Last week was a plethora. You had Andy Samberg as Cage:

And you had the rise of the Nic Cage as Everyone blog:

What will this week bring for Cage? I wait and wonder.

"Cage was the most interesting actor in American movies," a Postie writes today. Then begin the action movie. "And so it has been, with few detours from the action star/blockbuster track upon which Cage has trod with particularly graceless aplomb, and virtually no humor at all, except on top of his head, where his hair is continual source of mirth and mystery, because you never know what it's going to do, where it's going to go or to whom it once belonged."

The writer calls for a quick return to Nic Cage decision-making of old. The reviews for Knowing are mostly negative, and Ebert gives it four stars because he likes big-dumb movies and the science, which as you would expect is fine by me. But it's interesting how many of Friday's reviews do mini-examinations of Cage's career. Has Knowing become the tipping point for his quiet bad-awesome run? The movie is likely to win the box office this weekend. Thanks to Melissa for the Post link.

Matt weeks ago pondered why my Nic Cage post got strong reaction. My sense was that we all hold similar dreams: envisioning awesome, knowing life is often not so and self-fulfillingly delivering less. Like Nic.

Now, thankfully, dreams and a potentially awesome-bad Cage movie are coming together in a book. From the New Yorker review of The Way Through Doors, we get the plot: "In an inversion of the Scheherazade legend, the hero of this dizzyingly circuitous novel must tell stories all night to a beautiful amnesiac, to keep her awake and alive."

Buy your popcorn … now. "His stories dissolve, unfinished, into other stories; characters — including a 'guess artist' who reads minds with a thirty-three-per-cent accuracy rate, a girl who accepts only written communications (preferably typed), and a spurned Russian empress who forces her former lover to marry 'the ugliest of women' — vanish and resurface; and reality is generally given the heave-ho."

Coming Christmas 2011. With Nic Cage as the hero, Isla Fisher as the beautiful amnesiac, Sacha Baron Cohen as the guessing artist, Maggie Gyllenhaal as the only-writing girl, Amy Sedaris as the spurned Russian empress, Nic Cage as her former lover, and Isla Fisher as the ugliest of women. (Ooo. See what we did there? We made ourselves meta!)

Update: Got a new title idea. Nicolas Cage in … Don't Forget to Live.

Jess pointed me to the trailer of his coming movie. The plot: His son's school opens a 50-year time capsule and gives a letter to each person in attendance. Cage, of course, gets the letter with the date and body count of the deadliest tragedies of our time. And, of course, there are still more dates to come. And, of course, the movie looks awesome.

But every Nicolas Cage movie looks awesome in the trailer, a trend that may explain how Cage envisions his movies before signing on. I bet someone tells him the plot and he thinks hard for two and a half minutes before going, "Aw yeah, that'd be pretty good." I'd probably do the same. Imagines map on back of Declaration of Independence.

Jess figured that was maybe how Cage lived all of life. I had to agree.

"Nic, you ever thought about marrying Lisa Marie?" And he drifts off…

Pictures Lisa Marie in a pretty white dress, himself in a black suit with a crazy belt buckle, wedding bells, crowds of admirers, a limo with red Coke cans hanging off the back, fruity drinks on golden beaches, a den with a bar, Viva Las Vegas on the stereo, funny questions from other couples having drinks about Leaving Las Vegas, a thrown glass shatters, a door closes, the house burns as he stands alone on the lawn, he's drunk in a dive, a silent sneering man with mysterious sunglasses grabs him and beats him up, that man turns out to be Elvis, they chase each other with big rigs in the desert, the Vegas strip looms, where the big show opens tonight, a huge casino explodes as seen from the sky, cut to Cage in a red leather elevator with muzak playing a lounge cover of It's Now or Never, as he says to the elevator operator without turning, "You have no idea."

"Hey, I should marry her…"

With its success predicted by Mark and myself long before wide release, I give you the reigning box office champ — with now three weeks atop the ticket-taker charts — scorned by the critics but loved by good people everywhere — fine and dandy like sugar and candy — at $110 million domestically and counting — National Treasure.

"So, you believe that there is a treasure on the back of…"

"On the back of the Declaration of Independence."