(And you too may have unknowingly caught some Sparkle, lovely reader, if you happened to notice the early 1990s pop group, En Vogue.) Curtis Mayfield's "Something He Can Feel" recurs as the most thematically complex song in the film, somewhat surprisingly emerging as Sparkle's pop anthem. (Click on each of the "red dress" pics above to catch a whiff of what I'm on about.) The folks developing Dreamgirls for the stage were obviously influenced by Sparkle. Rather, StinkyLulu'd rather appreciate Sparkle's endurance along a kind of continuum.
Toss in the ambience of the shadier side of the music business a couple of charismatic men who may or may not be good for the girls stage it with a nearly all-black cast? Like, I said superficial but startling similarities.īut this is Supporting Actress Sundays, not an excuse to lapse into some glib argument for/against the musical biopic as a "retread" genre OR to spiral into the deathly vortex of yet another authenticity debate. After a shocking turn of events, the shy but pretty youngest member of the group takes over as the headliner and becomes a pop diva sensation. The group achieves some success but the personal problems of group's sexually confident lead singer seem to be holding the group back. In his review for Entertainment Weekly, Ken Tucker observed, "One of the best things to emerge from the film version of Dreamgirls is the release of an even better movie, 1976's Sparkle, now on DVD for the first time." As Tucker and virtually every recent commentator on Sparkle has observed, startling but superficial similarities do seem to link the two pieces: A group of inner city girl singers make a showing at a local talent show (where the MC misstates their name when introducing their debut performance). ) And what better way to kick things off than reflecting on Miss Hudson's recent win by finally screening the legendary cult classic Sparkle, a film that's been near the top of StinkyLulu's "must see" list for more than 20 years. ( Cast your vote for the roster of April's Supporting Actress Sundays in the poll toward the top of the right column.
#Sparkle 1976 cast movie
So, during March, StinkyLulu'll use each Sunday to profile some interesting but unnominated actressing found at the edges of a movie from each of the years under consideration for April. Might, then, be a good idea to use this meantime as a warm up of sorts. The return of Supporting Actress Sundays is still a whole month away. Jennifer Hudson has now entered the Supporting Actress pantheon.
I also thing Bishop Jakes' involvement probably hamstrung how far they were willing to go.It's the "Sunday After" here at StinkyLulu. I think 90s nostalgia could have only served to help the movie and I think a 90s setting would have done better job in updating the grittiness of the original movie. I think they should have set the remake in either Los Angeles or Atlanta in the early 90s, because we started to see an influx of R&B girl groups again in the 1990s. I think they should have gone a more radical route. In the remake Sister comes across like a beautiful, talented but very bitter woman who's nearing 30 with no husband and it's hard to get behind her In the original, you understand why Stix wants to make it big, you understand why Sister makes the choices she makes and why Sparkle does things that were probably against her better judgement and why Delores does the things she does, it's because they are poor, their mother is a maid, they live in Harlem. I didn't agree with move to the timeline up to 1968 and the setting to Detroit and I didn't agree with making the family a middle class family. I did appreciate the original fleshing out some characters more such as Delores, giving her character some closure and fleshing out Levi and his relationship with Sister a bit more, in the original, he was seemingly with Sister and then Satin stepped in and that was the end.
The remake is not a bad movie, it is watchable but compared to the original it kinda falls flat. The original Sparkle is rated PG, it pre-dates the introduction of the PG-13 rating and it's one of the hardest PG movies you'll ever watch and the movie retains it's edge even 40 years later. I agree with you, Sparkle is supposed to be dark and gritty, it's not supposed to be bright and colorful and happy.
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