Podcasts

Woman Around Town’s Editor Charlene Giannetti and writers for the website talk with the women and men making news in New York, Washington, D.C., and other cities around the world. Thanks to Ian Herman for his wonderful piano introduction.

Janelle Monae

Hidden Figures – The Women Behind John Glenn

01/30/2017

Every time we get a chance to get ahead they move the finish line.  Every time.

Hidden Figures, directed and co-authored by Theodore Melfi (St. Vincent) about a team of African American women who helped do the mathematical work on NASA’s early space missions in 1961, is not only a really fun movie, but feels like a truly vital one as well.

Hidden Figures Day 33

Kevin Costner

Based on a true story, Hidden Figures was adapted from the best-selling book by Margot Lee Shetterly. Katherine Goble (Taraji Henson of Person of Interest and Empire), Dorothy Vaughn (Octavia Spencer of The Help, and Fruitvale Station), and Mary Jackson (recording artist and big screen newcomer Janelle Monae), were three ‘human computers’ and some of the best minds at NASA. They also all happen to be women of color which relegates them to second class status and segregated bathrooms. (A running theme, is that Katherine, after being assigned to the main task force, has to keep running all the way across the NASA compound to use the colored women’s restroom several times a day.) Besides such indignities and unequal treatment they’re also faced with the fact that the incoming IBM computer station threatens to make their jobs obsolete. At the same time Goble, Vaughn, and Jackson help make history by sending John Glenn into orbit, they were also crossing lines pertaining to race and gender as well.  While the story of the former was well publicized, the story of the latter has been unknown until now.

Hidden Figures Day 40

Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), stands out amid her team of fellow mathematicians that helped send into orbit John Glenn. 

It’s an expertly written and directed movie. Melfi may have been something of an unknown before, but based on this we can expect good things from him in the future as well.  The casting is uniformly excellent. Kevin Costner as composite character Al Harrison plays the gruff, well meaning supervisor to a tee. Kirsten Dunst’s icy persona works in her favor for a change in the role of Vivian Mitchell, the white female supervisor who, while not an open emblem of bigotry, represents a subtler more insidious form of prejudice – indifference to obvious injustice. Janelle Monae is dynamic and sexy onscreen and Octavia Spencer as born leader and programming genius Dorothy Vaughn well deserves her Oscar nomination. However, it’s notable that Taraji P. Henson as lead character Katherine Goble nee Johnson is the movie’s heart and soul and notably was not nominated despite a performance that practically screams for Academy recognition. No offense to Meryl Streep, but Taraji’s work this year was clearly more deserving and this seems, like so much of the movie itself, to be another instance of a black woman not getting her due.

Photo Credit: Hopper Stone courtesy of 20th Century Fox

Moonlight – A Touching Coming of Age Tale

10/28/2016

With Naomie Harris’s raw and powerful performance, a charming cameo by Janelle Monae, and with Barry Jenkins at the helm as writer and director, Moonlight is a gem, a powerful coming of age tale.

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Janelle Monae

At the center of the film is Chiron (played by three actors – Alex Hibbert, as the young boy, Ashton Sanders, as an adolescent, and Trevante Rhodes as a  young adult). With Chiron as the vehicle, the film explores the intersection of race, identity, and the ravages of addiction in South Florida. As the latchkey son of a drug-addicted mother, Chiron tries to come to grips with the growing realization that he’s not like other boys his age.

Moonlight

Ashton Sanders

The real beauty the film is how it delicately, unapologetically explores a topic that is polarizing, especially for black men, skillfully grounding it in the most universal of truths: love, is love is just love.

The young actors who play Chiron deliver considered performances, transitioning the character from his beleaguered youth to a physically powerful, yet still vulnerable, young adult as seamlessly as skilled athletes hand over the baton during a relay race.

Moonlight

Alex Hibbert and Mahershala Ali

We would be remiss to ignore Mahershala Ali’s performance as Juan, who skillfully portrays a drug dealer at the height of war on drugs, who also manages to be a caring surrogate father to a young man who is in need of an anchor.

Moonlight, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in September, is one to watch when award season rolls around.

Moonlight opens nationwide October 28, 2016. Highly recommended.

Top photo: Alex Hibbert
Photos by David Bornfriend courtesy of A24