Record Club #2 -- Brand New

I have the honor of selecting the second album for the Record Club that Ed Howard has started (if you haven't checked out the first discussion at Ed's site on The Congos' seminal reggae album, The Heart of the Congos, you should do so now), and I decided to do a complete 180 from Ed's choice. My choice for this month's selection is the Radiodead-y (think The Bends and a little bit of OK Computer if it were done by a band from Long Island) 2006 album by Brand New entitled The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me. If you want to participate in the discussion, all you need to do is give the album a few listens (and it will take a few, I'm sure, for some of you to warm up to it...and I hope you do) and come back here on June 27 ready to discuss the album. If you would like to help promote the discussion and the club, you can post the banner on your site.

I look forward to the discussion on June 27!

8 1/2

"His film is as whole, as simple, as beautiful, and as honest as the one that Guido, in 8 ½, wants to make."

                              ---- Francois Truffaut

From its first surrealistic seconds of asphyxiation, synec doche, and an eerie silence that hovers over the action, Federico Fellini's 8 ½ states its thesis clearly: Fellini is cutting the umbilical cord to his neo-realist ways and introducing his postmodern, dreamlike (not to mention carnivalesque and farcical) motifs that would be found in all of Fellini's films post-La Dolce Vita. Fellini's style would venture into the baroque with films like Roma and Juliet of the Spirits; however, it was with 8 ½ that the auteur was at his most Jungian. It is within the dream world of 8 ½ that Fellini becomes a cartoonist (Terry Gilliam, in the Criterion DVD introduction to the film, says this too) who mixes the absurd and dreamlike aesthetic with a narrative that is poignant and effective. Yes, the aesthetics are impressive (I believe whole heartedly that Fellini's film is just as important a visual textbook as something like Citizen Kane), but for this viewer it is the narrative that continues to impress and affect with each subsequent viewing.