p e n g u i n d e v i l

How about a film about the Murder City Devils? While I have quite a liking for this band, I didn’t have much of an idea of what to expect from a movie about them. here was Rock & Roll Won’t Wait, and I just had to see. It turns out to be not so much a documentary but rather a tour diary of sorts or, better yet, a home movie that gives them a lot of chances to talk about themselves. Rock & Roll Won’t Wait is filled with a lot of “backstage” moments, live footage and then the guys in the band talking about being in the band.

I didn’t really find it that interesting. And of course there is a bit of the pat old stuff… “we’re not in it for the money, who joins a punk band for the money”, “we don’t have tattoos to be part of the tattoo thing”. They do just ooze that Seattle Rock/Punk hip look in their appearance, and while I don’t take issue with what they are saying, it just seems like it should go unsaid and stating it makes it sound a bit defensive.

Regardless, it is a short movie (under an hour) and a nice document of a great band… And a great live band, though that doesn’t really come across in the footage here. When I saw them Spencer seemed almost too drunk to stand up, but it was a hell of a show.

Also, we watched Starting out in the Evening. A good movie, mainly due to Frank Langella (yes, Dracula [or for the kids out there, Skeletor]). Frank plays a retired Literature professor who is also an old and ailing “literary novelist”. He had published a number of novels many years back, all of which are basically unknown and out of print and he is quietly living and working on his most recent novel (10 years in the making). Suddenly he is approached by a young graduate student (Lauren Ambrose from Six Feet Under) who wants to write her master thesis on his work and hopes to revitalize his career. She becomes quite the pest, trying to insert herself into his closed off world, analyze aspects of his life that he doesn’t want to talk about and basically become a bit much for an old fellow to handle.

Though Lily Taylor (as his daughter) and Lauren did good jobs, I found both of their characters to be somewhat annoying. Frank Langella was certainly the meat of the movie, not only did he do a really great and moving job with this character, but I found the character very compelling. I really loved his dedication to his art and with all of the pop fiction crap that is out now, it is nice to see a movie that is basically a homage to the (seemingly) dead art of literary fiction.