Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Purple Prose
So after approximately three months sitting on my kitchen counter, The Color Purple finally made it into my DVD player last night. The results were mixed. I very much enjoyed being reminded how truly fat Oprah Winfrey once was, and I was impressed that Spielberg had not inserted a wide-eyed little boy with daddy issues into the mix. But I felt Whoopi Goldberg's performance lacked the heft and gravity of her later work in pictures such as "Boys on the Side" and "Theodore Rex," and I concluded that two and a half hours was more than I really needed to learn how terrible men are. Also I really wanted Danny Glover to drive a car through something and declare that he's too old for this shit.
My selection of this film, dare I say it, was perhaps an instance of "Netflix Goggles." On more than one occasion I have felt that I really wanted to watch, say, a documentary about Russian typesetters, when I saw it on Netflix, only to realize upon its arrival that I had no desire to see it at all. It is absolutely a significant cross to bear.
So after approximately three months sitting on my kitchen counter, The Color Purple finally made it into my DVD player last night. The results were mixed. I very much enjoyed being reminded how truly fat Oprah Winfrey once was, and I was impressed that Spielberg had not inserted a wide-eyed little boy with daddy issues into the mix. But I felt Whoopi Goldberg's performance lacked the heft and gravity of her later work in pictures such as "Boys on the Side" and "Theodore Rex," and I concluded that two and a half hours was more than I really needed to learn how terrible men are. Also I really wanted Danny Glover to drive a car through something and declare that he's too old for this shit.
My selection of this film, dare I say it, was perhaps an instance of "Netflix Goggles." On more than one occasion I have felt that I really wanted to watch, say, a documentary about Russian typesetters, when I saw it on Netflix, only to realize upon its arrival that I had no desire to see it at all. It is absolutely a significant cross to bear.
