The first one is Shug Avery. I saw The Color of Purple this morning. Now, I have some problems with how the movie surpressed, compressed the Celie and Shug story-line, but against the background of problematic issues Margaret Avery’s depiction of Shug Avery (I know) shines. Just exceptional, vivacious and somehow healing as well. Can someone please buy me her outfit? Okay—thanks.
Later that morning, I saw most of Much Ado About Nothing. I’ve never been a Kenneth Branagh fan, but oh that changed. His Benedict is vrooom-vroom.
I know I’m in love with Emma Thompson a bit (she WROTE the script for Sense and Sensibility; pardon, but I just cannot be sensible). But Benedict was a revelation. Un-gallant, loving, and and kinda desperate. He shone against my least favorite Shakespeare character ever, Claudio (Much Ado About Nothing, first, no wait, fourth most problematic Shakespeare play? Merchant of Venice, Taming of the Shrew, Othello, and after, for the fifth, The Tempest, y/y?).
Also, how could I have forgotten how awesome Don John’s nefarious speeches are? ”
DON JOHN
I wonder that thou, being, as thou sayest thou art,
born under Saturn, goest about to apply a moral
medicine to a mortifying mischief. I cannot hide
what I am: I must be sad when I have cause and smile
at no man’s jests, eat when I have stomach and wait
for no man’s leisure, sleep when I am drowsy and
tend on no man’s business, laugh when I am merry and
claw no man in his humour.
CONRADE
Yea, but you must not make the full show of this
till you may do it without controlment. You have of
late stood out against your brother, and he hath
ta’en you newly into his grace; where it is
impossible you should take true root but by the
fair weather that you make yourself: it is needful
that you frame the season for your own harvest.
DON JOHN
I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in
his grace, and it better fits my blood to be
disdained of all than to fashion a carriage to rob
love from any: in this, though I cannot be said to
be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied
but I am a plain-dealing villain. I am trusted with
a muzzle and enfranchised with a clog; therefore I
have decreed not to sing in my cage. If I had my
mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do
my liking: in the meantime let me be that I am and
seek not to alter me.
Many Wine Dark Seas 
Recent Comments