Yes, it's a short of the most recent Superman movie (2025), but what's so weird about it is that the interior is that of Cincinnati Museum Center.
My wife used to work there in both the Natural History Museum and the Cincinnati Historical Society, and we used to take the kids there on a regular basis when they were growing up.
So yeah, I know nothing else of the movie or the scene, but looking at the interior of the rotunda like that is... Well, it's a bit much.
In case you're wondering whether they touched up the rotunda very much, here's a video of a performance of Debussy's Arabesque No. 1 on the Wurlitzer organ at the Museum Center. The pipes are hidden from view, but the main portion of the Wurlitzer is right on the border from the rotunda to the walkway that leads towards the Omnimax Theater and the Amtrak station.
As you can tell, the Winhold Weiss murals were changed from this:
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| From WVXU's 2023 article. |
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| From the same WVXU 2023 article as above. |
To this:
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| From Reddit. Here's a better set of pics from James Gunn on Facebook. Not sure how long it'll last. |
You know that gorilla thing, where the man in the gorilla suit walks across the shot and only about 1 in 10 people see it? I just read your post, clicked on the images, looked at those, then watched the movie clip all the way through, got to the end and thought "What? I didn't see any murals..."
ReplyDeleteSo I ran it a second time, looking for them, and saw them straight away. The brain is weird. Also, now I want to watch the Superman movie. I might watch it after lunch since I have it on DVD.
I have seen the gorilla thing in different formats, especially the memes which poke fun at men who focus on the hot woman while ignoring King Kong in the background.
DeleteFor this, I went back and rewatched it simply because I wanted to see if James Gunn had changed any part of the rotunda and the murals jumped right out at me. I suppose that I ought to look at the rest of the short to see what other changes were put in place. And yes, the "To Trains" sign is still present at the CMC. It dates to the construction of the building when it was a train station, Cincinnati Union Terminal, back in the 1930s. It looks like Gunn turned off the neon lighting in the movie, but the sign is largely intact. The frosted over windows behind the actors in what looks like old time ticket windows actually were ticket windows back in the Union Terminal days.
Wow, cool video. I would love to go to a performance there. When I was a lad there was a cathedral in Huntsville, AL (of all places) that had a big pipe organ. I used to go there for concerts on occasion. However, nothing as impressive as that.
ReplyDeleteAs for the first video, I would never have picked up that was an art museum or that there were murals. It very much gives off "random movie train station" vibes, though from what you said there is also an Amtrac facility in there somewhere so maybe not totally inaccurate.
Very cool regardless!
[I had to post this three times to get a version that didn't have some absolutely awful typo in it. I am apparently incapable of proofreading until I hit the submit button . . . .]
Don't worry: I'm kind of infamous for that too! I'll clean up the other comments so the "removed by author" won't show up.
DeleteAs for a performance, I think it would be cool to attend, but if I'd a choice I'd much rather listen to an organ concert at either St. Peter-in-Chains Basilica or Christ Church Cathedral downtown. The former has wonderful acoustics, and we've seen both Chanticleer and Musica Antiqua Koln there, the latter has the annual Boar's Head and Yule Log Festival every Christmas season.
(Yes, there's Cincinnati Music Hall, but that kind of goes without sayin'...)
Cincinnati Union Terminal still has an Amtrak station; Amtrak returned to the Terminal in the 90s after having had a crappy little depot underneath the 6th Street Viaduct when the building originally closed in the early 70s. Behind the Terminal there's a huge CSX rail yard; the old concourse had been torn down to allow for more freight tracks, so "officially" only one half of one building of the original CUT facility survives. But oh, what a building it is...