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at the movies

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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« Reply #50 on: April 10, 2014, 12:14:48 am »



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« Reply #51 on: December 24, 2014, 07:43:58 am »


from the Los Angeles Times....

Kim Jong Un has made Seth Rogen's silly film the must-see movie of the year

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM PST - Tuesday, December 23, 2014



THE bizarre saga of the cyberattack against Sony Pictures Entertainment could provide the story line for a better movie than “The Interview”, the film that inspired the hack. Still, much like Seth Rogen’s goofball comedy about the fictional assassination of North Korea’s baby-faced despot, Kim Jong Un, the real world tale is not a profile in courage or maturity.

Start with Seth Rogen. He and his creative partner, Evan Goldberg, have been buddies since they were kids and retain the comic sensibility of 14-year-old boys. Trying to widen the scope of their work beyond the pratfalls and bodily functions of amiable stoners and binge-drinking frat boys, they came up with what they considered a more adult concept: a movie about two knuckleheaded TV journalists being recruited by the CIA to “take out” North Korea’s pudgy potentate.

It’s an idea with great satiric promise, but, according to reviewers who managed to preview the film before Sony canceled its release, it is promise unfulfilled. The one thing it does deliver, though, is Kim’s on-screen death. However hilarious his pretend demise may be, Rogen should have put down his bong long enough to consider that somebody in North Korea might not be amused. Think of how outraged Americans would be if China or Iran produced a film making a joke of President Obama being killed. (Admittedly, not all Americans would be outraged; some would be lining up at theaters to see it, right Limbaugh fans?)

The thing is, Rogen has never claimed to be the adult in the room. He just makes the movies; somebody else gives them the green light. In this case, it is the Sony executives in Culver City who decided to grant Rogen free rein, ignoring the concerns of the chief executive of Sony Corporation, Kazuo Hirai. Given that the Tokyo-based boss might have a little more insight into Kim’s temperament, the American management might have been smart to listen to him. Still, I suppose they should be commended for erring on the side of artistic freedom, especially since they have paid dearly for it.

The hack has paralyzed Sony’s computer system, cost the company tens of millions of dollars, drawn lawsuits from current and former employees who say the company failed miserably in protecting their private information, and inspired speculation that the studio will soon be put up for sale. Besides all that, the exposure of private emails has been deeply embarrassing, especially for the studio’s co-chairman, Amy Pascal. She has had to do penance for a string of jokey emails that insinuated Obama’s taste in movies would not extend beyond pictures with African American actors and themes like “Django Unchained”, “12 Years a Slave” and “The Butler”.

For his part, Obama has branded the Sony bosses as a bunch of wimps — not for sending dumb emails, but for shelving “The Interview” in response to the hackers’ threats. Sony gave the major theatre chains permission to back out of commitments to screen the film and the theatre owners, worried that moviegoers would be scared away from the multiplexes, happily took them up on the offer. Obama said this capitulation was wrong.

“We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States,” the president said. “Because if somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing when they see a documentary that they don't like or news reports that they don't like.”

Obama, like the grown-up stepping in to sort things out among a brood of naughty children, is pledging to take action based on the FBI’s preliminary finding that the North Koreans are the principal culprits in this crime.

“They caused a lot of damage,” Obama said. “And we will respond. We will respond proportionally, and we'll respond in a place and time and manner that we choose.”

A lot of people are wondering if North Korea has already been hit by an American response. At 2 a.m. on Tuesday the country's Internet service went kaput. The outage lasted nine-and-a-half hours. It could have been the U.S. getting retirbution — no one was saying — but experts also said the rickety Internet link has failed all on its own more than once in Kim Jong Un's backward nation.

By far the most childish person in this weird scenario is Kim. He praised the Sony hack but, like a schoolyard bully who is too cowardly to take responsibility for his misdeeds, Kim denies he had anything to do with it. Kim is such a deluded, petulant punk that even the Chinese leaders who have propped up the dismal North Korean “Hermit Kingdom” for nearly seven decades are now engaged in a very public debate about whether they should let Kim and his regime collapse.

There could not be a more deserving and ripe target for sharp political satire than Kim. “The Interview” may have gone too far by killing him off, but may not have gone far enough in portraying him as the world’s most obnoxious brat. At least that’s what the critics say.

Sooner or later and one way or another, we will all get to see for ourselves, of course. Kim may have wrecked Sony, but he also has made Rogen’s juvenile farce the must-see movie of the year.


http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-kim-jong-un-seth-rogens-film-20141222-story.html
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« Reply #52 on: December 24, 2014, 09:40:46 am »

I saw the fantastic movie "What we did on our Holidays" - Billy Connolly is MAGNIFICENT as always.
« Last Edit: December 24, 2014, 05:26:16 pm by Alicat » Report Spam   Logged
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« Reply #53 on: December 24, 2014, 08:14:18 pm »

So want to see 'The Interview' now. I wonder if there are any North Koreans who would want to go with me.
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« Reply #54 on: December 25, 2014, 12:41:26 pm »

yes, I am keen to see the movie now to,

...might be hard to find many North Koreans who have escaped from North Korea Wink

but...I think secretly most North Koreans would hope the movie comes true Cool
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« Reply #55 on: December 25, 2014, 05:00:47 pm »


yes, I am keen to see the movie now to,

...might be hard to find many North Koreans who have escaped from North Korea Wink

but...I think secretly most North Koreans would hope the movie comes true Cool

Google, Microsoft help screen Sony film

December 25, 2014, 11:03 amAFP

...The Interview became available for rent in high-definition streaming at Google Play, YouTube Movies, Microsoft's Xbox Video service and at a dedicated seetheinterview.com website for a price of $US5.99 ($A6.48). ...
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« Reply #56 on: January 08, 2015, 11:35:20 am »



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« Reply #57 on: January 27, 2015, 04:36:16 am »


from the Los Angeles Times....

Clint Eastwood's ‘American Sniper’ brilliantly blurs ideological lines

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM PST - Monday, January 26, 2015



CLINT EASTWOOD's masterful, controversial new movie, “American Sniper”, is generating a useful debate that, at heart, is about wolves, sheep and sheepdogs.

Visually dynamic with a taut plot line, Eastwood’s film takes the audience straight into the horrific, intimate details of modern war by telling the fact-based story of Chris Kyle, the most prolific sniper in U.S. military history. We see the chaos and violence that surrounded him during four tours of duty in the Iraq war and his increasing alienation from the happy family life to which he intermittently returned throughout all his years at war.

Somewhat unexpectedly, the movie is a huge hit and a major contender in the Oscar race. It is especially popular among conservatives who see it as a bold celebration of muscular patriotism. Some antiwar liberals, on the other hand, are disturbed by what they perceive as a glorification of a war that should never have been fought.

Leftie filmmaker Michael Moore outraged conservatives when, in a tweet, he noted that his uncle was killed by a sniper in World War II. “Snipers aren’t heroes,” he wrote, “And invaders r worse.” An uproar ensued, led by a tweet from former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who suggested that Moore “spend a few weeks with ISIS and Boko Haram.” The brouhaha compelled Moore to offer a fuller assessment of the film, which he mostly praised, noting that “there is also anti-war sentiment expressed in the movie.”

Conservative fans of the film may have overlooked that antiwar element. They may have also not heard that Jane Fonda — “Hanoi Jane” — has gone on Twitter to favorably compare “American Sniper” to her own lauded Vietnam War-era antiwar movie, “Coming Home”. She ends her tweet with “Bravo Clint Eastwood.”

Having seen the movie myself, I would contend that “American Sniper” is neither pro-war nor antiwar; it is simply the reality of an asymmetrical conflict reproduced as precisely as art will allow from the tight perspective of the American soldiers who are fighting in it and the families at home who pay a big price for having their loved ones repeatedly sent into battle.

Some critics argue that the film’s tight perspective is precisely the problem. In their view, leaving out the deception and political hubris that led to the American invasion, as well as the complex history of exploitation and colonialism in the Mideast, makes the movie a simplistic story of good Americans shooting at bad Muslims. I understand the point, but I also believe that there is room for a movie that does not hammer the audience with a message and, instead, with a textured portrayal, gives them a lot to ponder.

For me, I’ve found a lot to think about in the central theme of the movie, which was also the motivating principle of Chris Kyle’s life. In an early scene, an actor portraying Kyle’s father tells his sons that the world consists of wolves, sheep and the sheepdogs that protect the sheep from the wolves. That becomes Kyle’s mission and, in the end, after all the carnage, the only regret Kyle expresses is that he could not save even more of the soldiers he was assigned to protect.

The simple formulation about wolves, sheep and sheepdogs is one of the things conservatives especially love about “American Sniper”. They are always the quickest to declare that our armed forces, filled with men like Chris Kyle, are the only ones standing between all of us at home and the barbarians who would destroy our freedoms. We are the sheep, they are the sheepdogs and the killers of Islamic State, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram and their ilk are the vicious wolves. As glad as I am that the United States has the best sheepdogs in the world, though, the picture is incomplete. There are also shepherds.

Good shepherds can see the broader landscape. They can understand what might be going on beyond the horizon to make the wolves so ravenous. They can make a wise judgment about when to hold the sheepdogs in check, when to turn them loose and when to call them back. Bad shepherds, though, read the landscape wrong and depend on the sheepdogs to save them from their mistakes.

American Sniper” is a well-told story about the sheepdogs — the tiny percentage of Americans who volunteer to fight and die to advance the objectives of U.S. foreign policy.

In the background are the sheep; the vast majority of us who go on with our lives, risking nothing, protesting little, with only a vague appreciation of what these soldiers are doing, for good or ill, on our behalf.

And then there are the shepherds; too many of them quick to deploy and use up the sheepdogs without looking over the horizon and finding a better, more permanent way to protect the flock and give the sheepdogs a rest.


http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-american-sniper-blurs-lines-20150126-story.html
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« Reply #58 on: January 27, 2015, 01:24:05 pm »

Sarah Palin pictured holding sign saying ‘F*** you Michael Moore’

35 MINUTES AGO JANUARY 27, 2015 12:42PM

R
REPUBLICAN Party presidential aspirant Sarah Palin has been pictured holding a sign that turned Michael Moore’s name into gun sights.
The former Alaskan governor was at the Las Vegas Shot Show, a trade expo for shooters and hunters, when she posed holding the sign with a couple of supporters.
The picture was posted on Facebook by Afghanistan war veteran Dakota Meyer, and has been liked over 50,000 times, and shared almost 30,000 times.

For Full Story
http://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/sarah-palin-pictured-holding-sign-saying-f-you-michael-moore/story-fnh81jut-1227198116241
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« Reply #59 on: January 27, 2015, 06:29:09 pm »


I'm sure Michael Moore will regard that as a notch on his belt....pissing off a retard like Sarah Palin would definitely be a good thing.


But about that “American Sniper” movie.

It sounds like yet another American wankfest where they try to pretend that a Sepo saves the world.

No wonder people get pissed off with them and fly Boeing airliners into their buildings....


And don't forget that the Americans were silly enough to elect a clown like Dubya to be Prez....he dragged them into a war which sucked more than a Trillion dollars out of their economy and threw them into a huge financial crisis which resulted in millions of 'merkins being thrown on the scrapheap as their jobs disappeared and they got kicked out of the homes they had mortgaged up to the hilt. And the idiots were actually stupid enough to elect him back into the White House for a second term.

Say no more about dumb Americans, eh?   




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« Reply #60 on: January 27, 2015, 08:24:21 pm »

ktj..."And don't forget that the Americans were silly enough to elect a clown like Dubya to be Prez"

..yeah..god thing kiwi's are alot smarter eh..we elected a great leader for our country..John Key..the americans must be envious Grin
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« Reply #61 on: January 28, 2015, 07:56:43 am »

Back to topic .... at the movies.

I really enjoyed American Sniper. It was a excellent movie. I certainly did not see it as pro or anti war. I saw it as an extremely well done movie.

War is not pretty, but war is, sadly, a fact of life. Like most movies that are based on  true story - they are exactly that - 'based' - with a fair amount of poetic licence.
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« Reply #62 on: February 21, 2015, 01:26:12 pm »


It's “Oscars” time again....



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« Reply #63 on: February 21, 2015, 01:26:41 pm »


from the Los Angeles Times....

Amy Pascal deserves an Oscar for Best Recovery from a Humiliating Hack

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM PST - Friday, February 20, 2015



SUNDAY will bring the American film industry’s most glittering night of the year, the 2015 Oscars, but the biggest movie story of recent months will only be noted if the evening’s host, Neil Patrick Harris, makes it the subject of one of his jokes.

That is very likely. How could anyone resist drawing humor from the rich trove of weirdness contained in the hack of the computer system at Sony Pictures? Who would have thought that a loveable stoner doofus like Seth Rogen would be the guy who inspired a devastating cyber attack on a major U.S. industry — an attack that exposed the shocking vulnerability of American corporations that have become completely reliant on vast computer systems plugged into the untamed frontier of the Internet? And who can help but laugh — nervously — at Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s mercurial young despot, whose head famously explodes in Rogen’s controversial comedy film, “The Interview”?

For those who missed this story, here are the main plot points: Rogen had grown tired of making movies about 20-something slackers who spend their days masturbating and smoking weed. Trying to think bigger, he hit on the comic possibilities of a movie about an American journalist being drafted by the CIA to assassinate a dictator in the middle of an exclusive interview. Cool concept, right? Thinking about it some more, he realized the movie would have a stronger impact if the dictator being portrayed were real, not some made-up ruler of a fake country. North Korea’s tubby tyrant was the obvious choice to fill that role.

Over the objections of her bosses in Tokyo who live a whole lot closer to the Korean Peninsula than she does, Amy Pascal, co-chair of Sony Pictures Entertainment, gave Rogen the green light for his movie. Everyone knew the North Koreans would shriek and stamp their feet, but what else could they do? Their missiles can’t reach the studio lot in Culver City.

Unfortunately, their hackers can. Or somebody’s hackers. It is still not absolutely certain who was behind the cyber invasion, but the FBI and U.S. intelligence services have convinced President Obama it had to be the North Koreans. The cinematic portrayal of the hermit kingdom’s supreme leader being “taken out” just to elicit laughs from cineplex audiences was branded an act of war by government officials in Pyongyang. And it provided a convenient opportunity for them to put their army of well-trained hackers to work exacting revenge.

And, boy oh boy, did it work. On the day before Thanksgiving, devilish images appeared on all the computer screens at Sony Pictures. The system locked up and the entire studio was forced to communicate with pens and paper and personal phones. Then came the massive data dump — all kinds of stolen personnel records and internal communications, plus copies of complete movies that had yet to be released in theaters, delivered to media outlets that were more than happy to share them with readers and viewers.

Pascal was humiliated when some of her pirated e-mails were bared to the world. There were racially-tinged jokes about what sort of movies Obama might like to watch. And there were messages to and from Pascal from various parties talking about how celebrities are a bunch of narcissistic whiners.

Sony seems to have recovered from the hack, but Pascal got booted from her job. Still, thanks to being a talented and influential Hollywood player, she landed well. Pascal is now overseeing the reboot of the “Spider-Man” franchise for Sony and, no doubt, will be at the head of many successful movie projects to come. It will not be surprising if she shows up on the Academy Awards red carpet on Sunday.

If Pascal turns out to be the butt of a few jokes, she will laugh along with everyone else, even if it hurts a little. And why not? It’s not an international incident, it’s just show biz.


http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-amy-pascal-oscar-20150219-story.html
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« Reply #64 on: February 25, 2015, 10:22:42 am »


from the Los Angeles Times....

American Sniper’ shoots blanks at Oscars

By DAVID HORSEY | 8:00AM PST - Monday, February 23, 2015



POLITICAL STATEMENTS were more numerous than good jokes on the stage of the 2015 Academy Awards. Equal pay for women, protection of voting rights, encouragement for young gay people, acceptance of new immigrants and even a better government in Mexico all got shout outs from Oscar winners, but the movie that has made the biggest political stir got only an award for sound editing.

That movie, “American Sniper”, was the people's choice for Best Picture, according to a fan poll noted by ABC, and Clint Eastwood's Iraq War film took in more money at the box office than all the other top nominees combined. When it came to gold on Oscar night, though, “Birdman” beat it out for Best Picture and “Sniper” star Bradley Cooper had to stay put in his front row seat when the Best Actor envelope was opened and his name was not called.

Conservative pundits are sure to take this as further proof that Hollywood is out of step with real America. Eastwood, the special guest star of the 2012 Republican, was slighted. Meanwhile, that Castro-loving leftie, Sean Pean, got to stand in the spotlight and hand the Best Picture prize to Alejandro Inarritu, a gosh-darned Mexican! Good grief! John Wayne must be rolling in his grave.

This will spark the latest round in a debate about “American Sniper” that has been going on since the movie opened in December. Is the film a skillful and subtle examination of the shattering costs of war, as seen through the eyes of Navy Seal Chris Kyle? Or is it a glorification of George W. Bush's trumped up war? A lot of hot air has been expended on talk radio and cable TV news shows arguing all aspects of those questions.

So, “American Sniper” may have been ignored by Oscar, but not by me. I'm giving it a special cartoon award for all it has contributed to the American punditry business.


http://www.latimes.com/la-na-tt-american-sniper-oscars-20150223-story.html
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« Reply #65 on: February 29, 2016, 08:39:40 am »


from the Los Angeles Times....

A cartoon extravaganza: What if everyone skipped the Oscars?

What if the Oscars gave out awards but nobody showed up … except maybe Leonardo DiCaprio?

By DAVID HORSEY | 8:00AM PST - Sunday, February 28, 2016

HOLLYWOOD's glamorous Smith couple — Will and Jada — made it known early on that they would be absent from the 2016 Academy Awards ceremony because not a single non-white actor had gotten a nomination.

In subsequent days, a lively and important debate has ensued about the lack of diversity in the movie industry.

This raises the question: What if they gave Oscars and nobody came?

There are plenty of reasons, both serious and silly, that film industry folks might choose not to show up.

Los Angeles Times editorial cartoonist and columnist David Horsey ponders a scenario at this year's Academy Awards, hitting all the eeshs and oohs. We're talking racial diversity, unequal pay and — ding, ding, ding — Leonardo DiCaprio's possible lead actor Oscar.




http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-skip-the-oscars-20160226-story.html
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« Reply #66 on: March 01, 2016, 11:29:51 am »



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« Reply #67 on: March 02, 2016, 12:20:12 pm »


OSCARS
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« Reply #68 on: March 06, 2016, 10:42:19 am »


What's the bloody point? 

The original movie is fine exactly as it is and doesn't need to be remade.

What's wrong with coming up with something original instead of trying to improve a Kiwi classic which doesn't need to be improved?




from the Sunday Star-Times....

Goodbye Pork Pie remake is coming


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« Reply #69 on: March 06, 2016, 11:44:30 am »

Riveting...
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« Reply #70 on: September 14, 2016, 09:32:32 pm »


Now this looks like it has the potential to be a great movie. It is certainly an interesting story.

I'll have to keep an eye out for its release in New Zealand.




from The Washington Post....

The nearly forgotten story of the black women
who helped land a man on the moon


By STEPHANIE MERRY | 7:00AM EDT - Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) in gray, flanked by fellow mathematicians Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), left, and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe), meets the man they helped send into orbit, John Glenn (Glen Powell) in the upcoming movie “Hidden Figures”. — Photograph: Hopper Stone/SMPSP/Twentieth Century Fox.
Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) in gray, flanked by fellow mathematicians Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), left,
and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe), meets the man they helped send into orbit, John Glenn (Glen Powell) in the upcoming
movie “Hidden Figures”. — Photograph: Hopper Stone/SMPSP/Twentieth Century Fox.


IT ALL STARTED with a mysterious photograph.

In 2011, Mary Gainer was a historic preservationist for NASA, and she stumbled on a 1943 picture of a thousand people standing in a huge building. Gainer figured that the black men posing in the front were probably machinists, and the rest of the group was mostly white men in suits and ties.

But scattered here and there was something unexpected: Women, some white and some black, in conspicuous knee-length skirts and pompadour hairdos.

Gainer, who worked at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, tasked her new intern, Sarah McLennan, to get to the bottom of it. There were too many to be the few secretaries employed then, so who were they, she wanted to know?

Unbeknownst to Gainer, another person was on a similar hunt — only Margot Lee Shetterly was a step ahead. Shetterly's father was a scientist who worked at Langley, so growing up in the 1970s and '80s, she was aware of the history of black women at NASA.

“There are these women and I knew them, and my dad worked with them and they went to our church and their kids were in my school,” she said recently over the phone from her home in Charlottesville. “It was my husband who was like, ‘What is this story? How come I've never heard about it?’”


This photo — unearthed by NASA historic preservationist Mary Gainer in 2011 — was taken at the NACA Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory (now NASA Langley Research Center) on November 4th, 1943 during a visit by Frank Knox, secretary of the Navy. — Photograph: NASA Langley Research Center.
This photo — unearthed by NASA historic preservationist Mary Gainer in 2011 — was taken at the NACA Langley Memorial
Aeronautical Laboratory (now NASA Langley Research Center) on November 4th, 1943 during a visit by Frank Knox,
secretary of the Navy. — Photograph: NASA Langley Research Center.


This was a special story, she suddenly realized: black women living in Jim Crow-era Virginia hired by NASA to do math and research that would launch men into space.

Shetterly started poking around and linked up with Gainer, whose intern was compiling oral histories from former employees and their families. Shetterly's book about those math whizzes, Hidden Figures, came out last week. In January, a movie version will hit multiplexes with a cast that includes Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe.

And just like that, a piece of history that was nearly lost could become common knowledge.

Shetterly and her neighbors all knew the stories of these women. “Growing up in Hampton, the face of science was brown like mine,” Shetterly writes in her book.

But at the very place where these prodigies were employed, the history was fading.

Everyone knows what a computer looks like: the hard drive, the monitor, the keyboard, the mouse. But in the middle of the last century at Langley (which was until 1958 part of NASA's precursor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), it looked different. Women who used pencils and paper to calculate data from wind tunnel tests, among other research, were called computers. The first of their kind were hired in 1935, and their ranks swelled during the labor shortage of World War II. In other fields, as men trickled back from overseas, women returned to more traditional roles at home, but not at Langley. The female computers became invaluable as the needs for aircraft advancements gave way to a different kind of battle: beating Russia to the moon.


Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) and NASA mission specialist Karl Zielinski (Olek Krupa) in “Hidden Figures”. — Photograph: Hopper Stone/SMPSP/Twentieth Century Fox.
Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) and NASA mission specialist Karl Zielinski (Olek Krupa) in “Hidden Figures”.
 — Photograph: Hopper Stone/SMPSP/Twentieth Century Fox.


The women who had these jobs may not have felt remarkable. They were just happy to have work that paid better than the alternatives — teaching and nursing. The jobs were classified as “subprofessional”, even though they entailed specialized math skills.

One such woman was Katherine G. Johnson. At 98, she still lives in Hampton, and has emerged as the most high-profile of the computers. In the last year, she's won the Presidential Medal of Freedom, saw a building named after her and had a bench dedicated in her honor. On her birthday, in late August, #HappyBirthdayKatherineJohnson started trending on Twitter. In a few months, Henson, an Oscar nominee, will play her onscreen.

Like a lot of the other computers, Johnson studied math in college. She was also one of three graduate students to desegregate West Virginia University in 1940, but marriage and a family derailed her plans for an advanced degree. At NASA, she worked on the life-or-death task of determining launch timing. Her calculations helped propel Alan Shepard into space and guided him successfully back to Earth; they landed Neil Armstrong on the moon and brought him home.

She never talked about work much, her daughter Joylette Hylick said recently.

“To come home and start talking about complex equations wouldn't go over with teenagers,” Hylick explained. Plus, “we had activities — church, sports, music lessons, the whole nine, so it was quite a full life. She was not a stay-at-home but she also was not a workaholic in the sense that everything revolved around that.”

When asked about her accomplishments, Johnson, a prodigy who graduated high school at 14, tends to deflect in every interview. Shetterly says Johnson told her again and again, “I was just doing my job.” (Johnson was unavailable to comment for this story.)


Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe, left), Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) and Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) in “Hidden Figures”. — Photograph: Hopper Stone/SMPSP/Twentieth Century Fox.
Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe, left), Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) and Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer)
in “Hidden Figures”. — Photograph: Hopper Stone/SMPSP/Twentieth Century Fox.


It wasn't until well into adulthood that Hylick realized the importance of her mother's job.

After all, she was a trailblazer amid rampant discrimination. The earliest group of black women who worked at NACA were segregated from another computing pool of white women, and they had to use different bathrooms. At lunch in the cafeteria, they were relegated to a table with a white cardboard sign that read “colored computers”. One woman, Miriam Mann, snatched the sign off the table and hid it in her purse, depositing it at home. At first, replacements would materialize, but when Mann kept taking them, they eventually stopped appearing. It was the first of many victories.

Now seems like the right time for this history to re-emerge. “There's been a movement in the last couple of decades to diversify the history of computing,” said McLennan, the former intern, who is now a visiting assistant professor at Virginia State University. “The earliest histories of that kind of thing were about innovators or big companies, but it didn't necessarily look at the social aspect.”

The film's producer, Donna Gigliotti, credits the current interest in encouraging women to pursue science and math for helping get the movie made so quickly. It's rare for a producer to option a book based on only a 55-page proposal, but that's what Gigliotti did.

“Really, you can feel it in the zeitgeist,” Gigliotti said, and the rapturous response to the trailer confirms that.

Whatever the reason, Shetterly is happy that people will know not just about the John Glenns of the world, she said, but the whole team that helped him get where he was going.

“We want the big stories, of course, of the great men, but there's as much drama and interest and lessons to be learned in actions that people like us take on a daily basis,” she said. “History happens as soon as I pick up my coffee cup — it happened 30 seconds ago. It's history.”


• Washington-area native Stephanie Merry covers movies and pop culture for The Washington Post.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-nearly-forgotten-story-of-the-black-women-who-helped-land-a-man-on-the-moon/2016/09/12/95f2d356-7504-11e6-8149-b8d05321db62_story.html
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« Reply #71 on: February 27, 2017, 10:31:23 am »


from the Los Angeles Times....

A 14-year-old king of Hollywood critiques
the best picture Oscar nominees


By DAVID HORSEY | 9:10AM PST - Sunday, February 26, 2017

I'M A BIG FAN of all the Academy Awards' best picture nominees — an impressive group of films with stellar actors in complex
human stories that, even in the case of “La La Land”, break away from conventions and stereotypes. But, there is a group of
movie fans who may be less impressed, who might want fewer adult themes and more car chases and stuff blowing up…




http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-academy-20170225-htmlstory.html
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