Sunday 12 February 2017



No Sunday morning cinema today as I knew that if it were snowy and slushy, I'd want to roll over and stay in bed. Well, the blizzard turned out to be a mild flurry of snowflakes yesterday afternoon but I rolled over and stayed in bed, anyway. However, I never got round to writing up last Sunday's film which was Hidden Figures. A bit clunky but we enjoyed it, anyway - and the story of these mathematically gifted black women working at NASA during the space race was new to me, and I guess will be new to most audiences. They're sending men into space - but lose a 40 minute chunk of their day as it's a half-mile round trip to the coloured ladies' room.
I know it's not the same thing, but it did remind me of the casual chauvinism that was taken for granted when I started work back in the Seventies. It wasn't at all unusual to encounter men in the ladies' if you were working a late shift ... they assumed that out of secretarial hours, it was their territory, because what could a woman possibly be if she wasn't a secretary?

A few days later, several of the Hidden Figures cast cropped up again in Moonlight - but despite stellar reviews I found this film heavy going. I think I was expecting a black Brokeback Mountain which it isn't. It has some wonderful performances but it wasn't for me.

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