There’s a handful of movies considered required-viewing to maintain one’s cultural cred: Do the Right Thing, Shaft, Boomerang, The Color Purple. But tell someone you haven’t seen Sparkle, the 1976 ode to doo-wop starring Irene Cara and Philip Michael Thomas, and you might as well hand over your “Black card.” Luckily, the remake of Sparkle arrives in theaters next August.
After 16 years, music powerhouse Whitney Houston returns to the big screen with a dual role in Sparkle: both co-producer and star. Houston’s take on Effie, the downtrodden, single mother to a trio of singing sisters, gets some 21st century tweaking. “This mother’s kind of fly,” says Houston from the Detroit set. But the remake has been bittersweet for her and co-producer Debra Martin Chase (the duo first partnered up for 1996’s The Preacher’s Wife).
