National Treasure Book Of Secrets

24 Feb 2008 In: Movies

Have been asking my friends about the feedback on the latest movie "National Treasure Book Of Secrets"
The feedback people said was, "ya we can see it once, not bad"

So thought of watching the movie, when I checked the movie schedule at Satyam it was moved from 16:00 hours to 12:30 hours. May be this movie will go out of the theatre in coming weeks . So booked the movie ticket.

It was Saturday and I was deep involved in my PC swimming in the Internet and listening music with my home theater . I didn't realize until I received an SMS and it was already 11:40 !   

Dressed as fast as possible, and removed my bike cover. The new technique of covering the bike worked, its less dirty
Dusted my bike off to remove those fine dust and aaaah there is my beast with spaniking new looks !!
Time for my regular starting procedure... and my bike came to life at first crank, I love my bike

Oh boy its already 11:55 and I have just 25 minutes to travel 16Kms, driving at afternoon with that daarn Chennai's hot climate and traffic is kind of difficult. Thanks to my beast's power and handling , I reached signal to signal in less time.

Thanks to my pure white and white dress and red colored bike, people around me were giving some strange looks   and that too this time I removed my fuel tank cover and my bike was more reddish than before. But felt happy to see that I got some attention

Reached theatre at 11:33, I was already late ! rushed inside and felt good with that cool A.C air blowing on me. The movie already started, and I lost around 3 minutes I guess . Its's ok

Movie Details: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0465234/

About the Movie:(Excerpt from Wikipedia)

Five days after the end of the Civil War, John Wilkes Booth and another man, both members of the Knights of the Golden Circle, enter a tavern and approach Thomas Gates (Ben Gates' great-great grandfather). They produce a diary containing an encrypted message, and entice Thomas, a well-known puzzle solver, to decode it. Thomas recognizes the message as using the Playfair cipher and begins to translate it. While he does so, Booth leaves for Ford's Theater to assassinate President Lincoln. Thomas solves the puzzle, a clue to a treasure map, and realizes the men are still loyal to the Confederate cause and have a sinister motive for finding the treasure, unfortunately he realizes this too late. The Confederate man pulls a gun on him, threatening to shoot him if he does not hand over the diary, however he is distracted from Thomas by the chaos erupting in the bar over news of Lincoln's assassination. Thomas rips several pages from the diary and throws them in the fireplace. The second man shoots him and attempts to retrieve the pages, only succeeding in saving a small piece. The dying Thomas gasps, "The war is over," but the man disagrees, stating, "You're wrong about that, the war has only just begun," and rushes from the bar. With his final breath, Thomas tells his young son Charles, "The debt that all men pay."

Years later, Ben Gates is telling his great-great grandfather's story at a conference on Civilian Heroes to great acclaim until black market dealer Mitch Wilkinson shows one of the eighteen missing pages of John Wilkes Booth's diary, with Thomas Gates' name on it, convincing everyone that Thomas was the mastermind behind the Lincoln assassination. Ben sets out to prove the innocence of his great-great grandfather.

Using spectral imaging, Ben discovers a cipher pointing to Édouard Laboulaye hidden on the back of the diary page. He travels to Paris, where he finds a cryptic clue engraved on the torch of the scale model of the Statue of Liberty on the Île des Cygnes in Paris, referring to the two Resolute desks. Ben heads to Buckingham Palace, seeking out the closer of the two desks. With the help of his friend Riley Poole and estranged girlfriend, Abigail Chase, he is able to sneak into the Queen's office to find an ancient wooden plank hidden in the desk. He is then pursued by Wilkinson, who, having broken into his father Patrick Gates' house, has cloned Patrick's cell phone in order to track Ben's whereabouts. Wilkinson eventually obtains the piece, but not before Ben manages to photograph the symbols carved into the plank.

At Ben's insistence, Patrick reluctantly asks his ex-wife for help in translating the mysterious glyphs. She does so, but points out that some of the glyphs are partial, leading Ben to conclude another plank must be hidden in the other Resolute desk, which is located in the Oval Office. With the unknowing help of Abigail's new boyfriend, who works for the White House, Ben and Abigail coax their way into the office to see the desk, where Ben discovers that the second plank is missing. However, he does find a stamp bearing the seal of the Book of Secrets. According to Riley, the Book of Secrets contains documents collected by Presidents for Presidents' eyes only, covering such controversial subjects as the JFK assassination, Watergate, and Area 51.

To find the location of the book, Ben crashes the President's birthday party to be held at Mount Vernon by booking all other approved locations. When Ben sneaks into the party, he convinces the President to follow him into a secret tunnel under the house where he confronts him about the book. The President tells him the location of the book in the Library of Congress and tells him to read page 47 as well as the information he needs. In the book, Ben finds a picture of the plank from the desk and a note saying that President Coolidge found it in 1924, had it destroyed, and had the Mount Rushmore monument built to hide the treasure.

At Mount Rushmore, Ben, Riley, Abigail, and Patrick meet Mitch, who has kidnapped Ben's mother. Mitch provides a clue to the entrance of a cave containing the legendary native American city of gold, Cíbola. Despite several traps they manage to find the city, but rising flood waters force them to leave. In the last room before the exit, a mechanism requires one person to stay behind while the others could leave. Mitch forces everyone to let him go first, but rising water forces him to be the last person left. Ben tries to help him out, but Mitch cannot come to Ben without the door closing. Mitch decides to sacrifice himself and allow the others to escape the flooding cavern, and Ben agrees to give him credit for finding the treasure. Ben clears his family's name with the discovery and is cleared of all charges when the President tells everyone that Ben saved his life after the door to the tunnel closed accidentally. Ben also ensures Mitch receives joint credit for the find. The President then asks Ben about what he read on page 47 of the Book of Secrets, to which Ben replies: "It's life-altering".

Enjoyed the movie. Not bad !

After watching the movie, I had some doubts,

Is there really a secret compartment in the real life Resolute desks?
Is there a gold city hidden on this earth?
Is it so easy to hack into Buckingham Palace's security?

The car chase was good, I like car chases very much. The new Range Rover looks great .
The treasure hunt inside the mount Rushmore was a good one, I like these kinds of parts in movie. 

The story line is ok, not boring.
The little comedy is good.
The slight suspense, don't make you boring.

Finally, I enjoyed the movie, but not that satisfied

 


Saw my favorite series of movie "Live Free or Die Hard" aka "Die Hard 4.0"

The story in some sentence

When a criminal plot is in place to take down the entire computer and technological structure that supports the economy of the United States (and the world), it's up to a decidedly "old school" hero, police detective John McClane, to take down the conspiracy, aided by a young hacker.



More Details : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0337978/

 

Ok now, when ever I see this kind of movie where computers get hacked down, it sends a chill up my spine. Almost everything today runs on computers. Somewhere some of our details or stored in some storage system which leads a direct path to our house's front door.

How is the above possible, well lets see.....

1. I register with my ISP using my address, telephone number etc.
2. ISP is assigned a set of unique IP address which can be geographically identified by the country.
3. This ISP assigns an IP from the IP pool to our system.

Now I think you can figure out how a hacker can step to our door. Of course he has to get the info from ISP about our address and if not, we some how put our address at some different sites where its mandatory and he has to get from them or may be he can use the GeoIP and Google Earth Map and step on our door. There are lot of possibilities. This may sound idiotic or fiction but this is truth. The only hitch is getting the info and once you have that the end user can be in trouble.

This is the reason why my spine chills up

 

A very simple fact, just don't have a security software, and have a Static IP based Internet connection, be an idiot to get some x-ware get it installed in the computer and you can step into the hell of somebody taking over your computer.

This movie is something which is bigger than what I said above.

Once again Bruce's performance is great and as usual he gets socked with lots of blood.
The Villan, Timothy Olyphant cool villan with kind of cool head. Doesn't gets pissed-off easily. Still Bruce makes him by killing Mai Lihn.
Good graphics and story line.