Janie and I had (are having) ample opportunity to play tennis over the holiday season this year. The weather is dull but basically dry and warm enough to enable us to play.
The majority of our contests have been draws. Of the eight contests we’ve had over the holiday season so far (as I write on 31 December), five have ended undecided as 5-5 draws. Until today the completed sets sat at 1-1. Today I managed to win the set, but was down in the second set when we agreed we’d had enough.
Janie is playing powerfully these days and is also mixing up her play to put me off my rhythm.
And talking of powerful women…
…our traditional Curzon film fest over Twixtmas has been a veritable powerful women fest.
The first actually did not require a trip to the Curzon, because Janie managed to secure the last copy of the DVD for the Kusama – Infinity movie when we went, a couple of weeks ago, to the Yayoi Kusama exhibition at the Victoria Miro – click here or below for the story of that visit.
Yayoi Kusama’s story really is fascinating, as is her art. The more perceptive Ogblog readers might have observed a sample of her infinity work taking over the look of Ogblog in the past week or so.
Actually we were glad to have the DVD rather than a cinema viewing of this one – as the subtitles were a bit difficult to read at times and tended to move on ridiculously quickly on some occasions, so we were grateful for the chance to scroll back and make sure we had assimilated the wise words.
Here is the official trailer for that movie:
The DVD is still available (just not from Victoria Miro) – e.g. from Amazon.
28th December we went, after work, to the Curzon Bloomsbury to see Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. Frankly, we hadn’t heard of rapper and activist Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A. but thought her story and the description of the movie sounded fascinating.
Here is the official trailer for that movie:
It is a fascinating movie. Elements of the film go to the heart of debates about activism around complex causes. Other elements are almost comedic documentary, such as the apparently infamous incident where M.I.A. “gives the finger” to camera when performing for the Superbowl and kicks off a massive controversy – that bit reminded me more of Spinal Tap than Joan Baez or Pussy Riot.
Slightly strange mix of audience at the Curzon too. Mostly younger people who clearly have an affinity with M.I.A. as a contemporary singer, with a smattering of (how do I put this politely?) somewhat older-looking folk, like ourselves, who were probably there for the human rights more than the music. The fussy white-haired lady on our row of the Dochouse seemed to have come straight from “human-rights-activist central casting”.
The movie was well worth seeing.
30 December we returned to the Curzon Bloomsbury to see the movie about Hedy Lamarr.
Here is the official trailer of Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story:
I had read quite a lot about this one and it is a fascinating tale. Not only her achievements as an inventor of information & communications technology but also the way she completely changed (some would say reinvented) her life after escaping from Austria in the troubled 1930s. I had previously read about her scientific inventions but, before seeing the movie, I had no idea that she was born and raised Jewish nor that her first marriage was to an Austrian armaments manufacturer who had sold weapons to Hitler.
As with all three of these movies, I couldn’t completely buy in to the “powerful woman who have been denied their rightful credit” story. All three of these women are, unquestionably, to some extent, victims of injustice. Hedy Lamarr by all accounts should have benefited from her patent on frequency-hopping (or spread spectrum) telecommunications. But then, so should her co-inventor, George Antheil – he remains even less remembered for the invention that Hedy Lamarr. It is also a huge stretch to attribute all of the value in GPS, Bluetooth and Wifi to the technology in that patent.
In truth, all three of the powerful women in these movies have benefited from their beauty and charisma, while also being held back from some of the credit that might have accrued to their efforts had they been men or had they arrived at their achievements from more conventional routes.
But then, even Janie’s powerful tennis comes from an unusual source these days…
…anyway, my excuse is that it is difficult to concentrate on getting the ball back time and time again, when you know that the power and balance in Janie’s shots is being cultivated by such unconventional tennis preparation:
This will be my last posting for 2018 – happy new year to those Ogblog readers who follow Ogblog contemporarily.