For Caesar: Rise of the Apes with Freida Pinto and John Lithgow. Lithgow dined with Steve Martin yesterday at Blue Water Cafe. And Freida was spotted out and about downtown. James Franco, the lead, and my former #1, hit up a movie on Sunday. He went to see Predators. Looks good, non? No, not the clothes, I mean his face. James is shaving because he’s filming. Seems healthy, not as gaunt/exhausted as we’ve seen him even though he has so much going on. Where does this kid find the time?

All that studying, several movies on the go, and of course he, um, writes a lot, and there’s his first solo art exhibit that just opened in New York at Art International Radio’s Clocktower Gallery last week. Called The Dangerous Four Boys, Franco’s work is a mixed media experience featuring short films, sketches, sculpture, photography, and a rocket ship. What? Yes. A rocket ship, a space ship, made of wood, and all of it meant to illuminate fame in the context of masculine sexuality and Franco’s own celebrity. He explains it, sort of, thus:

"The detritus of the movies became sculptures in a way, in a way they kind of become proof of the movies. After you see the movies those structures resonate with all of the events of the movies. They kind of accumulate a certain vibration or just more significance in your head because of what's happened in the film ... [And] by having the films near them, the films become more palpable in a way."

Please. My head hurts too.

I am not arty. But all the arty people, they’re really into it, not as something to snicker about, but as something to discuss.

Click here for a strong review from the Village Voice and also to see the space ship, and here for thoughts from Entertainment Weekly and here for more arty analysis from Art in America Magazine. Yeah. Art in America Magazine. For real.


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