If George Clooney had decided to use, say, a Glenn Miller or an Andrews Sisters tune for this Monuments Men trailer, he would be indicating a certain classic approach to his telling of this, a real-life World War II saga. But no — he’s gone with “Kiss The Sky” by Shawn Lee’s Ping Pong Orchestra. That plus the dry, low-key humor should tell you a lot. During last May’s Monuments Men set visit I told Clooney that I detected a jaunty tone in the script. Clooney smiled and said, “Yeah, but we’ve taken some of the jaunt out of it since.” Like I said in the piece, “Clooney likes to aim his films at places where people live, and in this context he’s looking to make a film that does the old ‘play to the smarties but also to the popcorn crowd’ routine.”

What else did I say? Oh, yeah — “To go by Clooney and producer-co-screenwriter Grant Heslov‘s script Monuments Men will be a clever, adult, carefully-threaded, occasionally sardonic and wise-cracking ‘drama’ by way of a skillfully massaged 21st Century Hollywood war-flick attitude.”