Everyone knows that Art Hill, in front of the St. Louis Art Museum, is a great place to go sledding in the winter. But did you know it’s a great place to see movies in the summer?
Inspired by the remarkable story behind Sunken Cities: Egypt’s Lost Worlds, these four films follow the search for something vital—whether it be truth, treasure, or justice. Discover other lives, other eras, and other worlds with these Epic Quests.
The We Are Movie Geeks gang always goes to these, so if you wanna hang with the cool kids, you should go too. It’s free and they set up a big screen at the bottom of the hill. There are food trucks and beer and wine for sale. You can even go dine in the museum’s restaurant before the show if you got money to burn. If you’re a museum member, you can show your membership card and get free popcorn and ice cream (I did that last year even though my card was expired!). Of course, you can bring a cooler with your own food and drinks as well. It’s a lot of fun! Bring your dog! The movies start at 9 but get there early! Thousands of people show up, especially if the weather is nice, and close parking is scarce. There’s live pre-show music and the people-watching can be entertaining.
What’s a film series without the food?
Bring your own picnic.
Food Truck Fest, presented by Sauce Magazine, will run from 6 to 8:30 pm in the parking lot to the west of the Louis IX statue on Art Hill. Food trucks vary each week and lines will close at 8:30 pm sharp each night. Cash, credit, and debit cards accepted. An ATM will be on Art Hill Plaza.
The Museum’s Cafe will be open and serving casual fare including freshly prepared soups, sandwiches, and salads until 9 pm.
Concession stands with snacks and soda will be located at the top of Art Hill. Show your Saint Louis Art Museum membership card and get a free bag of popcorn!
Adult beverages will be available for purchase at the Panorama booth.
Bring your appetite! Before the movie starts, make sure to tap into your creative side. Each week, there will be an Art Lab for adults complete with an instructor and all the materials you need to create your own Film Series masterpiece.
Here’s the line-up for this summer:
Friday July 13th – Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Directed by Steven Spielberg and Starring Harrison Ford and Karen Allen
Archaeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones races to find the mythical Ark of the Covenant before it falls into the hands of the Nazis.
Friday July 20th – Hidden Figures (2016)
Directed by Theodore Melfi
Starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe
The story of three brilliant African-American mathematicians who served a vital role in NASA during the early
Friday July 27th – Dr. No (1962)
Directed by Terence Young
Starring Sean Connery and Ursula Andress
In the film that launched the James Bond saga, Agent 007 battles the mysterious Dr. No, a scientific genius bent on destroying the U.S.
Friday August 3rd – The NeverEnding Story (1984)
Directed by Wolfgang Petersen
Starring Barret Oliver and Noah Hathaway
A troubled boy reads a magical book and dives into a wondrous fantasy world threatened by “The Nothing,” a darkness that destroys everything it touches.
HIDDEN FIGURES is the incredible untold story of brilliant African-American women working at NASA, who served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit, a stunning achievement that restored the nation’s confidence, turned around the Space Race, and galvanized the world. The visionary trio crossed all gender and race lines to inspire generations to dream big. Photo Credit: Hopper Stone.
The evening will feature a panel discussion with NASA scientists and “Hidden Figures” filmmakers for an examination of the past, present and future in space math, diversity and the movies.
HIDDEN FIGURES opened in cinemas on January 6, 2017.
Moderated by former Deluxe/EFILM Executive Beverly J. Wood, panelists include Fox 2000 president Elizabeth Gabler, Oscar®-nominated writer-director-producer Theodore Melfi, film editor Peter Teschner, cinematographer Mandy Walker, NASA chief historian Dr. Bill Barry and NASA engineers Tracy Drain, Jennifer Trosper and Powtawche Valerino.
Read our interview with the film’s composer Benjamin Wallfisch here.
This Academy Science and Technology Council program is made possible by generous support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae) offers some help to NASA mission specialist Karl Zielinski (Olek Krupa). Photo Credit: Hopper Stone.
Musician Benjamin Wallfisch is redefining the way audiences hear the sounds and feelings of movie music.
His recent scores are DESERT DANCER, HIDDEN FIGURES, A CURE FOR WELLNESS, LIGHTS OUT as well as upcoming films ANNABELLE 2 and BITTER HARVEST, so understandably it’s been a busy time over the past few years for the British film composer.
Recently Wallfisch spoke about the elements of composing and the opportunity to tell stories through his music.
Coming from a family of musicians, and classically trained at the Royal Academy of Music, Wallfisch says it was a happy accident that he discovered the sounds that have been instrumental when composing scores. “I’d spend hours examining this fascinating sound and would experiment with it, while exploring other avenues as I was learning the craft and creating electronic sounds.” What sustained him through his years of schooling and training was his love of storytelling. “From a very early age I loved film scores. Hearing John Williams’ iconic scores in the cinemas had a huge impact on me. I grew up in a family of musicians who had a work ethic of music making. It’s a constant striving for something better. My parents, who are both instrumentalists, were always perfecting their craft. After practicing the same music over and over, he’d remark there’s still something to discover.”
The composer has adopted the same approach to writing and scoring film music has been a gradual approach. Years ago Wallfisch began as a conductor and composing concert music before honing his craft of film music. “My fascination with film scores has been the one constant in all of it. Telling stories through music has always been my focus and I’ve felt like my prior experiences were training me for this. It’s a very exciting time for me now.”
Surrounded by music in his younger years, Wallfisch reflects that his music was influenced by his parents. “I’d wake up in the morning and hear my father practicing Bach and then my mother would be practicing Vivaldi. Sometimes they’d be composing some new contemporary music and I’d see a new piece being crafted. That sense of music and family is symbiotic – when I think of family I think of music. It’s a sense of home and comfort.” He adds, “as composers we depend on the artistry of musicians to bring our music alive and I see new music being alive and living.”
Audiences can feel the influences of music being “alive and living” in Wallfisch’s classical piece “Escape Velocity” (2006) as well as his score for DESERT DANCER. “There is narrative even in a concert piece like Escape Velocity and I’ve always been fascinated with outer space and Physics.”
In his music for the 2014 film, there is a real sense of the sand, the wind, and the characters. “With Desert Dancer, there is a basic human need to dance. Look at any child when music is playing and instinctually they’ll dance. We were telling a story about a person who is not allowed to dance because of a political situation and the desert was the only place he was physically free to realize that passion. You’re at one with the flow and space around you and all those ideas I tried to evoke in the score.”
Oscar-nominated HIDDEN FIGURES is a very technical score but with soul and synergy. The film’s songs by Pharrell Williams co-exist with the score from Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer. “It was a most amazing collaborative experience with Pharrell and Hans and myself. Very early on, we got into a room and played the music together to discover our instrumental language. Pharrell’s songs imbued this 60’s kind of sound. The harmonies, the melodies, we used it as a springboard for the score. We wanted the songs and score to be symbiotic.”
With the “MISSION CONTROL” track, you can really hear the sounds of NASA. Wallfisch says, “there was this great process of discovery and we used electric guitars and acoustic cues to create these computer-like, technical textures. What I was so passionate about this score was how we brought gospel harmonies into it. The use of African-American music is at the DNA level of the score. We used the core-progressions and harmonic sensibility of gospel music, even with a choir, it’s the way you voice the string chords, somehow effortlessly gave us that language for the score. It was amazing process of discovery. It was wonderful to be a part of and an incredible, uplifting story. I love that it’s influencing younger people to go after their dreams and especially young girls to pursue a career in engineering and in NASA.” He adds, “there is so much love in this story, and real heart in the film. I was so grateful to be a part of it.”
Wallfisch also composed the score for the horror film LIGHTS OUT. From producer James Wan (“The Conjuring”) LIGHTS OUT is a tale of an unknown terror that lurks in the dark. It marked the feature film directorial debut of David F. Sandberg, who directed the film from a screenplay by Eric Heisserer (“Final Destination 5”), based on Sandberg’s own short film.
An unsettling and frightening film that stays with you after you’ve left the cinema, the composer says he tested the genre by bringing it to the extremes. “It’s a PG-13 movie and it’s not a gruesome horror movie. It plays with your mind and does it in a way which is quite Darwinian – it’s very subliminal because the idea that there is a dark spot containing evil. We humans are hardwired for that and it plays into a basic need for flight from danger. There are some very visceral scares throughout the movie.”
Gore Verbinski’s A CURE FOR WELLNESS is a mind-bending psychological thriller. On being asked to work on the chilling film, “Hans Zimmer and Gore have worked on many films together and Hans, my mentor right now, couldn’t work on it for scheduling reasons and suggested that I write the score for the movie. I worked on it for over a year even before they shot any footage. It was an extraordinary journey which started with me setting up my writing desk in Gore’s editing room and while he was editing, I was writing the music. There was no temp score at all. It was one of those processes that required a lot of time, but that made for a better score as everything was written and edited from scratch, uninfluenced from any other score.”
Of working with the visionary director to compose such a ominous score, Wallfisch says, “Gore is a total genius and I was truly honored to be working with him and we became great partners in the process. It was an incredible canvas musically. Gore and I literally worked together every day for months creating some very atmospheric music and sound design. The music department provided some great textures and a true collaboration.”
The Academy Award winning filmmaker brings his inimitable style and vision to A CURE FOR WELLNESS. Visually breathtaking, the film is compelling and thought provoking, exploring the true meaning of wellness and the trappings of avarice and power, while asking what fulfillment really means. There is a music cue that even sounds like a lullaby. “It sounds innocent and simple, while underneath the surface there’s a dangerous symmetry – it feels symmetrical because of the harmonies, but it’s not. The theme is designed so as the story progresses there are various shifts in the melody that conveys someone losing touch with reality. Even today it’s hard to discern fact from fiction. The modern world is kind of a strange place right now and this film goes to a massive extreme of that. It’s a slow burn.”
One not to miss is the historical movie BITTER HARVEST. Based on one of the most overlooked tragedies of the 20th century, Bitter Harvest is a powerful story of love, honor, rebellion and survival as seen through the eyes of two young lovers caught in the ravages of Joseph Stalin’s genocidal policies against Ukraine in the 1930s. As Stalin advances the ambitions of communists in the Kremlin, a young artist named Yuri (Max Irons) battles to survive famine, imprisonment and torture to save his childhood sweetheart Natalka (Samantha Barks) from the “Holodomor,” the death-by-starvation program that ultimately killed millions of Ukrainians.
Against this tragic backdrop, Yuri escapes from a Soviet prison and joins the anti-Bolshevik resistance movement as he battles to reunite with Natalka and continue the fight for a free Ukraine.
Wallfisch’s moving score BITTER HARVEST has brought new life or a renaissance to classical music. With the music that might have echoed the sounds of Russian composers Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Wallfisch says, “there’s a period in Ukrainian history that many don’t know about and it’s a long movie. It is an epic movie with lots of music and its shot as an epic romance. There were lots of tropes which I was aware of and I didn’t want to necessarily write an old school score for this epic film. I wanted to try to use and be influenced by Ukrainian folk music while composing the score. I had zero knowledge of it when I started and I was incredibly lucky to work with Ukrainian musicians who showed me the stylistic piano – it very joyous music with asymmetry notes and sounds. There is a very classical feel to the movie.”
Starring Max Irons, Samantha Barks, Barry Pepper, Terence Stamp and Tamer Hassan, there is a warm acoustic, symphonic sound to Wallfisch’s score to BITTER HARVEST. “I’ve always been drawn to Russian music. I wasn’t trying to make the score sound Russian, but because of my love for Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, which are my absolute heroes, I was very aware to stay away from it and it wasn’t deliberate. My favorite part of the score was the Ukrainian songs and the vibe of it.” Wallfisch reveals he has direct ties to Russian music. ”My grandfather was the chief conductor of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia in the early 20th Century. I have a family connection to all that incredible time of music in Russian history.” As to being a part of BITTER HARVEST, Wallfisch concludes, “I wanted the music to bring the story to life and the film honors the people who died.”
In some cases, the story is more important than the details. “Have I ever told you about the time that your uncle and I caught our biggest fish?” It’s a line we’re all familiar with, and while these individual stories may be slightly exaggerated for dramatic effect, the facts usually aren’t as relevant as the overall feeling that the story leaves us with. It’s these hard to believe but ultimately true tales that leave us with a smile.
HIDDEN FIGURES seems more keen on leaving the audience feeling the same way. In the end, this portrait of three strong and determined women is a true and amazing story, but the focus seems more on provoking emotions for dramatic effect than through genuine means. Despite the fact that the story feels simultaneously watered down while also feeling a bit overblown at times, at least the story is being told, which is better than not being told at all.
Adapted from Margot Lee Shetterly’s novel, HIDDEN FIGURES tells the story of Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae), three black women who defied expectations and social norms by working for NASA in the 1940s to the 60s. Through their knowledge of mathematics and physics and their determination to not let their sex or race get in their way, they helped put the first American into space.
Henson is given the most screentime and in turn, delivers the most endearing performance. The pressure of her job, as well as that of a single mother for three children, feels real and tragic. And yet, the fact that she has to hurriedly scurry across the parking lot to use a “colored bathroom” in another building (which they show repeatedly to an almost comedic effect) becomes a bigger point of contention than some of the more challenging issues that she had to face in the workplace. In fact, the most honest and genuine moment is when the film speaks the softest: Johnson is packing up her things and leaving the office after being let go, and as she walks across the room to leave, not a single man acknowledges her or looks up from their work. It’s a subtle moment in a film filled with messages seemingly projected over a loudspeaker.
While glossing over the significance or symbolism of the space race, director Theodore Melfi chooses to focus more on the hardships these three women faced. At every turn it seems like they are being told, “You can’t do that,” which they in turn reply, “I’m going to do it.” This scenario plays out time and time again and is punctuated at every step to the point that its effect on the viewer begins to wane (Vaughan can’t even go to the library with her child without facing hostility). For all the good intentions that HIDDEN FIGURES has in highlighting the struggles these women faced, you still get the feeling that you’re watching a Disney-fied version of history. Not a single cigarette is smoked in the film despite what history has proven, and the “N-word” has been completely ignored, along with any other form of expletive you could think of. The film passes its PG rating test with flying colors.
In the end, HIDDEN FIGURES is a nice film – the kind of film your grandma would like and would feel good about going to see while commenting afterward, “Look at how far we’ve come.” With that in mind, coincidentally, NASA only just named one of their buildings after Katherine G. Johnson in May of last year (long after filming had already begun). Even if the recognition comes late or if the story wasn’t necessarily told in the best or most precise way, I guess it’s good that at least people are hearing about the incredible story of these three groundbreaking women.
Overall rating: 3 out of 5 HIDDEN FIGURES opens in theaters everywhere Friday, January 6th.
This week’s episode of our podcast WE ARE MOVIE GEEKS The Show is up! Hear WAMG’s Jim Batts and Tom Stockman talk movies. Our guest in the studio this week is Lynn Venhaus, film critic for The Belleville News Democrat and the Kirkwood/Webster Times. We’ll discuss the weekend box office and review PASSENGERS, A MONSTER CALLS, HIDDEN FIGURES, and ASSASSIN’S CREED.We’ll discuss all of the local movie events, pay rtribute to the late Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher, and then Michelle McCue will call in and we’ll all choose our favorite movies of 2016.
HIDDEN FIGURES tells the incredible untold story of Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson-brilliant African-American women working at NASA, who served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit, a stunning achievement that restored the nation’s confidence, turned around the Space Race, and galvanized the world. The visionary trio crossed all gender and race lines to inspire generations to dream big.
Director Theodore Melfi (St. Vincent) brings the women’s rise to the top ranks of aerospace in the thrilling early days of NASA to life via a fast-moving, humor-filled, inspiring entertainment that illuminates both the gutsy quest for Earth’s first, seemingly impossible orbital flight and also the powerful things that can result when women unite.
Starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons, Mahershala Ali, Aldis Hodge, Glen Powell & Kimberly Quinn, HIDDEN FIGURES opens everywhere January 6th, 2017.
WAMG invites you to enter for the chance to win TWO (2) seats to the advance screening of HIDDEN FIGURES on WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 4 at 7PM in the St. Louis area.
Answer the following:
Name the First woman in space.
Name the First American woman in space.
TO ENTER, ADD YOUR NAME, ANSWERS AND EMAIL IN OUR COMMENTS SECTION BELOW.
OFFICIAL RULES:
1. YOU MUST BE IN THE ST. LOUIS AREA THE DAY OF THE SCREENING.
2. No purchase necessary. A pass does not guarantee a seat at a screening. Seating is on a first-come, first served basis. The theater is overbooked to assure a full house. The theater is not responsible for overbooking.
20th Century Fox has released the first poster for their upcoming film, HIDDEN FIGURES, based on the women you don’t know behind the mission you do. This incredible untold story stars Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer & Janelle Monáe and hits theaters this January.
Check out the the trailer for HIDDEN FIGURES below.
HIDDEN FIGURES is the incredible untold story of Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe)-brilliant African-American women working at NASA, who served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit, a stunning achievement that restored the nation’s confidence, turned around the Space Race, and galvanized the world. The visionary trio crossed all gender and race lines to inspire generations to dream big.
The cast also stars Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons, Mahershala Ali, Aldis Hodge and Glen Powell.
Directed by Theodore Melfi (ST. VINCENT), HIDDEN FIGURES hits theaters everywhere on January 13, 2017.
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Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae) offers some help to NASA mission specialist Karl Zielinski (Olek Krupa). Photo Credit: Hopper Stone.Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae, left), Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) and Dorothy Vaughn (Octavia Spencer) celebrate their stunning achievements in one of the greatest operations in history. Photo Credit: Hopper Stone.Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughn (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae) are three brilliant African-American women working at NASA, who served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit. Photo Credit: Hopper Stone.HIDDEN FIGURES is the incredible untold story of brilliant African-American women working at NASA, who served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit, a stunning achievement that restored the nation’s confidence, turned around the Space Race, and galvanized the world. The visionary trio crossed all gender and race lines to inspire generations to dream big. Photo Credit: Hopper Stone.
