1. Is Jerry Seinfeld’s new reality game show The Marriage Ref so bad that it cancels out the good of Seinfeld? [via Gawker]
2. Billboard magazine’s fourth-annual Top 40 Money Makers loves the ’80s: U2, Madonna, and Bruce Springsteen top the list. [via MTV News]
3. Get a first look at William Baldwin’s upcoming Gossip Girl guest appearance as Serena and Eric’s long lost father. [via EW]
4. How much does it actually cost to produce a printed book versus a digital one? If you want the truth, ask Anne Rice. [via NYT]
5. Roger Ebert will debut his new computer-enhanced voice tomorrow on Oprah. [via USA Today]

Bonus Giveaway: We use Yahoo! Search to help find the top culture stories of the day. Now we’re giving you the chance to play editor, and you just might win a trip to Coachella.

Use Yahoo! Search to find an interesting link about Jerry Seinfeld, and drop it below in the comments. Our favorite entry will receive Seinfeld – Seasons 1 & 2, and more importantly, be entered to win a VIP trip for two to Coachella. Topics will be changing throughout the week, so get your search on and keep playing to increase your chances of winning!

Today at Flavorpill, we chortled over the fact that James Cameron is working on a prequel novel to Avatar that should be finished later this year. We were creeped out by Robert Smith’s cover of “Very Good Advice” for the Alice in Wonderland soundtrack. We wanted to buy some of The Lost Art of Inglourious Basterds — Quentin Tarantino, Upper Playground and the Weinstein Company have all teamed up on the poster project, and it benefits Haiti. We wondered if making our own music video for “You’re So Vain” could be our claim to fame. We found it funny that Madonna waited until now to launch her own fashion line. We peeped the winning photographs from the 2010 World Press Photo Contest. We made a mental note to tell you to read this Roger Ebert interview in Esquire (also, if you’re not already following his journal, you should). We were sad to hear that the lead singer of the Knack had died, but happy to meet his Sharona. And finally we watched the first episode of HBO’s latest, The Ricky Gervais show, which premieres on Friday. You can download it for free now on iTunes.

Our friends at Urlesque tipped us off to this montage of awkward moments between famed film critic friends Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert that has been cobbled together from outtakes of their TV show. It’s interesting that to this day Siskel and Ebert remain the most identifiable critics out there — apologies to Michael Phillips and A.0. Scott, but your version of At the Movies will never have the same mainstream appeal. We’re also charmed by the moment around 1:30, where Siskel is ribbing Ebert about his McDonald’s apple pie obsession.

Watch the best friends go at each other — with the skill of an old married couple — after the jump.

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Or least that’s what Roger Ebert says in his review (now that he can finally publish it):

Watching Avatar, I felt sort of the same as when I saw Star Wars in 1977. That was another movie I walked into with uncertain expectations. James Cameron’s film has been the subject of relentlessly dubious advance buzz, just as his Titanic was. Once again, he has silenced the doubters by simply delivering an extraordinary film. There is still at least one man in Hollywood who knows how to spend $250 million, or was it $300 million, wisely.

The film, which opens in theaters this Friday, has been shrouded in secrecy since its inception. While many feared that end result could never live up to all of the hype, it currently sits at a comfortable 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 100% rating from top critics. The pretend James Cameron is stoked.

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Megan Fox may be an it girl, but she’s currently experiencing what every celebrity does eventually: major backlash, and on the brink of her first headlining gig in Jennifer’s Body. Being called “dumb” and “ungracious” by anonymous Transformers crew is probably not what the leading lady, even while channeling a demonic killer cheerleader who eats teenage boys’ flesh, wants to hear. Oscar-winner Diablo Cody is back with a somewhat satiric horror film that looks a lot like Carrie, but with all the awkwardly quasi-hip lingo you loved to hate from Juno.

Follow the crazy critical maze after the jump. Read More »

To scalp or not to scalp? The critics have weighed in on this question, and the consensus is… decidedly mixed. Roger Ebert is hailing Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds as the best film of year, while the folks at The New Yorker have written it off as “pure sensation.” Not sure what to think? Are you, too, slightly puzzled by the grassroots, spray-painted advertising we found outside our office? Check out our review roundup and give us the verdict: Will you be seeing Inglourious Basterds tonight?

“Immediately after Pulp Fiction played at Cannes, QT asked me what I thought. ‘It’s either the best film of the year or the worst film,’ I said. I hardly knew what the hell had happened to me. The answer was: the best film. Tarantino films have a way of growing on you. It’s not enough to see them once.”

-Rogert Ebert [via Chicago Sun Times]

View what the rest had to say after the jump. Read More »

We have a weird obsession with Roger Ebert that’s hard to explain. Maybe it was all of those guest appearances on Sesame Street with Siskel. We only bring it up because he’s at the center of a major internet brouhaha involving a movie critic named Armond White and a negative review of District 9. White, a critic for the New York Press, is known as a troll in the film world. He has hated every single movie in the Harry Potter and Pixar franchise. He liked Land of the Lost. Hated All the Real Girls; loved The Nanny Diaries. When it came time to review District 9 — which at that point had 49 positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes — you can guess which way he went. Read More »

Today at Flavorpill, we wanted to visit this mysterious floating campground in Holland. We considered just getting rid of August, something Slate has been petitioning for since 2001. We were shocked that Julia Child has old people sex in Julie and Julia — we remember her relationship with Paul coming off as much more chaste in her memoir. (And then we came across this juicy excerpt from Julie Powell’s new book about butchery and cheating, Cleaving.) We found it funny that the US military may ban Twitter and Facebook. And then the more we thought about it, we found it creepy. We were sad Gotham didn’t rank higher on Architects Journal’s top 10 list of comic book cities. We read Roger Ebert’s annotated top 10 of The Spectator’s list of 50 Essential Films and felt bad because we’ve only seen one. And finally, we pretended we were in a British nightclub back in the day thanks to Mark Leckey’s charming short film.

Today at Flavorpill, we said our farewells to Blender Magazine and felt bad for our friends cut from the New York Times. We thought Padma’s burger commercial was more gluttonous than sexy — but that’s Hardee’s for you. Read More »

Today’s big winners: Meg and Jack White; the Astroland Park rocket; barefoot kicking; the producers of Speed-the-Plow; cute kids; graphic designers (both in and out of love); Joan Didion; Edificial; Waiting for Guffman; Jimmy Fallon; Bruce McDonald; Blart Blurt.

Today’s big losers: Cardio for Indie Rockers; 3-D glasses; Adobe; DVDs; Martin Louie the King Jr.; Fleet Foxes; Third Eye Blind; Stephanie Meyers; David Dixon; Wrestlemania; Bill O’Reilly; Bernie Madoff.

Side note: Tune in tomorrow at 1 p.m. GMT for a live Webcast of an interview with Coldplay and Absolute Radio; we sent them some silly questions to ask Chris Martin, so there’s a chance he could storm out.