Spinning History Through The Movies

With a renewed love of history, I'm always looking for documentaries or movies that serve my twin interests in history and family history. Yesterday, flipping through the TV channels, I stumbled on National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007) and later, Wild, Wild West (1999).

National Treasure: Book of Secrets follows National Archivist, Ben Franklin Gates (aka Nicolas Cage) and his father, Patrick Henry Gates (aka John Voight), as they seek to uncover the back story of Abraham Lincoln's assassination and 18 missing pages from the diary of John Willkes Booth.

In Wild, Wild West, at the behest of President Grant, Jim West (aka Will Smith) & Artemus Gordon (aka Kevin Kline) team up to battle wits with Dr. Arliss Loveless (aka Kenneth Branagh) and his "lady-fiends". Kenneth Branagh's southern accent is right on.

Yes, okay, so Roger Ebert ripped both of these movies to shreds but that doesn't mean that you can't still enjoy the Civil War tie-in.

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