1. George Clooney’s The Ides of March, an adaptation of Beau Williams’s play Farragut North, which was inspired by events in Howard Dean’s 2004 Presidential primary campaign, will open the Venice Film Festival on August 31st. The film’s all-star cast features Ryan Gosling, Paul Giamatti, Marisa Tomei, Jeffrey Wright, Max Minghella, and Evan Rachel Wood. [via Slashfilm]

2. Jon Stewart explained to his Daily Show viewers last night that producers at Fox edited his interview with Chris Wallace to make him come across as emotional and erratic. “I suggest you look at the unedited version online where my emotional states don’t seem to change so arbitrarily,” he says. “The arguments are a little clearer and a little less like a scene from woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.” [via The Daily Beast]

3. Jackass’s Bam Margera has responded to Roger Ebert’s controversial tweets about his co-star Ryan Dunn’s death in a car accident yesterday, writing, “I just lost my best friend, I have been crying hysterical for a full day and piece of sh*t roger ebert has the gall to put in his 2 cents … About a jackass drunk driving and his is one, f*ck you! Millions of people are crying right now, shut your fat f*cking mouth!” [via Vulture]

4. We’re not sure how we feel about this: The final season of Weeds will jump three years into the future, with Nancy Botwin entering into the witness protection program in New York City. Watch a behind-the-scenes preview clip here.

5. NPR is streaming the Buddy Holly tribute album, which features contributions from Paul McCartney, Lou Reed, The Black Keys, Julian Casablancas, Cee Lo Green, and Florence and the Machine, among others. [via Pop Candy]

Bonus link: Check out some “top quality giant robot porn.”

Even through its nebulous extinction and the onset of bigger and brighter technology, polaroid has remained a compelling format for artists, amateurs, and appreciators alike. Sure, maybe it’s just a hipster faux-stalgia thing, but we think there’s a little more to it. In an age when so many of the photographs we are bombarded with every day are endlessly processed, photoshopped and color-corrected, it feels nice to return to an analog way of seeing the world, and there’s a distinct sense of intimacy in a polaroid that you know hasn’t been messed with too much – even if it may or may not have been expertly staged. There are a million polaroids of celebrities out there, but we’ve combed through and picked the best and weirdest for your viewing pleasure. Click through for 25 of our most favorite polaroids of the rich and the famous, and let us know which ones we’ve missed in the comments!

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Here at Flavorpill, we’re into music. And like any group of music nerds with access to the Internet, we like garnering suggestions from people we trust about the best bands out there. So who better to suggest some great musicians than, well, some great musicians? After all, they should be experts on the subject. Here, we’ve compiled a list of our favorite musicians’ own favorite musicians for your listening — and obsessing — pleasure. After all, if you live, breathe and sleep Frank Zappa (as yours truly admits to doing for a spell in her teenage years), now you know which bands to listen to, just to, you know, complete the experience. Of course, just like us mortals (and probably even more so), musicians’ favorite bands change with their mood, the season and what they ate for lunch, so consider the following a snapshot, or in at least one case, just what John Darnielle would say in front of a firing squad. Ah, obsession.

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1. Salma Hayek is teaming with ABC to develop an eight-hour miniseries adaptation of Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, which already inspired an incredibly successful Broadway musical. Any casting suggestions? [via TVLine]

2. Last night Julian Casablancas inexplicably tweeted fake cover art for The Strokes’ upcoming album, which is due out in March. At least we think it’s fake… [via Vulture]

3. Baz Luhrmann is thinking about shooting his upcoming film adaptation of The Great Gatsby in 3D, which leads us to believe it’s going to be more of an Australia for the director than a Moulin Rouge. [via Forbes]

4. Ryan Murphy has confirmed that Gwyneth Paltrow will reprise her role as Holly Holliday for two episodes of Glee in the spring; the plotline will involve her subbing for the sex ed teacher and (briefly?) dating Mr. Schuester. [via EW]

5. A Weekly World News story claiming that Facebook is shutting down on March 15th — because “managing the site has become too stressful” for Mark Zuckerberg — sent the Internet into a tailspin. Obviously it’s about as true their latest Bat Boy sighting. [via Gawker]

Bonus link: First Peek At 2011 No Pants Subway Ride

Featuring an all-star cast of vocalists, the multimedia collaboration between David Lynch, Danger Mouse, and Sparklehorse finally receives an official release today.

Guests on the album include the Flaming Lips, Super Furry Animals singer Gruff Rhys, Julian Casablancas, Iggy Pop, and Danger Mouse’s Broken Bells bandmate James Mercer. Lynch himself sings on two tracks, as well as contributing dozens of haunting photographs for a companion book available in the deluxe edition.

While the album was originally ready to go last year, label issues caused indefinite delays regarding when, or if, it would finally appear. Its release this week is bittersweet, as it now serves as an epitaph for one of its contributors, Vic Chesnutt, as well as one of its masterminds, Mark Linkous (aka Sparklehorse), both of whom took their own lives since the music’s initial appearance in 2009.

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To celebrate our recent streak of wonderful weather, here’s a weekly mixtape fit for a glorious spring day. There are both up and coming wunderkinds (Avi Buffalo, Twin Sister) and established musical geniuses (Wolf Parade, Ratatat) at work on this diverse set of songs — but what they all have in common is their seasonal appeal. See for yourself after the jump, where you can download the entire mix or check out each of the ten tracks individually.

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In case you decided that an episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by Jude Law featuring musical guest Pearl Jam sounded way too ’90s for you to DVR, here’s the best part: the SNL Digital Short for the Lonely Island’s “Boombox.” Julian Casablancas of The Strokes, who appeared on the track on Incredibad, makes an appearance in fingerless gloves, so that’s exciting. We’re also just big fans of the message: A boombox is a not a toy.

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Like many great artists, Sparklehorse mastermind Mark Linkous led a troubled life. His struggle with drugs and personal demons led him to a near-death overdose experience while on tour with Radiohead in 1996. However, it also drove him to explore deep creative recesses, and saw him collaborate with a plethora of modern music’s finest, including the Flaming Lips, PJ Harvey, Tom Waits, Vic Chesnutt, Danger Mouse, David Lynch, Iggy Pop, and Radiohead themselves.

Over the weekend, however, Linkous lost his inner battles, taking his own life in an alleyway in Knoxville, Tennessee. He was 47. The artist was in the process of relocating to the area, where his frequent collaborator, Scott Minor, is based, and was reportedly putting the finishing touches on a new album, the follow-up to 2006′s Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain — an album that scored an enviable 8.3 rating from Pitchfork.

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1. Vampire Weekend, Julian Casablancas, and Beck will feature on Hear To Help, an upcoming Haiti benefit album from Filter Magazine and American Eagle. [via NME]
2. The Last Goodbye, a rock musical adaptation of Romeo and Juliet featuring the songs of Jeff Buckley (including “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” and “Eternal Life”), will premiere during the 2010-11 season. Fun fact: It’s the first show authorized by the musician’s estate since his death in 1997. [via Variety]
3. Watch clips from New York socialite Tinsley Mortimer‘s new reality show on The CW, High Society. [via Gawker]
4. There are seven(!) plays and musicals about gay life opening in New York in the next several weeks — and what’s exciting is they’re more about love than politics. [via NYT]
5. Among the celebrities still willing to talk to Jay Leno when he steals back The Tonight Show on March 1: Sarah Palin, Lindsey Vonn, and the cast of Jersey Shore. [via ArtsBeat]

Bonus link of humiliation: Tufts University admission videos on YouTube

Sure, there’s something to be said for pushing boundaries, constantly seeking out strange new sounds, and generally compiling the ephemera of the musical universe. But if there’s one thing any music fan with a taste for hooks knows, it’s that the folks at Pitchfork have a habit of often missing the forest for the trees. While the online indie-music kings at the site spend their days approaching music from a nigh-on scientific standpoint, some of the year’s best music can end up getting the shaft, simply because it isn’t weird or progressive enough. So, we weren’t all that surprised to see that a lot of our favorite albums of 2009 were omitted from Pitchfork’s top 10 albums of the year list. However, the fact that many of them not only also failed to appear in the site’s top 50, but even the honorable mentions, was a little too much to let slide.

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