1. It has been confirmed: Charlie Sheen will be introducing acts and performing live comedy at the 2011 Gathering of the Juggalos; the annual event is scheduled to run August 11-14 in Cave-in-Rock, Illinois. [via Perez]

2. The Playlist reports that Spike Lee — who says that he hasn’t been able to get financing for any of his films in three years! — is currently in talks to direct the long-delayed American remake of Park Chan-Wook’s modern Korean classic Oldboy. We weren’t exactly thrilled when the project was first announced, but with Lee at the helm, it could be interesting.

3. What do you think of Damien Hirst’s artwork for the new Red Hot Chili Peppers album, I’m With You, which is due out on August 2? Is it just us, or could it use a little more formaldehyde shark? [via Vulture]

4. Tête de Femme (Head of a Woman), a small, 1965 drawing by Picasso valued at over $200,000, has been stolen from San Francisco’s Weinstein Gallery. Says the gallery’s president: “My greatest fear is that, with all this attention on it, the person will realize it’s unsellable and will dispose of it in a less-than-proper manner.” [via ArtsBeat]

5. Some not so surprising news: There will be a fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. According to The Wrap, Jerry Bruckheimer is currently supervising rewrites to the script and Johnny Depp is negotiating his salary. Considering that the fourth installment of the franchise surpassed $1 billion at the global box office over the weekend, and Bruckheimer says he’ll only do a film with Depp on board, we think he should aim big.

Bonus link: The 5 Most Talented 3D Sidewalk Artists

The Fourth of July weekend is upon us, and it would seem appropriate to celebrate the birthday of the nation with a bit of America-lovin’ cinema. However, these films are not exactly known for their subtlety; the line between patriotism and jingoism is a fine one, and if you’re not careful, you may find yourself suffering through flag-waving pap like Independence Day and The Patriot. We like our Fourth of July cinema a little more perceptive than that; America is a complicated notion, an idea as much as a place, constantly redefining itself and expanding its own borders and definitions. After the jump, we’ve put together a few films that acknowledge that complexity, and find their drama within it.

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We love our commenters, who are smart and sweet and supportive, always. (Almost.) So big ups to “Jax” for making this writer’s life a little easier by writing, in response to the inclusion of American Grafitti and Dazed and Confused on our “10 Great Summer Nostalgia” movies list: “Speaking of 24-hour movies, has Flavorwire done post on best 24-hour movies? Or movies set within specific time limits?” We hadn’t, Jax. But we have now.

Come to find out, there’s actually a wealth of really terrific movies set over one long day or one long night (or both). Even when setting some ground rules just for the process of thinning the herd (for example: nothing with flashbacks outside of that time frame — which eliminated Reservoir Dogs, Halloween and 25th Hour, amongst others), we still left out some awfully good stuff: A Single Man, The Breakfast Club, The Paper, Training Day, Adventures in Babysitting (don’t judge), Collateral, Friday, Rope, Duel, the Die Hard movies, etc. We’re not saying these films are necessarily better than those; these are just the ten that struck our fancy today. Check ‘em out after the jump.

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Finals, graduations, barbecues, baseball, summer jobs, summer camp, vacations… yes, friends, summer is upon us. What’s more, summer movies are upon us — more giant robots and superheroes and pirates and Vin Diesels than you can shake a stick at. It’s all pretty depressing, frankly.

So instead of looking at those summer movies, let’s take a look at some of our favorite films that are set in the summer. Summertime nostalgia is a powerful thing, and few screenwriters worth their salt can resist the opportunity to pen an introspective voice-over about the summer that changed their lives (“Nothing was really the same after that summer of 1963…”). After the jump, a brief survey of some of our favorite slices of summer nostalgia.

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Exciting news: American Express just announced that Todd Haynes and My Morning Jacket will be the next filmmaker/band pairing in its Unstaged series, which has previously featured collaborations by Terry Gilliam/Arcade Fire, John Legend/Spike Lee, and Duran Duran/David Lynch. If the match seems a bit random, it’s worth noting that My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James appeared in Hayne’s 2007 Bob Dylan film, I’m Not There; he sang “Goin’ to Acapulco” with Calexico backing him up, and according to the director, they immediately hit it off.

As Haynes told ArtsBeat, this is will be his first time shooting a live concert, but his past experience, specifically his work on 1998′s Velvet Goldmine, should come in handy: “When you’re shooting concert scenes in films, we try to bring in, where appropriate, as much of a sense of live performance as possible. Once you set up those elements, you really let the live performance dictate it. Hopefully you’re working with great operators who are spontaneous and dexterous and versatile, and they can catch those moments that you can’t really ever completely plan.” Look for the online broadcast on May 31st.

One of the most intriguing (and unexpected) pop culture discoveries of the last week was this post from Studio 360, which revealed that they had acquired Steven Soderbergh’s “cultural diet” for the past year — a detailed, day-by-day account of the films, television, and books that the Oscar-winning filmmaker ingested from last April to this March. It’s full of interesting nuggets: his almost-obsessive viewing of The Social Network (four times), his appreciation for low culture (hello, The Room), his AMC fandom (both Mad Men and Breaking Bad pop up frequently), his programmer’s sense of pairing (he apparently prepared for the Coen Brothers’ True Grit remake by revisiting Miller’s Crossing), and his apparent speed-reading skills (dude’s knocking out dense books in a day or two). Also worth noting are his three Christmas week viewings of Raiders of the Lost Ark — each, he takes pains to note, in black and white (which we’re totally going to do now).

Soderbergh’s list got us wondering about the cultural appetites of some of his fellow filmmakers. Some are fairly easy to pinpoint, via interviews and the like; others require a bit of creative guesswork. Both are after the jump.
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For a writer so beloved of the film industry’s core target market — i.e., teenagers with cash to burn — H.P. Lovecraft has remained curiously untouched by Hollywood. That was due to change this year, of course, with Guillermo del Toro realizing his long-cherished dream of a Lovecraft adaption. But with the $150 million project now having been put on hold indefinitely due to the studio’s budget worries, the door will have to remain closed. We can’t really think of anyone better placed to adapt Lovecraft than del Toro, but still — here’s a lighthearted look at how Lovecraft adaptations might haved turned out if they’d been helmed by various other prominent directors.

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It isn’t often that you get as clear a consensus about the Super Bowl ads as there appears to have been this year. Everybody seems to pretty much be on the same page, at least according to Twitter and the media blogs: the best ad was Volkswagen’s “tiny Darth Vader” spot, and the worst was Groupon’s borderline-offensive “Save the Money” ad, in which Timothy Hutton makes light of the troubles of Tibet because hey, they can still “whip up an amazing fish curry.”

In spite of the company’s blog post noting that their ads were parodies — never a good sign, when you have to announce that — and that they would be donating matching funds to three featured charities (including the Tibet Fund), the general distaste for the campaign was swift and unanimous. The general tone-deafness of the ads was all the more befuddling when The AV Club and others noted, on Monday, that the commercials were helmed by Christopher Guest, the director/star of such brilliant “mockumentary” comedies as Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind (not to mention the granddaddy of them all, This is Spinal Tap, which he co-wrote and co-starred in).

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Well, we’ve all had a week to let the Oscar nominations sink in, and if there’s one thing almost everyone seems to agree on, it’s this: Christopher Nolan wuz robbed. As we noted when running down the snubs, it’s a bit surprising that Nolan’s dizzyingly complicated, masterfully-crafted work on Inception somehow didn’t net him a Best Director nomination, particularly after many felt he should have received that recognition for The Dark Knight two years ago. We know, it’s hard to feel too bad for a fabulously successful studio director; he can always take solace in his rave reviews, piles of money, and the knowledge that he gets to spend several months with a cat-suited Anne Hathaway. But it’s gotta sting just a little.

So take heart, Christopher Nolan: you certainly won’t be the first great filmmaker to get the cold shoulder from the folks at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. And keep in mind that, while these folks never won, Best Director Oscars sit in the homes of Kevin Costner, Mel Gibson, Warren Beatty, Robert Redford (pattern?), Robert Zemeckis, James L. Brooks, and James Cameron. Perspective given? Good. Join us, won’t you, for a look back at some of the fine filmmakers who never won the Best Director honor.

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Among the buzziest indie films of the year, Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture opens today in New York. The 24-year-old filmmaker’s second feature (the first, Creative Nonfiction, didn’t get theatrical distribution) has been earning some impressive and thought-provoking reviews, with the likes of New York Times critic Manohla Dargis remarking that Dunham “has created a work that addresses a constellation of ideas that speak to how we live now, on screen and off, in an age of multiplying types of technological reproductions. By playing a version of herself (and asking her family to go along for the ride), and by closing the distance between art and life, she has gotten at something real.”

In an industry that tends to reward years of tireless dues-paying, and in one of art’s most expensive mediums, it can seem impossible for young people to summon the money and support needed to make a great film. And yet, over the years, a number of smart 20-somethings have leveraged their sparse resources to do just that. After the jump, in hopes of lighting a fire under the aspiring Truffauts and Coens out there, we list 10 great movies made by directors under 30.

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