When a movie calls for a CGI animal or grotesque troll, there's only one man to call: Andy Serkis, who's gained notoriety as the best motion capture actor around. It's not always easy to understand how deep his method acting goes, but this clip from Rise of the Planet of the Apes should make it a little more obvious. In the movie, Serkis plays Caesar, the ape who eventually gains sentience and leads a simian revolution. The clip contrasts two takes on the same scene -- one with CGI and one without -- so you can see how eerily realistic Serkis is as a monkey. He slaps his paws against the glass, grunts and howls in frustration, and does everything so effectively that it seems like all the CGI artists have to do is lay the monkey skin right over him in post-production.

Any night that ends up in Bellevue can’t be all bad. Your humble servant managed to hurt himself badly enough to require attention and numbing pills. The cute doctor quoting Gloria Gaynor said “I will survive” with the oomph and believability of the disco diva. I believed her and here I am. Instead of flowers, send sympathy notes to Kenmare, which has just won The Eater Award for Best Shitshow of the Year. The other nominees were Artisanal, The Lion, Rouge Tomate, Shang, and Abe & Arthur's. What do I know? I love most of those joints. I was downstairs from Abe and Arthur's last night, attending the Blackbook magazine November issue release bash at SL. I told everyone that the joint was named after me, and everyone protested. November is themed “The Protest Issue” and I wrote a piece for it about those “Shitshow” winners from Kenmare, Paul Sevigny and partner Nur Khan.

Earlier today, we debuted the cover story and gallery for our November issue, featuring Freida Pinto. You probably recognize Pinto from her most famous role as Latika in Slumdog Millionaire. But there's a lot more to this 26-year-old beauty from Mumbai than starring in your favorite movie about Indian orphans. In 2011, she'll appear in four films: As a Palestinian activist in Julian Schnabel's Miral; as an oracle in Tarsem Singh's mythological epic Immortals; as a primatologist opposite James in Franco in the Planet of the Apes prequel, Caesar: Rise of the Apes; and in Jean-Jacques Annaud's period drama, Black Gold. It makes sense - the camera loves Freida Pinto. We've got proof, after the jump.

"I'm never going to be entirely happy with a performance."

The trailer for Julian Schnabel’s Miral is out and it is great, great stuff. The story concerns a young Palestinian girl who becomes invested in political activism after she is awoken to the struggle of her people. The film addresses love, violence, and a daughter torn between her father's wishes and her newfound calling to fight for justice. It looks gorgeously shot and the music in the trailer is excellent.

This week, we learned that no one can out-diva New York City herself, try hard as they might. And that when NYC has no qualms about strapping on her sharpest pair of high heels and kicking your ass, even her guardian has little choice but to shyly step aside. More sobering is how she's even helped manage to humble once-wealthy wannabes, driving them to ask for alms. But because that's too real and because the President told us last night that this reality looks poised to settle in for a good while longer, let's instead preoccupy ourselves with more obliviously pleasant thoughts -- the likes of which helped us get through the first miserable eight years of this century. Pleasant thoughts like hand-held video games, leather, and Grace Jones.

Sometime very, very soon (later today?), all this Slumdog Millionaire excitement will finally abate. But let's wring the last few trickles of hype out of the Little Movie That Could, while we can. In light of all that talk of post-Oscar floppery, it looks like Freida Pinto (who may or may not be dating her former co-star) has found a way to beat the bad karma that an Oscar win seems to foretell for all its champs. She's going to follow in Scarlett Johansson's footsteps as Woody Allen's new muse.

Unless you're a heartless monster or an envious, emotionally dead Bollywood goddess who's watching her star fall in slo-mo, somehow finding herself in that new Pink Panther sequel, you really can't begrudge Freida Pinto for upgrading boyfriends. Up until the surprise success of Slumdog Millionaire, she'd been engaged to her Mumbai-based flack. But as we all do once we've successfully achieved the zenith of superstardom and find ourselves unable to tolerate the dead weight of underachieving loved ones, Pinto decided to cut her fiancé loose.

The 'Slumdog' startlet's Blackbook interview.