In this shot from For Colored Girls, Thandie Newton's character, Tangie, pauses in front of a beaded curtain in a doorway. While I've usually rejected beaded curtains due to their hippie connotations, a more minimalist version, like this one, might have potential. Have you ever used one in your home?
This weekend's movies debuted in a big way at the box office. Animated flick Megamind led the charge with $47.7 million in ticket sales. The Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis comedy Due Date pulled in $33.5 million for second place, while Tyler Perry's For Colored Girls took third with $20.1 million. Together, the three films helped the weekend hit a record-breaking tally of $154 million — the highest figure ever for the first weekend in November.
With the newbies sitting pretty in the top three, Red stumbled to fourth place with $8.9 million, while last week's winner Saw 3D dropped all the way to fifth with $8.2 million.
The holiday season is rapidly approaching, and three highly anticipated films are kicking off the fun at theaters. Brad Pitt, Will Ferrell, and Tina Fey's kid-friendly 3D Megamind is out, as is Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis's silly new buddy movie, Due Date. Tyler Perry's star-studded but overly serious new project, For Colored Girls, is also debuting at the box office. So, tell us — which new movie will you see this weekend?
There have been rumblings that For Colored Girls is director Tyler Perry's best work. If that's true, then I fear for what that says about his career as a filmmaker. The movie is based on the Broadway play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, which first hit the stage in 1975. Perry's adaptation is a sloppy effort, as he has foregone any sort of updating or modernization of the 35-year-old production, choosing instead to exploit timeworn clichés to portray the dramatic lives of several African American women living in New York City.
It's a shame, because Perry has many fine actresses in his cast, like Thandie Newton, Phylicia Rashad, Loretta Devine, Kerry Washington, and Whoopi Goldberg. The movie follows them over the course of a few days, as each character endures a horrific ordeal (think rape, abortion, and physical abuse). Perry is going for a powerful, extravagantly theatrical feeling, but each story plays out like an after-school special.
To read about the problems I had with For Colored Girls, just read more
Happy Fall! I hope my Summer reading list helped you decide what to page through this past warm season, and now that it's Autumn, I thought I'd give you a whole new list of books that are currently in the process of being adapted into films. Peruse my picks (and see who'll be playing the roles) so you can inevitably say "the book was better" when the movie version is released!
Tyler Perry has a reputation for formulaic films, but will he fare better working off someone else's material? In his ambitious For Colored Girls (an adaptation of the play), the director rounds up his go-to actresses (Kimberly Elise, Janet Jackson) along with a few newbies (Whoopi Goldberg, Thandie Newton) for a harrowing look at love and abuse. It's promising, though somewhat overwrought. Watch when you read more
