1. Entertainment Weekly has your first look at stills from Tim Burton’s reanimation of his 1984 short film Frankenweenie — which Disney executives originally found “too weird” and actually fired him for making at the time.

2. Patti Smith, Ke$ha, and Adele are among the artists contributing Bob Dylan covers to a new charity compilation album that will benefit Amnesty International. [via NME]

3. Watch Beyoncé throw an amazing, technicolor trailer park party in her newly-released music video for “Party,” which features cameos by Solange, Kelly Rowland, and a dumpster swimming pool. [via Vulture]

4. Oliver Stone has signed on to direct a movie for HBO that will be based on Robert Caro’s 1974 Pulitzer-Prize winning book about how famed urban planner Robert Moses reshaped the face of New York. [via THR]

5. Last night on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart asked the question that many of us following the Occupy Wall Street movement have been wondering: What the fuck happened in Oakland? [via Gawker]

Bonus Buzz: Fox And Friends Bash Grinnell College’s Gender-Neutral Housing Policy

1. The pilot for Zooey Deschanel’s new single girl comedy The New Girl is currently available for download on iTunes, and will be streaming on Hulu and Fox’s website beginning September 13 — a week before its official premiere date. [via THR]

2. George Lucas’ crazy new offices for LucasFilm in Singapore look like something out of Star Wars movies, don’t you think? [via Slashfilm]

3. Michael Pedicone, the drummer for My Chemical Romance, has been fired just one year after joining the group for allegedly stealing from the band. His explanation via Twitter: “What happened is more complicated than it sounds but I did make a mistake. It was never my intention to hurt this band or all of you.”

4. Hilarious Daily Show “Senior Black Correspondent” Larry Wilmore has just been cast in what may be a recurring role as Damon Wayans Jr.’s boss on the ABC show Happy Endings. [via Vulture]

5. Newsflash: Madonna absolutely loathes hydrangeas. She also plans to release a new album early next year, her first since signing that deal with Live Nation. [via Billboard]

Bonus Buzz: Cats Celebrating Labor Day

We don’t normally pay attention to this kind of thing, but in this case, we’ll make an exception: For the first time in ten years, The Tonight Show failed to come out on top in the quarterly late-night ratings race among viewers 18 to 49. Instead, that honor went to The Daily Show. Sure, the margin was slim (1.295 million viewers vs. 1.292 million viewers), but we’re sure that this has the suits over at NBC wondering if they made the right decision bringing back Jay Leno. In other happy news for Comedy Central, the Daily Show/Colbert Report programming block finished the quarter as the top-rated late-night shows among younger viewers 18 to 34. What can we say? Young people love their fake news shows. Meanwhile, things are not looking so good for Conan O’Brien as of late; for the first time since his show’s premiere in November, monthly viewership dipped below the 1 million viewer mark, putting him behind E!’s late-night offering, Chelsea Lately… [via THR]

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.”

1. Frequent collaborators James Franco and performance artist Kalup Linzy are planning to release a three-song, limited-edition EP entitled Turn It Up on July 12th. The pair will be shooting video clips for each of the songs, and promise some “surprise guest cameos.” [via PopEater]

2. Both BBC programming chief Sam Hodges and showrunner Steven Moffat confirmed via Twitter yesterday that Matt Smith will be returning for another season of Doctor Who next year in 14 new episodes. [via Blastr]

3. Should we blame Bridesmaids or The Hangover 2?: Reese Witherspoon is planning to produce and star in a new wedding-related comedy called Who Invited Her? that’s about a “about a woman who insists on tagging along on a guy’s bachelor party weekend.” Because that doesn’t sound like an annoying premise. [via EW]

4. Oscar-winning actress Melissa Leo is reportedly considering a role in an upcoming Broadway revival of William Inge’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Picnic. The show — which focuses on “young love and growing older in small-town Kansas” — is set to begin production this fall. [via ArtsBeat]

5. Preview the tracklist for Stephen Malkmus’ new Beck-produced LP, Mirror Traffic, here. The album is due out August 23rd from Matador, but you can already download one of the tracks, “Senator,” here.

Bonus link: The Daily Show’s Kristen Schaal Explains The Importance of Penis Pics in the Advancement of Technology

1. AMC is developing a reality series that will focus on the two guys who run Kevin Smith’s New Jersey comic book store, The Secret Stash; Smith will be an executive producer on the show. [via THR]

2. Well that was fast: “Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall,” the latest single from Coldplay, has already been accused of ripping off another song (“Ritmo de la Noche,”), leading the band to release this statement: “[Peter] Allen and [Adrienne] Anderson are credited as writers on ‘Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall.’ Chris was inspired to write the song after watching the film Biutiful by Alejandro González Iñárritu. In the film, there is a nightclub scene in which a track ['Ritmo de la Noche'] is playing in the background, based on ‘I Go to Rio.’” [via Vulture]

3. We were curious how Jon Stewart would react to the news that his pal Anthony Weiner the man behind the now infamous crotch shot. If you missed The Daily Show last night, you can watch the segment on what he calls “weirdest f’ing story I’ve ever seen in my life” here.

4. Definitely worth checking out: The New York Times’ interactive coverage of the 54th Venice Biennale asks for your own six word reviews of the featured works.

5. Because HBO seems intent on teasing us in the days leading up to June 26th, you can now watch three more minutes of the Season 4 premiere of True Blood here. So that’s six of the 55 minutes or so already accounted for — what are your thoughts so far?

Bonus link: 10 physical gestures that have been patented

Today at Flavorpill, we stood by powerless as Lady Gaga decapitated our respective childhoods with her My Little Pony heads necklace. We followed along as Slate’s Chris Wilson attempted to solve the real mystery lurking in the chapel where Dan Brown set The Da Vinci Code. We discovered what typography has to do with cross-cultural understanding and linguistic minimalism. We met the very funny Al Madrigal, The Daily Show’s newest contributor, and some of the composers behind our all-time favorite TV theme songs. We decided that we find the locations and set design for X-Men: First Class way more exciting than the promos for the film itself — Emma Frost is so lucky! We liked these alternative posters for The Royal Tenenbaums. We read a short history of lady pirates. We enjoyed Cracked’s roundup of the five craziest buildings ever proposed with a straight face. And finally we were shocked on a few different levels to hear that Mel Gibson got a 10-minute standing ovation at Cannes for his performance in The Beaver. Aren’t you?

1. Walter Breuning, who is officially recognized as the oldest man in the word, died yesterday in Montana of natural causes. At 114 years old, he lived through both the stock market crash of 1929 and the birth of the computer — and was around to see Halley’s Comet pass through twice! [via Gawker]

2. Interpol are planning to do a visual collaboration with director David Lynch during their performance tonight at Coachella. Their set will also feature the premiere of his short animation “I Touch A Red Button Man,” which will accompany their song “Lights.” [via NME]

3. This is your final weekend to check out Julie Taymor’s version of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark; after taking a brief hiatus, a slightly different take on the musical — think less Arachne, more Green Goblin, no Geek Chorus — is set to debut on May 12th. [via NYT]

4. Last night at one of his live stage shows in Toronto, Charlie Sheen decided to spice things up by revealing the identity of his first celebrity hookup: Jennifer Grey. Interesting, if not that all that surprising given their on-screen chemistry in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. [via Vulture]

5. In case you missed Ricky Gervais last night on The Daily Show, here’s the general gist of his interview with Jon Stewart: “This is what I think I should apologize for about the Golden Globes: fuck all!” Watch the full clip here.

Bonus clip: Spike Jonze Presents Lil Buck and Yo-Yo Ma

So maybe the old Gray Lady and her pals have some life in them yet: According to a new study from the Harvard University Institute of Politics, 49 percent of the 3,018 18-to-29-year-olds surveyed (and a whopping 60 percent of college students) said that national newspapers were their preferred source of political news. While researchers failed to differentiate between the print and online versions of said papers, it’s certainly a vote of confidence in these long-established brands. And now for the troubling side of the findings: The other “news sources” ranked as follows: friends’ Facebook pages (35 percent), official Facebook pages (29 percent), partisan blogs (22 percent), mobile alerts (19 percent), friends’ Twitter feeds (17 percent), and official Twitter feeds (16 percent). Are we the only ones curious as to where two of our political news standbys — The Daily Show and The Colbert Report — would land on this list? [via soupsoup]

1. Bill Murray will play FDR in an adaptation of the BBC radio play Hyde Park On the Hudson, which recounts the story of the president’s love affair with his distant cousin, Margaret Stuckley; the film will be directed by Morning Glory’s Roger Michell. [via Vulture]

2. Charlie Sheen and Snoop Dogg have reportedly laid down a track together. Maybe this means that Snoop will be coming along on Sheen’s live tour? [via Perez Hilton]

3. Daily Show correspondent Jason Jones will play Heather Locklear’s “younger hunky husband” in a new CBS comedy about life in Hollywood called The Assistants. [via Deadline]

4. Where the Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak has reached an agreement with HarperCollins to publish Bumble-Ardy, the first book that he has both illustrated and written since 1981. If the title sounds familiar, it might be because it’s based on an animated segment for Sesame Street that aired in the early 1970s. [via UnBeige]

5. MTV has released the first official trailer for their Teen Wolf, and it’s just as angst and drama filled as you might have feared. [via io9]

Bonus link: Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof attempts to sum up his show in one tweet