Tea With Chris is a roundup of recommended links, posted every Friday. Here are our favourite things from the internet this week:
Carl: Sam Anderson’s massive investigation into just what the hell James Franco is up to these days: A classic of post-New-Journalism or an incredibly self-absorbed making of minutia into monuments? In places it’s reminiscent of the very funny chapter of Jennifer Egan’s recent novel A Visit from the Goon Squad that takes the form of a Vanity Fair article, in which a novelist manque turned celebrity profiler gets so deeply confused (by way of David Foster Wallace-esque footnotes) in the course of an interview with a young starlet, over the issue of who is serving who in their exchange, that he has a psychotic break and ends up confusedly assaulting her. But because I have a (thankfully unmentioned) walk-on role in the events depicted, I can’t help sharing Anderson’s fascination. At the least, it’s an extraordinary, Oliver Sachs-like case of celebrity (and/or extreme attractiveness) as a sort of neurological phenomenon that can produce unpredictable perceptual side effects. It’s as if Franco is going to bed (on the few nights he does go to bed) and reciting to himself the closing credits of his day: “… with special guest James Franco in the role of James Franco.” Capgras Syndrome in reverse.
Chris: Joe McCulloch reviews Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (the movie).
Anonymous Twitter sadist “Discographies” dispatches lifetimes of music with 140 characters each.
And all-female L.A. crew Pink Dollaz finally release their first mixtape.
Margaux: Lynn Crosbie asks a good question: “What if these maniacs form real friendships and start traveling in packs?”
I just found Agnès Varda’s Ydessa, the Bears, and etc. (Ydessa, les ours et etc…). http://mubi.com/films/25438, 2004, 44 Min, 3 dollars.
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