.@TherealTaraji: "I have been told my entire career 'Black women can't open films domestically or internationally'" https://t.co/MktHB3f6CD pic.twitter.com/qjCVP5LbdJ
— Hollywood Reporter (@THR) January 9, 2017
Last weekend’s snowstorm kept us from getting out to see Hidden Figures, and I felt just a little guilty about not adding to the opening box office numbers. I’m glad it will still be in theaters next weekend!
***********
Apart from President Obama’s farewell address, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
lamh36
Loved, loved, loved it.
If blizzards and bad weather kept people away…I hope that means as the snow thaws…the movie will have legs…I don’t see much on the horizon…that is getting buzz before February?
Best movie I’ve seen in years.
Miss Bianca
I’m so ignorant and out of the pop culture loop I’m stil not sure what either “Hidden Figures” *or* “Rogue One” is about! One of them is a Star Wars movie, right?
ETA: Ooh, just checked ’em out on IMDB and looks like they’d be a great double feature!
HeleninEire
LOL Anne bigfooted Cole. There’s a first.
lamh36
So…um….if anyone forgot to get me something for my birthday last year, or for Christmas, or Kwanzaa…or hell for MLK day…go ahead donate to this VERY worthy cause in my name…its for the kids…of course…
Be Idris’ Valentine
dmsilev
@Miss Bianca: Rogue One is a Star Wars film (a prequel of sorts to the original trilogy), and Hidden Figures is a dramatization of the lives and work of some NASA mathematicians who did some very difficult and very necessary calculations back in the early days of the space race. And were black and female in a facility in the South. Needless to say, they had obstacles to overcome.
Felanius Kootea
I really enjoyed Hidden Figures and recommend it to everyone. Taraji, Octavia and Janelle Monae did an incredible job.
Plus I like when movies are based on fact.
Anne Laurie
@lamh36:
I hope so too! (We didn’t get nearly as much snow as much of the midwest, but the police were still ‘advising’ people to stay off the roads from Friday evening on. Most stores closed early Saturday & we assumed the movie places would too… in fact, the late-night Saturday news had a clip of a non-serious ice-related collision just down the block from the place we would’ve gone.)
@Miss Bianca:
Hey, I did MY best to let people know :)
lamh36
lamh36
@brianbeutler 39m39 minutes ago
Also, why you shouldn’t sleep on @DavidCornDC’s reporting.
lamh36
So…this CNN report…sex tape?
Mnemosyne
Still trying to talk G into it, but not because he’s not interested in seeing it. I am apparently … challenging to go see movies with since I’m picky about the times, and where, and eating beforehand AND eating afterwards.
These are apparently the things you only find out 10 years into marriage with a 16-year relationship. ?
Miss Bianca
@lamh36:
oh, um…wait, I’ll get right right on that for ya…soon as I’ve finished my own, ah, “contribution”…drool…
oh, that man is BAD!! In a good way!
Elizabelle
@lamh36: I hope this blows up big. On the party before country GOP, too.
Comey even more disgraced.
MomSense
Haven’t seen the video yet but Charles Gaba (another health policy wonk) commended Sen. Angus King for his remarks in support of the ACA today. I’ve spoken with his staff twice this week already and will give a quick call tomorrow to say thank you.
Haven’t heard anything about Collins yet but I plan to find out and call her office again. I’m not happy about her Sessions situation so that will also be a part of my call.
bemused senior
I saw Hidden Figures on Sunday. It was a wonderful movie. I was surprised to realize that the IBM 7090 that “figured” in the movie is probably the one I learned Fortran on. In 1964-5 I had a mentor who helped me with my science project, including learning Fortran. He was an astronomer who worked at an aerospace company in Fairfax county, and he had computer time on a 7090 at Langley. I would write my program on a keypunch sheet, he would take it to Langley, have it punched, run it and bring back my output. Maybe they had more than one 7090, but I think it is very possible it was this same one. When I went to Stanford, a colleague I worked with at the computer center had been a “computer” at NASA Moffett Field. She and her family were dear friends — I wore her wedding dress at my own wedding. So this movie was extra special for me.
Steeplejack (tablet)
I love Taraji P. Henson. To lighten the evening’s mood, here’s a very funny bit she did with James Corden.
chopper
@lamh36:
jesus, i just threw up in my mouth.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Steeplejack (tablet):
Please to release from moderation. Apparently unsuitable YouTube link.
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
Don’t forget, if you can’t get through on the phone (I suspect some Republicans are refusing to answer), you can also send a fax if you have access to a fax machine.
ThresherK
@MomSense: Remember Mystery Men? “Invisible Boy” was invisible unless someone was looking at him. Has Susan Collins ever been bi(partisan)-curious when someone was looking at her, when her vote would make a damn difference?
I’m not from Maine so I haven’t been paying the attention you have.
jacy
@lamh36:
I just saw the Idris Elba thing come through my Facebook feed and immediately thought of you!
zhena gogolia
I have raged, I have shaken, I have done 1,000,000 crossword puzzles, but I haven’t sobbed (except maybe a little on 11/9) until I saw this — Chris Jackson singing “One Last Time” at the White House, Obama in the audience.
Schlemazel
@bemused senior:
WOW! Cool story.
zhena gogolia
I’m in moderation, I don’t know why. Posting Chris Jackson singing “One Last Time” in the WH with Obama in audience.
zhena gogolia
Okay, now all my comments go into moderation. I e-mailed Alain before when this happened, and he said to text him. I don’t text.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack (tablet):
Is that what it is? I just tried to post Chris Jackson singing “One Last Time” in the WH.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Mnemosyne:
Apparently you can send a free fax from FaxZero.com. I’ve been meaning to check that out.
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
Rogue One is the prequel Lucas should have made instead of the schlocky trilogy he did.
chris
@MomSense: Post a link, please, when you find it. I’m trying to keep my aunt in Maine motivated.
Also, fax any senator for free.
p.a.
Saw La La Land and Hidden Figures yesterday. Enjoyed both. Great storytelling and a great story, acting, and no ‘splosions needed (well… rockets ?.)
Brachiator
I tried to finish the book “Hidden Figures” before I saw the movie, but saw it this past weekend and enjoyed it tremendously.
I’ve heard a number of people say that they have seen “this type of narrative” depicted in “Hidden Figures” before, but I will bet good money that most Americans of any race did not know that black women (and white women) worked at NASA during early 1960s doing any kind of work that was not either janitorial or secretarial.
One of the great strengths of the movie is that it doesn’t simply show these women as fighting for equal opportunity, but rather depicts them as fighting to be able to express their specific and wonderful talents to the fullest, an idea that can be understood and enjoyed by someone, for example, who enjoyed the sports film “Rudy,” that also depicts a type of football success story that has been depicted many times before.
One sly way that “Hidden Figures” draws the audience in is the way in which it begins with the characters Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, and the other black “computers” already hired and doing their jobs at NASA, but at risk of losing them just as the astronaut program is taking off. This ups the stakes and makes the movie more than just another historical anecdote. An engaged viewer immediately wants to know who these women are and how they fit in with what we thought we knew about getting Americans into space.
And in a time when women of all colors still can’t get a break when it comes to careers in science, because of variations of the same biases dealt with by the protagonists of “Hidden Figures,” it’s also instructive to know that these struggles are not yet part of a quaint past that we have overcome.
“Hidden Figures” is not heavy handed in dealing with its themes, and is filled with a lot of great acting, especially from Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe, along with good supporting work by Kevin Kostner and Kirsten Dunst.
Go see it. It will cheer you up. And you know you need cheering up.
Mike in NC
One of the Golden Globe musical nominees was “Sing Street”, set in Dublin in 1985. It’s streaming on Netflix and we enjoyed watching it last night. Very charming story of a teenage band.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@zhena gogolia:
That has been my experience in the past. And I have no idea what combinations of letters in the YouTube address cause the problem.
David Evans
@bemused senior: I was learning Fortran about that time, using stacks of punched cards. I remember the joy when we acquired, a little later, a PDP-8. On which we could play a lunar landing simulator! In glorious green on black! Controlled by a light pen! Not much work was done that week.
bemused senior
@Brachiator: I heard my Stanford friend, the ex-computer, be told by our mutual boss “Don’t you feel guilty taking a job that a man could have to support his family?” Of course my friend was a single mom supporting her own family of two kids. It would have been 1969 or so. The part about the race to the distant ladies room echoed for me, because in summer 1965 I attended a summer physics program at Ohio U. sponsored by the NSF. Our labs and classrooms were on the top floor (4th I think) and the only ladies room in the building was on the 1st floor. Not a half mile run, but a good long way! I guess they didn’t plan for women students and faculty in physics.
Mnemosyne
As you guys know, I’ve been planning this for a long time, and it looks like the Devil Woman IS going to let me take my nieces to Disney World the week of their spring break in March. P.H.E.W.!
She asked if I could take them for an extra day. Gosh, twist my arm!
Kathleen
@lamh36: I plan to see it this weekend. Number one on my list.
Currants
After your first post about this, Anne Laurie–was it last summer?–I’ve been waiting for it to open, and just now got out of the theatre.
Do Not Miss This One.
Did make me want to swing a shovel at certain folks the way Costner swung that crow bar, though.
Kathleen
@bemused senior: What a lovely story!
danielx
@lamh36:
I’d bet a small sum on it.
Passing thought: I wonder how many authors have (figuratively speaking) have launched drafts of political thrillers/novels towards the nearest wastebasket over the last couple of months. “Forget it, there’s no way anything I write can compare with current reality, no matter what bizarre plot I come up with.”
Scout211
@lamh36:
Totally agree. Loved Hidden Figures and so did my husband.
geg6
@bemused senior:
My godfather was one of the people at IBM who worked on that computer and many others. He worked his whole career for IBM after serving in Korea and still consults for them at age 80. He’s a cool guy.
debbie
@Mnemosyne:
Good news! Finally!
Kathleen
@bemused senior: I was reminiscing (translation: boring my brother and friend) about my college years (1967 to 1971). The year I graduated there was 1 woman in the School of Business and 1 woman in the School of Engineering. There were 2 of us in my Business Math class, in which I flailed but the other female student excelled. Good times.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
I just call her local office since her D.C. Office only has a voice mail set up on her comment line.
@ThresherK:
Of course I remember Mystery Men. It’s a family favorite. She is a bit like invisible man. She will throw liberals a bone by voting on some things we support usually if they either have zero chance of passing or if they are close to unanimous.
She is really good at constituent services and I think that helps her tremendously.
bemused senior
@geg6: cool! Which IBM facility? I know a lot of old IBM folk.
Brachiator
@bemused senior:
Stuff like that is infuriating on so many levels. Among other things, it presumes that a woman is at best a temporary backup to a “real person,” a man. It also presumes that a woman could never be better than a man at the job, and that being the (male) bread winner automatically confers extra life points. What a load of malarky.
On my commute, I sometimes take the Metro bus that comes from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and runs by Caltech. Tons of talented scientists and engineers on board, including a good number of women. I’m betting that one day soon, a majority of the Nobel Prizes will go to women scientists. The times, they are a changing.
bemused senior
@Kathleen: My college years were 1966-71 because I took a year off to be “clean for Gene” and work for the poverty program in spring of 1968. I am feeling odd echoes of that time now.
chris
@danielx: Charles Stross had to rewrite his forthcoming near-future SF novel last summer because of Brexit.
Schlemazel
@David Evans:
That is where I came in! Moon lander, Adventure and Star Trek, great games. I worked with and old Teletype 33 RJE for a very short time & repaired card readers but never programmed with them.
It would be fun to play the Star Trek game again – to the google machine Sherman!
Schlemazel
I worked with a woman about the same time that had finished her degree in biology and applied for med school. During the interview process she was asked “Why should we give you a place in med school when you’ll just get pregnant in a few years and quite medicine?” It was a different world but not a good one.
Bonnie
I am very proud to be one of those opening box office numbers. It is a great, great film! Any one who hasn’t seen it, do so. I don’t think you will be disappointed.
SiubhanDuinne
Decided on the spur of the moment to see it this afternoon. Wonderful film!!
By a curious coincidence, as I was leaving I said to the woman next to me (a stranger) something anodyne like “Great movie!” We started chatting and it turns out she also worked at Langley starting in the early 1980s. Not during the overt Jim Crow era as in the film, but she was the first African American woman in her section (something to do with robotics) and the first AA female in a supervisory position in that particular unit.
Aaron
But how did Hidden Fences, this new movie I have been hearing about, do?
/s
Gvg
@bemused senior: I went back to college at 30 in 1992 and ran into another woman student returning for her masters who had earned her BS in engineering at UF in the 70’s and had a professor say that to her then. She was the only woman student most of the time. Returning to the same school 20 years later and nobody said a word. Her son was getting his bachelors at the same time. She had been divorced and supporting them alone for years and to me it just showed how unreal that attitude had always been.
I had a hard time processing that any professor had ever been so unprofessional as to say something like that. Glad times changed.
Monala
One of the things I loved most in Hidden Figures was the support network the women had – they had one another, first and foremost, and all of the black women in the computers group. (Love how Octavia Spencer’s character taught herself Fortran, then taught all the women under her supervision, so that they would all stay valuable at NASA!).
But they also had very supportive men in their lives (or men who came around to being supportive). And they did this while mothering children – leaning in before it was a meme.
bemused senior
@Gvg: It’s a dead thread, but maybe you’ll see this. I had a physics professor say in a class in which I was the only female student that physics wasn’t suitable for women, because you had to think about physics all the time, even when you were on the toilet. I was the only female physics major of my year. I can’t tell you how awful the experience was. It is why I ended up just living at the Computer Center, where my pre-college experience had gotten me a job. Of course the non-stop anti-war demonstrations while my father was serving in SEAsia didn’t help either.