Lush Life

My brother turned me on to this movie and I've about worn out my VHS copy of it. A lot of jazz movies suffer from "short attention span camera syndrome"... i.e., once the music starts, after a bit, the camera wanders away and busies itself with some irrelevant bit of drama or dialog. "Lush Life" suffers from this problem only slightly, I'm happy to say. I was particularly impressed with how believable the actors look when they're playing their instruments. I do have one criticism of this movie, however, and it's a doze as far as I'm concerned: why, why, why, didn't they release a soundtrack album? I would have bought it in a heartbeat and I'll bet most of the other people who saw this movie would have, too. In an age when the soundtrack album is all but ubiquitous, to have a movie that does not have one -- when the movie is ABOUT MUSIC -- is beyond understanding.