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.
The critics panned National Treasure but my younger daughter liked it and goaded me into watching when our Netflix copy arrived. I had to admit she was right. I enjoyed it but for one or two anachronisms.
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