National Treasure

We haven't watched any movies for a while, so tonight we sat down and watched this one on DVD, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Of course, I tend to like Jerry Bruckheimer-produced action movies starring Nicolas Cage. I thought both THE ROCK and CON AIR were great fun. So is NATIONAL TREASURE, and I think it's a little smarter than those other movies, too. Sure, a lot of the history stuff was hokum, but it was still enjoyable working out the clues. I also liked the fact that instead of a bunch of exotic locations, the story was set primarily in Washington, Philadelphia, and New York.

And just to throw in a little trivia, Cage's character Ben Gates has the same name as a fictional private eye who starred in a series of Dell paperbacks written by Robert Terrall under the pseudonym Robert Kyle. I suspect the screenwriters never heard of the PI character, but I got a kick out of it anyway.

I put the Flynn collection aside for the moment to read Elmore Leonard's new novel THE HOT KID. I'm not a big fan of Leonard's mysteries (I like his early Westerns a lot better), but I'm enjoying this one so far. A little of the style he uses these days goes a long way with me, though.

Wrote 21 pages today, which is just the sort of nice, productive day I needed in order to get this book finished this weekend.