Sam Richards and Kate Hutchinson 

La Roux’s on the blower and James Franco goes bald – plus the rest of today’s breaking pop culture news

Bringing you all today’s red hot pop gossip in real-time. Stay tuned for La Roux’s new vid, Mary J’s London love-in, superheroes vs bullying and the latest on James Franco’s ongoing super-meta life-as-art project
  
  

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Look, Pitbull's grown a porn tache! Oh hang on, it's James Franco. Photograph: TIZIANA FABI/AFP/Getty Images

A Monday bear hug…

… courtesy of the UK’s beariest dance duo, The 2 Bears. Except that the furry suits have come off and London’s best arty-party drag collective, Sink The Pink, are in, showing you how to lip-synch in style as they cavort around the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club in fishnets and pom pom beards. Stuff the hug: who’s up for a Monday rave?

Could J-Lo's new film actually be good?

Few can lay claim to making one of the worst films in living history but that hasn’t stopped J-Lo, oh no. Then she made Monster-in-Law. Then The Back-up Plan. And then Parker with Jason Statham. But her new film, with its illicit affair/teacher-pupil/hot mom vibe, and an appearance from John Corbett from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, could take this low-budg flick from thriller to killer. Maybe.

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Miley Cyrus does a Tracy Emin – and other absurd celeb art

So Miley has an art side-project, obv, in which she’s created sculptures such as a “marijuana joint glued to a vibrator”. The show opens on 10 September for New York Fashion Week, is entitled Dirty Hippie, and will later go on display at V Magazine’s in-house gallery. But the singer isn’t the only one whose secret artistic talents have raised eyebrows. Hey, if James Franco can…

Stallone

Yes, Stallone does paintings and it turns out that he’s not half bad – some of them have fetched up to $90,000.

Robbie Williams

Nope, not something that Peter Hook barfed up after downing too much Pepto Bismol but just one of the paintings by the popular singer Robbie Williams. In fact, they’re so good we had to post up this one, too.

Viggo Mortensen

Here’s a trippy little video of actor Viggo discussing his paintings in a video filmed by someone who appears to be stoned. Or drunk. Or both. You can actually own some Viggo artworks for as little as £14.

Anthony Hopkins

If there’s anything you can do, Anthony Hopkins can do it better. The guy can act, write classical music and, now, paint scary-ass faces that will haunt your dreams. Some people have all the talent.

Ronnie Wood

The Rolling Stones guitarist has been painting for as long as he’s been touring and his paintings of musicians, such as this flattering portrait of Rod Stewart, have been known to command “high prices”.

Lucy Liu

Not content with being the most beautiful woman on earth, actress Lucy Liu is now the most beautiful woman on earth covered in paint and making abstract artworks.

Truly ridiculous

Forget Lost and its polar bears, Twin Peaks and its log lady and 24 and ‘the amnesia storyline’, True Blood has had the most bonkers plots of them all. Remember the time Jason was held captive by a gang of crystal-meth-addict werepanthers? Or the time Sookie discovered she was a faerie? Ahead of its UK season finale, relive its best moments over on Guardian Culture.

Marylebone J Blige

One of the year’s unlikeliest collaborations was US R&B vet Mary J Blige teaming up with UK house whippersnappers Disclosure on a remix of the latter’s F For You. But it seems the union worked so well for Mary J that she’s recorded a whole album in London with the likes of Sam Smith, Naughty Boy, Sam Romans and Emile Sandé.

This is the first track from The London Sessions, a nifty little Disclosure-helmed number called Right Here.

Bully for you

Marvel has teamed up with America’s Stomp Out Bullying campaign to produce five special anti-bullying covers of their upcoming comics. I have to admit I was cynical, given that Marvel are prone to presenting a simplistic view of social interaction that largely involves bashing up the bad guys. But these covers are really rather touching.

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Lounge lizard

Here’s recent Guide cover star FKA Twigs providing an object lesson in how to tackle Radio 1’s dreaded Live Lounge, ie take a current pop hit and respectfully dismantle it.

Of course, you still have to identify with the sentiment of the original song for it to work:

There was one line which basically alludes to saying, ‘I’m not in love with you and maybe this isn’t a serious thing, but it’s perfect for right now and it’s what I need emotionally right now,’ and maybe that’s just something that I have related to.

Inevitably, some publications have managed to interpret this as a comment on Twigs’ supposed relationship with “Twilight heartthrob” R-Pattz, but scurrilous gossip is not strictly our remit so we’ll leave it at that.

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General Franco

Guide editor Paul MacInnes is currently at the Toronto Film Festival, where he was none too enamoured with James Franco’s latest bid for Oscar glory in The Sound And The Fury. Not that the lukewarm reviews will bother James too much, as he’s already on to the next phase of his never-ending 24/7/365 live art project, “James Franco”.

At the weekend he turned up to the Venice film festival with a porn tache and a tattoo of Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift on the back of his newly-shaved head. Apparently he was in character for a new movie in which he plays a bald 70s film obsessive, though it’s pretty hard to separate fact from fiction with Franco these days.

Here he is documenting his transformation into Vikar Jerome on Instagram:

The book the new film is based on is called Zeroville, by Steve Erickson. Looks interesting – and eminently more filmable than The Sound And The Fury…

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It's for La Roux-hoo!

Morning all. Let’s kick things off with the new video from La Roux, whose hair gets more impressive with each passing week. Here she is posing with a range of novelty 80s telephones, which for younger readers are the weird plastic contraptions on your hall table that ring when your gran wants to speak to you.

I just called the sex-line number advertised in the video and got a slightly forced breathy female voice – possibly La Roux herself – inviting me to leave a “cheeky message”. So I told her that Kiss And Not Tell was a bit of a rip-off of Jive Talking, the Boogie Box High version.

 

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