Inglorious ArtNurds

Been waiting on "Monuments Men" for awhile, and it looks good. George Clooney directs and stars alongside Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Cate Blanchett and Bob Balaban in the true story of a U.S. special division that enlisted architects, professors and art-history experts for the purpose of minimizing damage to Europe's artistic and cultural treasures from the fighting and, eventually, tracking and reclaiming priceless art stolen by the Nazis themselves.



This looks really, really good. I'd been a little worried that they were going to impose some kind of unnecessarily more "humanistic" story-arc on this, i.e. the unit rolls up on some blighted village that gets all sad when they find out the soldiers are to save "some paintings" instead of the people and a choice has to be made and everyone learns about what really matters and blah blah blah.

But that doesn't seem to be the case - this trailer, at least, is selling a straightforward guys-on-a-mission movie where the "gimmick" is that much of the unit is comprised of decidedly un-soldier-like academics who have to learn the ropes on the fly to go do their job. To me, that's a compelling enough story on it's own - plus, I like the idea of an A-list, big-star "prestige picture" being built around the message that art, culture and knowledge are worth fighting for.