1. If you blinked during last night’s Super Bowl half-time show, then you might have missed MIA flipping off the crowd while performing “Gimme All Your Luvin” with Madonna and Nicki Minaj, but now it’s all that anyone is talking about. The official apology from NBC: “Our system was late to obscure the inappropriate gesture and we apologize to our viewers.” [via THR]

2. Chronicle, Fox’s low-budget new movie about a group of teen boys with superpowers, topped the Super Bowl weekend box office (which is usually a total wasteland), taking in an estimated $22 million. Daniel Radcliffe’s thriller Woman in Black surprised everyone by coming in second place with $21 million, followed by The Grey, which made about $9.5 million. Not so lucky? That Drew Barrymore saves the whales movie. [via ArtsBeat]

3. The @CormacCMcCarthy Twitter account, which counts Margaret Atwood and Jack Dorsey among its followers, has been exposed as a hoax — news that isn’t entirely surprising given the famed novelist’s belief that “anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.” [via Guardian]

4. Harrison Ford is in talks to resurrect his Rick Deckard character in Ridley Scott‘s new Blade Runner film. Does this mean that it’s going to be a sequel as opposed to a reboot? [via Vulture]

5. Here is that slightly-extended version of The Avengers trailer that debuted last night. There’s not a lot of new footage, but you do get a better look at Mark Ruffalo’s take on the Hulk and the army that Loki has amassed.

Bonus Buzz: The Single Most Awkward Photo Of Madonna During Her Halftime Show

If you’ve been feeling a little lonely in the Twitter-verse this morning, it could be because of a protest against Twitter’s new international censorship policies organized by Anonymous Operations. The day-long event entails abstaining from Twitter to protest rules that would allow the company to censor tweets in specific countries — or more precisely, as the New York Times explained, “So if someone posts a message that insults the monarchy of Thailand, which is punishable by a jail term, it will be blocked and unavailable to Twitter users in that country, but still visible elsewhere. What is more, Twitter users in Thailand will be put on notice that something was removed: A gray box will show up in its place, with a clear note: “Tweet withheld,” it will read. “This tweet from @username has been withheld in: Thailand.” The outcry has been considerable, but we have to admit that we’re not seeing that much of a difference in the number of tweets today — so maybe we all like Twitter a little more than we’d care to admit, censorship or no. Are you participating in today’s blackout? Let us know in the comments!

[via Gawker]

Today at Flavorpill, we perused Pop Candy’s list of Joy Division/Unknown Pleasures-inspired stuff — especially timely due to that Mickey Mouse tee Disney made. We learned all about the C-word. We watched Vanilla Ice become an indie rock star. We held our breath watching people jump from Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands. We found these Persian stamps to be surreally beautiful. We raised a brow at Twitter’s censorship policy. We smiled at Community writer Megan Ganz’s meeting note doodles. We wanted to adopt a Dire wolf. We heard what advice Snoop Dogg gave Kris Humphries about Kim Kardashian. We were amused by Chris Pratt with a lightsaber. We admired the best of Paris Spring couture. And finally, we liked these hipster Disney princesses — even if we didn’t know that a few of them existed until today.

Celebrities: they’re just like us. That is, they make New Year’s resolutions and promote them on Twitter whether any of their friends care or not — though, to be fair, they probably have more friends who do care than anyone else you know. And of course, just like our own New Year’s promises, some of these celebrity resolutions are thoughtful and from the heart while others are meant in jest, and many fall somewhere in between. Whether revealing a dream to stay alive forever, a need to pare down, or a staunch resolution to make friends with a lion, and whether completely tongue-in-cheek or sweet and sincere, click through to read fifteen of our favorite celebrity New Year’s resolution tweets, and be sure to let us know your own resolutions in the comments. As for us, well, we resolve to stop looking at Twitter so much.

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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]

Bonus Buzz: Filipino Prisoners Inspire a Musical

Every year, the American Dialect Society chooses a word of the year — and they’re not the only ones. This week, we found out that Merriam-Webster has already chosen their own word of the year: “pragmatic,” which we’re not sure reflects the state of the nation. The American Dialect Society chooses their word of the year based on the following criteria: the word must be “demonstrably new or newly popular in 2011, widely and/or prominently used in 2011, indicative or reflective of the popular discourse and not a peeve or a complaint about overuse or misuse.” They also stipulate that “Multi-word compounds or phrases that act as stand-alone lexical items are also welcomed.” To give you a better idea: last year, the world they picked was “app.” We’ve come up with a list of a few of our nominees for possible words of the year, but of course there are many more — let us know which words you would nominate in the comments! Read More »

We’re big fans of Kanye West’s hilarious twitter account, and it might only be going a little bit too far to say that we think that pretty much everything Kanye West tweets deserves to be marked down somewhere and contemplated forever. So how could we resist these charming, hand-stitched tweets by Etsy member supervelma? As the artist opines, “Really, though, Kanye’s just saying what we’re all thinking – who amongst us hasn’t lamented the inability to procure a decent cherub-decorated rug or, at one time or another, needed to apologize to Taylor Swift?” Indeed. Click through to see a few of our favorites, and head over to the shop to request whichever tweet is your own cherished favorite. Read More »

Twitter has revealed its top trending topics for 2011 — a list that always manages to surprise us on some level every year. With millions of voices chattering in one place, the breakdown provides a fascinating snapshot of popular culture — and yes, highlights plenty of trends we should probably feel embarrassed about wasting our precious 140 characters on. If you told us on New Year’s Day that some of these names, events, and subjects would have been the words at everyone’s fingertips, we’d have been shocked. What didn’t trend is equally curious, and we examine it all past the break. Ignore the insane ramblings of today’s “#nevertrustagirl” and “#YouKnowAFatPersonInvented” topics, and see what surprised us in this year in review. Leave your picks below. Read More »

History buffs, we have a feeling you’ll be into this one. Our newest obsession (discovered via the ever-illuminating kottke) is following tweets from WWII — as it happened on the same dates and times 72 years ago, of course. A recent tweet, from a series of Lt. Gen. Alan Brooke writing in his diary about ‘yesterday’s’ Armistice Day service at the Canadian Memorial at Vimy Ridge in France: “I suppose that it is through such punishments that we shall eventually learn to ‘love our neighbours as ourselves.’” It’s interesting enough on its own, but we can’t help but think how that war, or maybe just our perception of it, might have been different if the social networking tools that exist today had been around, if only for the sheer wealth of up to the minute information that would have been available. Or maybe nothing would have been different! What do you think?

In the wake of an uninformed tweet regarding Joe Paterno’s dismissal as Penn State football coach (which has since been deleted), Ashton Kutcher, who in many ways was one of the first celebrities to fully embrace and harness the power of Twitter (not to mention, hit one million followers), has made the interesting decision to turn over the reigns of his account to his handlers. “While I feel that running this feed myself gives me a closer relationship to my friends and fans I’ve come to realize that it has grown into more that a fun tool to communicate with people,” he writes. “While I will continue to express myself through @Aplusk I’m going to turn the management of the feed over to my team at Katalyst Media to ensure the quality of its content.” Are you at all surprised by this news given the serious nature of his gaffe? Do you think Kutcher’s eight million followers will stick around if he’s no longer technically running the show? [via THR]