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Thanksgiving week tends to be a big movie week for those not responsible for cooking the turkey (which thankfully my mother did, since my sister and her three kids were coming to town). So we took advantage of the lousy early-week weather and the long weekend.

Last Sunday we saw National Treasure, which is purely delightful. Don't get me wrong, the plot is very, very silly - Nicholas Cage decides to steal the Declaration of Independence to see if there's a secret Masonic map on the back of it before Sean Bean can steal it first - but it's beautifully filmed, with the national treasures of Washington, DC and Philadelphia (two cities in which I have lived) displayed beautifully, and a lot of humor and Indiana Jones-type values. We went with my children and my parents, and everyone from the eight-year-old to the 66-year-old loved it.

On Tuesday I had won a free pass to see Alexander, which I'm afraid I found monumentally disappointing. The acting was considerably better than the screenplay, with Angelina Jolie appropriately chomping scenery and petting snakes, Val Kilmer portraying a gruff, smart Philip of Macedon - I would never have recognized him - and Colin Farrell trying gamely to portray Alexander as a military genius who's also a sensitive boy who couldn't grow up with such titans for parents. Parts of it are brilliantly filmed, and I'm delighted Oliver Stone kept Alexander's bisexuality and ambivalence about settling down to forge a dynasty, but there's so much clunky dialogue and incoherent cinematography that I was quite often bored.

Yesterday we took my sons and my sister's daughters to see The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie, which all of them found screamingly funny. I was only moderately amused - in general I find cartoons on the big screen unnecessary unless something extraordinary is being done with the visuals, and then too often the plot and humor fall by the wayside - but as a family film, it seems that this one cannot fail. Plus it had a gratuitous framing story involving pirates, which always make me happy.

But the real highlight of my entertainment week was the release on DVD of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which came with cast interviews and making-of features that made me very happy. And last night after Thanksgiving dinner, when the kids were asleep and we were zoned on too much food, we watched Inventing the Abbots, which I'd somehow never seen before, though how I'd managed to miss a movie where the protagonist went to my alma mater the University of Pennsylvania and which stars Liv Tyler and Jennifer Connelly as sisters is beyond me. I enjoyed it a lot even though it was obviously not really filmed at Penn, and thought Liv and Joachim Phoenix were wonderful.

Trek BBS Today

Below are some of the topics currently being discussed at the Trek BBS:

-Are plans for a Shatner appearance on Enterprise kaput?

-Who would you cast as Kirk, Spock and McCoy?

-If Enterprise's first season had been like its fourth season, would we be looking at seven years?

More topics can be found at the Trek BBS!

Trek Two Years Ago

These were some of the major news items from November 2002:

• First 'Crash Landing' Plot Details
  A futuristic episode with a dead human pilot is claimed by both Starfleet and the Suliban in this episode of Enterprise, in which Suliban cell ships come after Enterprise despite the threat of involvement from the Vulcans.

• 5 Minutes Of 'Nemesis' Footage Online
  Paramount Pictures revealed the newest Star Trek villain and the Star Trek Nemesis Romulans on the internet, making clips from three scenes available: Picard and company's meeting with Shinzon, a battle scene, and a personal confrontation between Picard and Shinzon in the captain's ready room.

• Berman: There Will Be A Trek XI
  While he expected that Nemesis would be the "final journey" for the Next Generation crew, Rick Berman said that there would be another film:

  I can tell you right now we'll be making another film...there's never been a Star Trek movie that wasn't profitable for Paramount [meaning] there's very little risk involved in Star Trek films, so I think we're a long way from seeing the end.

More news can be found in the archives.

Poll Results

Below are the results of the most recent TrekToday poll:

How would you rate 'The Forge'? 9-10 66.9% - (1177 Votes) 7-8 17.8% - (314 Votes) Wasn't able to see it 7.8% - (138 Votes) Didn't want to see it 2.7% - (49 Votes) 5-6 2.3% - (42 Votes) 3-4 1.1% - (20 Votes) 1-2 0.9% - (17 Votes) Total Votes: 1757

Please rate "Awakening" after you have seen tonight's new episode on UPN.

Today's Television Listings

Tonight at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time, UPN will broadcast the new Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Awakening". Here's the official synopsis:

Archer and T'Pol encounter the Syrrannites, a radical group hiding in the Vulcan desert, while the NX-01 crew contends with Vulcan power ploys.

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