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Okay, so I lied a little. If this was 1995, “new” might be an appropriate adjective to describe something six days old. Of course, in blogging terms, six days is nearly an eternity.

Fortunately, the new recently-released National Treasure: Book of Secrets preview is pretty excellent, even if it has been on the shelf for a week. I went up to the IMDb boards to see what the conversation was about plot, but it seems like the only people talking about the story are the people who’ve managed a sneak peak and want to discuss spoilers. Sometimes I don’t mind reading the last page of the book first, but I’d rather see this movie from scratch, so I suppose I’ll do some of my own story speculating – all spoilers aside.

The older trailer, which you can see on YouTube, featured several shots of Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills. This newer preview, which you can watch at Cinema Blend, doesn’t show quite as much of South Dakota, but there are some new scenes we haven’t seen before. They stick the Black Hills sequences toward the end, interspersed with some shots of speeding around Paris.

The dialog is a little cryptic, but it could hint at the climax of the National Treasure sequel – involving the diary of John Wilkes Booth, the president’s little book of national secrets and Nicolas Cage and Jon Voight doing lots of dashing around the world, apparently – happening in the Black Hills. Since the clothing the primary characters wear in the Rushmore scenes seems to match their dress in all the dark epic tunnel shots, that doesn’t seem too far-fetched a guess.

I know there were a handful of local residents who got to help out as extras and crew members during the filming. I’m guessing they’ll stay pretty tight-lipped until the film comes out on December 21.