva, Amon Tobin, Diplo, Gold Panda, Kid Koala, Mr. Scruff, the Orb, and a host of others, alongside classic tracks from throughout the label’s history.

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Focusing on new technology, the Creators Project is an online and real-world hub for groundbreaking work from some of the best visual, multimedia, and musical artists of the digital age.

Founded by Vice and Intel, the Project pairs an increasingly intriguing web archive of work by the likes of Spike Jonze, Diplo, Romain Gavras, Danny Perez, Mark Ronson, Phoenix, and James Powderly with a series of immersive music and art events taking place in major metropolises throughout 2010. Next up is Seoul on August 28, followed by Beijing on September 17.

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Super-producer Diplo’s Favela on Blast film explores the vibrant music culture of funk carioca, which has been emanating for two decades from the poorest streets of Rio de Janeiro.

The DJ and Mad Decent founder traveled to Rio with Brazilian filmmaker Leandro HBL to capture the MCs, DJs, and dancers in action, bumping and grinding their way to euphoria. Electronic ’80s funk combines with bossa nova, samba, and other traditional Brazilian influences to create an impossibly bombastic sound, with songs like “Wanna Fuck?” appealing to the primal nature of desire — often leading to massive street parties that threaten to shift the power to the people of the favelas.

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Swedish pop royalty Robyn releases the first installment in her three-album Body Talk project today, featuring contributions from top-notch producers Diplo and Röyksopp.

As with her self-titled 2005 breakthrough album, Body Talk Pt. 1 finds its voice through a trademark combination of sass and style, balancing genuine emotion with street-smart attitude. It’s that dual nature that lets Robyn nail a kiss-off mantra like “Don’t Fucking Tell Me What to Do” as easily as she takes on late-night lonely anthem (and lead single) “Dancing on My Own.”

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