And hotness.
The movie is about science, too.
Most people don’t really know how much teamwork is involved with science. We have a tendency to worship the singular greats while overlooking great teams. I think the movie does a wonderful job showing how no one at NASA was a lone superstar. Like, Ms. Vaughan could have hogged the Fortran knowlege for herself, which is what most people would do in a cut-throat work environment like that one. But she knew she wasn’t going to be able to do anything without a team.
I have known about human computers (and that they were mostly women) for some time now, but I never really thought much about what they did until I saw this movie. I take for granted the R scripts and Excel formulas I use to crunch numbers, despite the fact they save me weeks/months of tedium and headache. It is humbling to think that the Langley engineers had the same attitude towards human beings. And it’s humbling to think that very few people today–even those with fancy degrees and certifications–would be able to do what those women were able to do without skipping a beat.
Makes me wonder what we might be losing by turning so much of our thinking to computers.
Weight wait … can someone explain what the ancient numerical method she was inspired to apply was and how it worked?
I’m old enough to remember the excitement about the space program. When I was nine I wanted to be an astronomer and happily reeled off facts about the planets to anyone who would listen. The movie touches on some of that excitement, and the pleasure that the characters have in being even a small part of that achievement.
But again, that’s not what the movie is about. It’s a pretty dismal view of science, overall. Any portrayal of women in science and women overcoming tremendous odds may do some good, certainly, but girls may be just as likely to come out of the movie thinking “if that’s what science is like, I don’t want any part of it.” I didn’t get the feeling that the filmmakers understood anything about real science; it was colorful background and nothing more. They didn’t even get to read the book, which wasn’t finished until after production.
I’m not kidding when I say that Big Bang Theory is far better at conveying the excitement of real science. That’s a central focus for them. Not here. Jim Parsons spends most of him time looking like he’s wondering why his lines are so bad and the money is as well.
The film itself is a wonderful product of what Hollywood better than anyone. I repeat, everybody should go see it. There are so few films that deal with science at all that any good ones need to be encouraged, even celebrated. It’s also a film that exemplifies what so many people hate about Hollywood: its tendency to take complicated, nuanced subjects and simplify and sentimentalize them against a one-dimensional background. Everybody will take away different percentages of those dichotomies. I can only give my view.
She was talking about the Euler method, but I don’t have the math to understand why it was important.
I really liked the movie, though.
They needed to figure out the change between the elliptical round-the-world orbit and the parabolic descent to the ground.
They knew the curves, but didn’t know the starting point for the parabolic curve. This gave them an approach to work backward and calculate that. I’m sure Chronos will contribute more on the subject.
Euler Method is a way to solve differential equations numerically (brute force), rather than analytically (i.e. coming up with an equation that describes the answer). I remember learning it in freshman astronomy course, though we were allowed (and required) to use electronic computers, not human.
I’m not sure it made sense in that context though. If transitioning from an elliptical to a parabolic orbit by firing a thruster, the change is almost instantaneous. It should be possible to use the same position and new velocity, and find an analytical solution to the resulting parabolic orbit.
But maybe the thruster firing took long enough that the trajectory during the firing needed to be calculated numerically. Or they needed to calculate the trajectory with air resistance taken into account (though this wouldn’t be correctly described as “parabolic”).
And to be pedantic, “parabolic” orbits are actually elliptical orbits that intersect the ground. But in that situation, a parabola is probably a good enough approximation.
Well, there are orbits that are true parabolas, but you wouldn’t see any of those in the Mercury program (maybe in Apollo, if you ignore perturbations).
Saw it last night, and loved it. So refreshing to see a movie where the smart people are rewarded. The scenes of racism and discrimination were hard to watch, but the ones where the three main characters gracefully showed their bosses (racist and otherwise) that they were making a valuable contribution were inspiring. There weren’t many people in the theater where we saw it (it was a rainy night) but there were several instances of applause during the movie (not just at the end). That was cool.
Took me a while to recognize Cottonmouth from “Luke Cage” as the love interest. I think the spouse and I figured it out about the same time and gave each other a “THAT’s who that is!” satisfied look.
I feel like I’m getting old, since I remember Kirsten Dunst as a teenager, not as a full-grown woman in a position of authority.
That’s Mahershala Ali. I haven’t seen the show you reference, but I know him from the film Moonlight. Look for him to get a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for the Moonlight role (along with a boatload of other Oscar nominations for that movie, including probably Best Picture). I saw him in Hidden Figures and after awhile it occurred to me, “Wow, that’s the guy from Moonlight!”
Or as Claudia, the little girl vampire in Interview with the Vampire when she was only 11.
To me, Kirsten Dunst is Mary Jane, from Spider-Man.
BTW, once the dust settled Hidden Figures ended up coming out ahead of Rogue One for the box office weekend.
This is far better than most projections. Quite a feat. It also has an A+ CinemaScore.
This one is going to do quite well money-wise which will help its Oscar profile.
Looking forward to seeing it.
It will get a nod or two, but I’d be disappointed if it won anything. It was a good movie with decent performances. It was uplifting. It wasn’t terribly well directed. The acting was good, but the roles lacked meat. Disney made it, and it shows.
Saw it with my wife this weekend, and we loved it. I was surprised to learn that the scene with Glenn insisting that Katherine personally check the numbers for his trajectory before launch was not Hollywood-ized, but actually happened almost exactly as portrayed on screen.
Saw it today. Inspiring. I heard a young girl shout as we were exiting, “I want to see that movie a thousand times!”
When Katherine entered the Pentagon meeting, I noticed she was wearing what I’d call “statement” earrings and a lovely brooch. So much for “you can only wear a simple strand of pearls”!
And I knew “Miss Mitchell” was going to call her “Mrs. Vaughan” by the end of the movie.
We finally got to see this last night.
Mostly a very good and well acted movie. The three main leads were especially well cast.
It’s a good reminder that too much of the racism and sexism of that era still exists and is getting stronger.
The big problem with the movie is the historical inaccuracies keep piling up and up. Too many liberties were taken to put people together for key scenes.
Also they screwed up the Math too often.
I’m looking forward to this film being released over here.
I really liked it. Most of what I’d say has already been said except that I really think Taraji P Henson should have gotten an Oscar nomination and I’m disappointed that that didn’t happen.
The film got other nominations, so it’s not like Academy members didn’t see the film.
I’d put her in the Best Actress category without hesitating to substitute her for Ruth Negga (excellent performance in a not too demanding role), Meryl Streep (excellent performance but, c’mon, she’s Meryl fucking Streep, she can basically phone this shit in without breaking a sweat such that it’s just not interesting anymore), or Natalie Portman (a talented actor who spent this whole movie struggling to maintain her accent and so never got around to bringing her A game for the actual acting).
The only other thing that struck me about the film that hasn’t really been mentioned,
Dunst is 34. I think she easily comes across as 36 or 37 in the film.
With Hollywood make-up and lighting, she could easily play 26 or 27. Taking full advantage of movie magic to play younger is the route most professional actresses would generally choose. And that’s not an accusation of vanity. There’s very real reason for an actress to worry about her career once she’s seen as “older”. Once you’re seen as too old to play a 20-something lead, you’ll almost disappear until you are old enough to play “mother” roles for the young adult lead characters.
So, I was pretty impressed with Dunst as an actor to agree to take this role and to not insist on make-up choices that would not have been true to the character.
I didn’t even recognize her at first. It took until her third scene, or so, for me to have an “Ah-HA!” moment.
I saw it yesterday and loved it. The thing that got me was not the blatant racism (no n-word, thank Og) but the casual racism. Like no one even considered that Katherine would have to run across campus to use the restroom because there was no restroom for “her” in the building. She didn’t question it, no one else questioned it, until the meltdown in the room as to why she was away from her desk so much.
I’d like to know more about Harrison. He saw the big picture that brains and aptitude were more important than gender or color. If you knew your stuff and were willing to stay late and do the work, then he didn’t care where you peed.
I’ve reserved the book through Overdrive. Excellent film. So glad to see she’s had a building named after her and is still alive!
And damn you, Ron Howard. You couldn’t include Katherine in Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks?