Today at Flavorpill, we were surprised to find out that fake boy band 2gether of “U + Me = Us (Calculus)” fame would be reuniting for an MTV movie. We thought this indecipherable post by Nick Douglas about our audience in his What Your Favorite Blog Says About You write-up was a letdown. We were beyond excited to find out that David Cronenberg has been writing a novel. We got spooky with this video of a giant air-powered spider. We were curious about this Jim Jarmusch produced movie starring Chloe Sevigny and Mark Webber, written by the Go The F*ck to Sleep guy. We loved Trailers From Hell’s Cary Grant playlist. We got some tips about stocking our pantry. We learned that Michael Jackson was a Benny Hill fan. We discovered this bizarre-o AlphaNail video, thanks to Art Fag City. We wanted to buy one of these Stephen Colbert action figures. We thoroughly enjoyed this Jim Henson robot video. And finally, we debunked 10 popular myths and misconceptions along with C.G.P. Grey. The part about the spiders won’t help us sleep tonight.

If you can remember back to a time when MTV played music — lots and lots of music, in fact — then you’ll probably be excited by the news that the network’s four surviving original vjs — Martha Quinn, Alan Hunter, Mark Goodman, and Nina Blackwood — have signed a deal with Atria Books to write an uncensored oral history of its salad days in the early ’80s.

“The original vjs are to the MTV generation what the original cast of Saturday Night Live was to the ’70s generation, in terms of their influence and their iconic status,” says Judith Curr, Executive Vice President and Publisher of Atria Books. “This book will give voice to how Nina, Mark, Alan and Martha became the narrators of the early ’80s for us all.”

So, are you at all intrigued by the promise of reading some decades old dirt? Do you, like us, wish that cut-offs lovin’ vj Downtown Julie Brown of Club MTV fame was old school enough to be involved with the project? [via Gothamist]

1. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol dominated the holiday box office for the second week running, pulling in an estimated $31.3 million. It was followed by Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, which made an estimated $22.1 million, and Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, which made $18.3 million. [via Moviefone]

2. Rupert Murdoch, the 80-year old chairman and CEO of News Corp, decided to join Twitter on New Year’s Eve; so far his @rupertmurdoch account, which has been verified, has amassed more than 50,000 followers. [via The Hollywood Reporter]

3. MTV has announced that a new season of Punk’d will premiere on March 19, with a rotating series of celebrity guest hosts that includes Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Kellan Lutz, Bam Margera, and Dax Shepard. [via Deadline]

4. Queen Elizabeth has appointed famed British painter David Hockney — who recently turned down a request to paint her portrait, and previously refused knighthood — to the Order of Merit, a “select group of individuals who have achieved distinction in the arts, learning, science and public service.” [via Guardian]

5. Fans of Terrence Malick’s Palme d’Or-winning headscratcher The Tree of Life might be interested in these revealing storyboards which feature sequences that were not included in the final film. [via The Playlist]

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MTV’s Emmy-winning docu-drama True Life has gone to fat camp, lived in a brothel, had an eating disorder, and been pregnant over the span of nine seasons. The series will be returning later this month to share the struggles and life-changing issues of teens and young adults everywhere.

We’ll be seeing more of TV troublemakers the Theriot family and their special brand of dysfunctional nightmare for a part two follow-up to episode “The Riot in the Bayou,” which aired this February. You might remember them as the hell-raising clan that got up to all kinds of illegal and underage antics on camera. High school competitive wrestling, chubby chasers, diabetics, and demanding parents also go under the True Life microscope. In other words, it’s business like usual. Prepare to gawk on December 28 at 10 PM.

Talk about striking while the iron’s still hot (or lukewarm, if we’re being honest): There’s already a new season of Jersey Shore heading to MTV, and it premieres on January 5. Judging from the newly-released trailer that we just spotted over on Vulture, the fifth season will attempt to shrug off that whole Florence trip like a bad dream, replacing the language barriers and discotheques that ruled more recent episodes with a return to form: ie, Snooki inexplicably dressed up in a bunny costume; Snooki popping a squat on the back porch; Snooki telling the camera without a hint of irony that this is the best time of her life. The only real storyline we see (other than more of Mike’s “secret crush” on Snooki) comes about midway through the clip, when Vinnie decides to leave the Seaside Heights house, and the search for a new roommate must begin. We’ve got but one hope going into this: please don’t let the whole “Hurricane Situation … heading right for Snooki Island” thing actually pan out. We’d be oddly devastated. Read More »

Over the weekend, MTV aired its much-discussed True Life episode, “I’m Occupying Wall Street.” The half-hour documentary follows two protesters, a 23-year-old punk named Bryan, a leader at Zuccotti Park, and Kait, a formerly apolitical 20-year-old college student radicalized by the mass arrests in early October. When the network released a preview two weeks ago, it seemed that the episode would portray the Occupy movement in a sympathetic light; the portraits that emerge, however, aren’t particularly flattering.

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1. In what many UK papers are calling “the real Slumdog Millionaire,” 27-year-old Sushil Kumar, a poor government clerk from Bihar, has become the first person to win 50 million rupees (worth over $1 million), on an Indian game show. [via Guardian]

2. Earlier in the week, Keith Richards and Johnny Depp played a cover of “Key to the Highway” at the after-party for Depp’s new film, The Rum Diary. Watch a clip of their impromptu performance here.

3. Reality TV star Tonya Cooley, who most recently appeared on The Real World/Road Rules Challenge: The Ruins, is suing MTV, Bunim/Murray Productions, and her co-stars Kenny Santucci and Evan Starkman; according to her claims, the men sexually assaulted her with a toothbrush while she lay unconscious and the cameras remained rolling. [via TMZ]

4. Anger Management, the new sitcom based on the Adam Sandler comedy of the same name that Charlie Sheen has been shopping around since getting fired from Two and a Half Men, has finally found a home at FX. The network has ordered 10 episodes of the series, which it plans to premiere next summer. [via Vulture]

5. In case you’re as confused as we are by all of the recent changes, Gawker explains what Facebook’s new “trusted friend” category really means.

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Prepare to step into a time warp, children of the ’90s, because tonight our favorite music-video critics — Beavis and Butt-Head – return to MTV. If the reviews we’ve read, and the preview clip we posted a few months ago, are any indication, the show looks and feels almost exactly like the original. The big difference, of course, is that the chuckling protagonists will be mocking reality TV shows (along with some music videos), due to both licensing and relevance concerns. So, does the new focus work? After the jump, we’ve picked out the highlights from a number of reviews that find critics debating whether a Beavis and Butt-Head who make fun of Jersey Shore are necessary in 2011.

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Now that the United States has a real, visible, broad-based youth movement for the first time in a couple of decades, everyone’s looking to cash in on — er, cover – it. So, when word spread last week that The Real World was seeking Occupy Wall Street protesters to audition for the show’s 27th season, we weren’t particularly surprised. We did, however, have trouble imagining how a reality series that has basically devolved into drunk people hooking up and shouting at each other would manage to incorporate a character whose main interests are of the political, as opposed to alcoholic, variety.

While there may turn out to be a vocal 99 percenter among the next crop of housemates, it looks like we’ll see MTV’s take on OWS well before The Real World starts shooting. MTV has announced that True Life: I’m Occupying Wall Street will air November 5th at 6pm ET and “profile a group of 20somethings who’ve pitched their tents amid the skyscrapers of Wall Street to see how they’re feeling about the event.” One featured participant, named Bryan, is a leader of OWS’s sanitation team, which nearly went head-to-head with the city over a demand that protesters temporarily vacate so Zuccotti Park’s owners could clean the space. If the snippet of his story that’s depicted in the True Life preview clip is any indication, it looks like Viacom’s cameras will be fairly sympathetic to protesters. Watch it and let us know what you think after the jump.

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1. Do Silicon Valley tech geeks have as much reality TV potential as the gorilla juice heads who inhabit the Jersey Shore? A casting call for a new show — which is rumored to be for MTV as well — suggests that someone out there thinks so. [via AolTV]

2. The Emily Haines-led Canadian band Metric is teaming up with Oscar-winning composer Howard Shore to score David Cronenberg’s film adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel Cosmopolis, which tells the story of a 28-year-old multi-billionaire asset manager who will be played by Robert Pattinson. [via The Playlist]

3. Here’s a closer look at iPhone 4S’ new voice interface, Siri — including the really important stuff, like what happens when you tell her that you love her. [via Gizmodo]

4. We regret to inform you that Tom Hanks’ younger son Chet Hanks (a.k.a. Chet Haze) is back with another rap video. If you’re feeling brave, you can watch it here.

5. Beyoncé’s publicist says that the rumors that the pop star is faking her pregnancy — most recently sparked when her stomach “appeared to fold when she sat down” during an appearance on an Australian talk show — are “stupid, ridiculous and false.” [via Rolling Stone]

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