#monuments men

(Part 1 because there's too many 🫣)

Gives you goosebumps (the good kind)

🎥 Hidden Figures (2017)

Rating: PG

Genre: History/Drama

Actors: Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Glen Powell

Summary: Three brilliant African American women at NASA serve as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit.

What I love about it: Badass girlbosses, science, W acting, Glen Powell.

🎥 The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)

Rating: PG

Genre: Adventure/Comedy

Actors: Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, Sean Penn, Adam Scott

Summary: Walter Mitty, an employer at Life magazine, lives a monotonous life, escaping with his exciting daydreams. He gets a chance at real adventure when Life's new owners send him on a mission to obtain the perfect photo for the final print issue.

What I love about it: Makes me wanna climb a mountain and make my life meaningful. The color palettes and camera shots?? The score?? The locations?? Stunning.

🎥 Apollo 13 (1995)

Rating: PG

Genre: History/Action/Drama

Actors: Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Ed Harris

Summary: On NASA's Apollo 13 mission, the oxygen tank explodes, leaving the three astronauts and mission control to find a way for them to make it home.

What I love about it: Has me on the edge of my seat (even after watching it 20 times), the soundtrack slaps, makes me feel smart when I watch it, a real tear jerker.

Hidden Gems

🎥 Cellular (2004)

Rating: PG-13

Genre: Thriller/Action

Actors: Chris Evans (need I say more?), Kim Basinger, Jason Statham, William H. Macy

Summary: A kidnapped mother manages to call a random stranger from a broken phone. He must find a way to rescue her before she or her family is killed.

What I love about it: Gives exquisite 2000s vibes, the action and suspense is so real and intense, you're rooting for Chris Evans the entire time, fast paced, peak character development

🎥 Front of the Class (2008)

Rating: PG

Genre: Drama/Comedy

Actors: James Wolk, Treat Williams, Patricia Heaton

Summary: An aspiring teacher with Tourette's syndrome proves everyone wrong as he overcomes prejudice and fear to make his dream come true.

What I love about it: Gives all the feel goods, great acting, lots of awareness about Tourette's.

🎥 Monuments Men (2014)

Rating: PG-13

Genre: War/Thriller

Actors: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett

Summary: During World War ll, the Nazis steal millions of pieces of art and hide them away. A group of art scholars, historians, architects, and risk their lives to find and protect some of mankind's greatest achievements.

What I love about it: literally everything?? The acting, the music, the storylines, the characters, the humor, the message. Ugh. So good. Bonus, it's based on a true story.

🎥 Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

Rating: PG

Genre: Family/Comedy

Actors: George Clooney, Bill Murray, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman

Summary: After years of living a safe comfortable life with his family, Mr. Fox breaks a promise to his wife and raids the farms of their human neighbors, endangering the lives of his family and animal friends. When the farmers force them underground, Mr. Fox has to resort to his natural craftiness to win.

What I love about it: the aesthetic makes my heart happy, the voice acting scratches an itch in my brain, solid one-liners, Roald Dahl for the win. Some people say the stop-motion animation is weird - i think it's charming.

Rocks my world every time

Interstellar (2014)

Rating: PG-13

Genre: Sci-Fi/Drama/Suspense/Thriller/All the things

Actors: Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway, Matt Damon

Summary: Set in the future, Earth's second Dust Bowl is slowly killing the planet. A former NASA pilot works to save mankind by traveling through space with his team.

What I love about it: When people joke about "absolute cinema", THIS is absolute cinema. Watching this feels like an out of body experience (thank you, Mr. Nolan), if sound was a person, I'd want to marry this soundtrack (thank you, Mr. Zimmer), and the acting also makes me sob right along with them (thank you, Mr. McConaughey).

🎥 La La Land (2016)

Rating: PG-13

Genre: Musical/Romance

Actors: Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling, John Legend

Summary: An actress and jazz musician fall in love. But as their success grows, the dreams they worked so hard to maintain threaten to rip them apart.

What I love about it: It's like the 1950s and modern cinema had a musical baby. I'm a musician, so this movie heals my soul. There's something so nostalgic and satisfying about the aesthetic. If you don't like jazz, this is the movie for YOU. *wink wink*

🎥 A Walk to Remember (2002)

Rating: PG

Genre: Romance/Drama

Actors: Mandy Moore, Shane West

Summary: A rebellious high school senior falls for an innocent girl he and his friends once scorned.

• Operation: Body Snatch

Operation Body Snatch, which began on April 27th of 1945, just three days before Adolf Hitler’s suicide, was an operation by U.S forces to return the remains of Germany’s most celebrated rulers: King Frederick Wilhelm I, King Frederick the Great, and Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg. To their proper burial locations.

On The 27th of April, seven members of the U.S. Army Ordnance Corp were searching the northern reaches of Germany’s Thuringian Forest – basically the middle of nowhere - for hidden ammo dumps. That is when they stumbled across a salt mine in Bernterode that had been used as a munitions manufacturing and storage facility. The size of this mine, that one reached it by taking an elevator down about 1800 feet – that’s about a 1/3 of a mile or ½ a kilometer from the surface. Down there, the men found an estimated 400,000 tons of stored ammo in its estimated 14 miles or 23 kilometers of tunnels. However there was an ever bigger surprise in store for them. About 1/4 of a mile or 4/10 of a kilometer from the elevator shaft, the soldiers stumbled across a side passageway that appeared to be sealed off with fresh cement. They decided to find out what was behind that newly mortared wall. They tunneled an opening through an estimated 6-feet or 2-meters of masonry and rubble.

It was a room that had been partitioned off into bays that were filled with artwork, boxes, and tapestries. An estimated 225 Prussian flags and banners were hanging unfurled. More importantly, everything surrounded four coffins, one of which was adorned with a large wreath and red ribbons with swastikas and bore the name Adolph Hitler. Upon closer inspection, they noticed that someone had quickly scribbled a few words in red crayon on each casket. Three of these were the remains of Germany’s most celebrated rulers: King Frederick Wilhelm I, King Frederick the Great, and Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg. The fourth casket belonged to Frau von Hindenburg. These remains had been placed down in the mine about three weeks earlier as the Russians were closing in on Potsdam, the location of the Tannenberg Memorial. The Nazis feared that the Russians would destroy not just the monument, but also the remains that were buried there – those of Hindenburg and his wife. They quickly removed the caskets and blew up the remaining sarcophagi, ultimately finding their way, along with the two Fredericks, to the Bernterode mine.

It has been theorized that this room deep in the mine was set up to preserve the most precious artifacts of German military history for the next rise of the German Reich. The job of getting these four coffins and all of the associated regalia up and out of the mine became the responsibility of the MFA&A – or the Monuments, Fine Arts, & Archives – branch of the military. This was a group of 345 art historians, museum directors, architects, educators, and curators that hailed from thirteen different countries. Better known today as the Monuments Men. The coffins were the last objects to be removed from the mine. Frau von Hindenburg had the lightest casket and was the first one to take the fourteen minute ride up to the surface. Next was Frederick Wilhelm I, followed by Field Marshall von Hindenburg. The last coffin, however, was not going to return to the surface easily. Frederick the Great’s casket was massive and weighed over half-a-ton. In addition to being incredibly difficult to maneuver. To the surprise of the men accompanying Frederick the Great on his journey skyward, as they approached the surface they could hear a radio blasting the Star Spangled banner followed by God Save the King. Germany had just surrendered the war.

These four caskets created an incredible dilemma for the US Army. Three of these four caskets belonged to men that played a significant role in Germany’s military history. They couldn’t be reburied in just any ordinary way. On the other hand, to give each a grand burial with an ornate tombstone or monument could help bring the Nazi party back to life. So, the Army without certainty of what to do with the caskets quickly passed the responsibility on to the higher-ups in Washington, DC to deal with. Since the US government was dealing with the bodies of dignitaries, the issue was deferred to the State Department, the branch of our government that deals with international relations. For an entire year the coffins didn’t move from their guarded storage location in the basement of a castle in Marburg. Ultimately, it was decided that these bodies were of historical importance and should be treated just like any other historical treasure or artwork plundered during the war. This top secret reinternment of the bodies once again became the responsibility of the Monuments Men.

Three officers were assigned: Theodore Heinrich, Francis Bilodeau, and Everett Lesley Jr. It was Lesley that coined the name of this top secret mission: Operation Body Snatch. Their instructions were fairly straightforward. The two kings were to be reburied in the US controlled zone Greater Hesse, while the two Hindenburgs were to be buried near Hanover in the British Zone. Why Hanover? That’s because Hindenburg had requested that he be buried on his family plot there. It was Hitler who decided to override his final wishes and have his remains placed at the Tannenberg Memorial. The US was simply trying to respect Hindenburg’s wishes, but it was not to be. The British government wanted nothing to do with the bodies. Word came back from London that would not allow the bodies into their zone under any condition. So, they couldn’t be buried in the British or French zones. It became clear that all four bodies needed to be buried somewhere in the US zone. Since all four of these corpses were of the Protestant faith, it seemed logical to bury them in a Protestant church. That idea quickly fizzled after it was determined that all of the suitable Protestant churches were either badly damaged or totally destroyed in the war. The next step of the three Monuments men was to see if they could find a place, any place, that had even a slight connection to the Hohenzollern family. After careful research, the Kronberg castle near Frankfurt seemed like the perfect fit. Once again, luck was not on their side. The Monuments Men, Theodore Heinrich in particular, had a bigger problem thrown on their plate. Someone had stolen the jewels that had been hidden in the Kronberg castle. Valued at $7.6 million dollars in 1947 or about $77 million today, the great mystery of the theft focused worldwide attention on the castle.

I'm terrified about what we might be facing, and I'm tired of hiding it.

Today, I cried a lot. I cried for myself, for other trans people. For my country.

For what I thought my country could one day be. For what I'm pretty sure my country will now never be.

I used to say, I love what my country could be. I love the theoretical, mythical promise of "America." But I'm painfully aware that what I thought I'd see is probably now out of reach in my lifetime. I know my time is short; I don't pretend it isn't. I'm disabled and already likely to die younger than otherwise, anyway. And I kinda assumed I would be dead about ten years ago, from this or that eating disorder. So getting older is extremely weird in general.

But I thought it would be different. I thought a lot of things would be different.

I'm scared. I'm really, really scared. But I didn't fight my way back from the brink of death multiple times by age 35 to be scared into killing myself or going back into the closet by these assclowns.

Whoever takes me down will have to fucking earn it. Whoever silences me will have to earn it. I'm done playing. I'm done pretending I don't see what's right in front of me.

I'm tired of being scared. That's how they get you. And I'm not gonna get got until they start issuing decrees to round up trans people. And even then, I'll slip through. Because I survive. It's what I do.

Like damn it I think a bunch of shitty historians fighting fascism would be really cool and I think a serious movie concept where rebel characters who don’t come from privileged or important places get to have interests and hobbies and passions would be so neat.

My Monuments Men Foundation playing cards arrived! I had an inquiry from an anon about images other than what was available online, but not specifically what they were looking for, so I thought I’d take a picture of a few cards. Each card has the MMF tipline on the back (upper right) and an image of a work looted (or presumed looted) by the Nazis and still missing after WWII on the face. I like that they list the owner and give a bit of context for each work as well as the image and descriptive details. 

Corporal Walter Eugene "Radar" O’Reilly was a stand out character on the TV show M*A*S*H, which was famous for running much longer than the war it was supposed to be about. Radar's nickname came from his ability to apparently sense when he was needed by a superior officer, as well as his extra sensitive hearing, which allowed him to note that helicopters were coming long before anyone else noticed. He strikes me as being very much like Soundwave, to be honest.

How many times have AI ppl told creatives that we have been "gatekeeping" art, how often have the attacks on artists for speaking up against AI have, at their core, proven to be jealously based and that now since "everyone can make art, artists aren't special anymore."

Billions of pieces of art have been scraped, the devaluing of art is becoming even more apparent, the literal destruction of an entire generation of up and coming creatives career paths is being dismissed by AI techbros with utter coldness and disdain.

Just as Nazi soldiers burned art, techbros and AI advocates are torching careers and creativity. I see it every day when another creative posts about how they are losing clients or losing hope, only to be endlessly mocked by AI advocates who could care less about the devastation

Over and over again in the movie it is stated that the men would not allow Hitler to destroy/steal and horde the entirety of human creativity, and yet AI does exactly that. It steals everything that it sees, devouring and devaluing it in the never ending search for more data.

And the ppl that use it, they don't care about art, or humans, they care about their own profits, or clout factor by showing off their newest shiny computer constructed regurgitated prompt created hack job in an attempt to steal talent and success from those who earned it.

AI art is taking a flamethrower to masterpieces. And these AI prompt monkeys are laughing as the flames leap ever higher. I would bet you that if you asked them about Hitler's thefts they would be all "Hitler was a dick" while casually typing prompts into midjourney..

While advocating the destruction of copyright, the theft of art and telling artists to adapt or die.