On the final weekend of the year, National Treasure: Book of Secrets continued to uncover a bounty of box-office riches, beating out a slew of solid holdovers (I’m talking about you, Alvin and Will Smith) and upstart indies (There Will Be Blood — whoa!) to finish a strong No. 1 for the second consecutive week.

Nicolas Cage’s family-friendly adventure sequel remained in the top spot by grossing $35.6 mil during the Friday-to-Sunday period. That brought its 10-day sum to an impressive $124 mil, making it the 27th release of 2007 to cross the century mark. For Cage, the blockbuster returns provided a sweet bookend to a comeback year that began with his $115.8 mil smash Ghost Rider. Prior to that, his previous hit release was 2004’s National Treasure, which earned $173 mil domestically — a total that Book of Secrets now seems almost certain to pass. In other words: Get ready for Part 3, people!

As expected, there was still plenty of good cheer left to go around on this post-Christmas weekend, as most releases either gained at the box office or suffered minimal declines — exactly what you’d expect for the middle of a two-week stretch when many Americans have been on vacation. (Indeed, the box office was up a substantial 14.3 percent over the same frame a year ago.) Alvin and the Chipmunks (No. 2) added $30 mil to its surprisingly huge haul, which now totals $142.4 mil. Will Smith’s I Am Legend (No. 3) scared up an additional $27.5 mil to come within a zombie’s bite of the $200 mil mark (it’s got $194.6 mil and counting). Charlie Wilson’s War (No. 4) rounded up $11.8 mil, a 22 percent increase. And after tripling its theater count, independent sensation Juno jumped into the top five with a rockin’ $10.3 mil tally.

Then again, while the holdovers were singing ”Jingle Bells” and “Auld Lang Syne,” the major Christmas Day openers struggled. Alien vs. Predator - Requiem (No. 6) fared best among the yuletide newbies, banking a decent $10.1 mil over the weekend. The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep grossed a soft $9.2 mil at No. 7, however, and Denzel Washington’s The Great Debaters disappointed with $6.3 mil at No. 11.

Among smaller releases, the Jack Nicholson dramedy The Bucket List averaged a nice $20,188 in 16 theaters, and the Guillermo del Toro-produced Spanish-language thriller The Orphanage scored a solid $12,118 average in 19 venues.

But the big winner was Paul Thomas Anderson’s historical epic There Will Be Blood, which banked a whopping $185,525 in just two theaters in New York and L.A. — a $92,763 average that ranks as one of the best ever. Combine said box office success with all the critical praise being heaped on the movie and its stars, Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano, and There Will Be Blood appears to be moving into awards season with all the force of a gushing oil well. Happy new year, everyone!

Long before the word “forensic” became synonymous with cadavers being sliced up in prime time, forensic societies — debating clubs engaged in bare-knuckle intellectual combat — flourished in high schools and colleges throughout the land. “The Great Debaters” may sound as if it’s meant to recall those pasty-faced geekfests, but it’s actually a tribute to one of the greatest debate teams ever assembled. The story of tiny, all-black Wiley College, jousting with some of the country’s most elite universities, has been turned into one of the most inspirational films of the year. About that much, at least, there should be no debate.

Though the movie’s story is fictionalized, the Wiley debate team was a very real powerhouse in the 1930s

under the leadership of Melvin B. Tolson, a charismatic professor whose brilliance meets its match in Denzel Washington’s remarkable performance. Just watching him as Tolson, you wish you could pack your kids off to his classroom. It makes perfect sense for Washington to play an inspiring teacher. And yet, in a resume of more than 40 film roles, Washington has never before played a schoolteacher. The picture would be worth seeing if for no other reason than to hear Washington quoting the poetry of Langston Hughes and other powerful voices from the Harlem Renaissance, then in its fullest bloom.

Almost in spite of itself, “National Treasure” defied sniping critics and became one of the surprise blockbusters of 2004, combining family-friendly popcorn thrills with an enjoyable blend of Hardy Boys mystery, Indiana Jones adventure and ludicrous plotting. As a newly minted franchise from über-producer Jerry Bruckheimer, it was “The Da Vinci Code” for the PlayStation set, promising multiplatform merchandising and a sequel mandated by the success of its opening weekend.

Perhaps that explains why “National Treasure: Book of Secrets” feels like it was made out of obligation to Disney stockholders, as opposed to springing from anything resembling inspiration. From start to finish, this lavish, nonsensical product of Hollywood greed betrays the creative ennui of everyone involved. Their paychecks were obviously generous; there’s no other explanation for watching talented people embarrass themselves so badly.

And so it is that we find the likes of Ed Harris, Jon Voight and Helen Mirren (yes, “The Queen” herself) tumbling around in a cavernous catacomb with fellow Oscar-winner Nicolas Cage, as they discover a massive Native American city of gold hidden in the bowels of the Black Hills, under the gaze of the faces on Mount Rushmore.

According to the movie’s by-the-numbers logic, that setting is historically significant: The so-called “Book of Secrets” is known only to U.S. presidents and contains the mother lode of state secrets, from the truth about JFK’s assassination to the cover-up at Area 51 and the location of the aforementioned city of gold. For intrepid treasure-seeker Benjamin Franklin Gates (Cage, looking desperate for a hit), the book holds the key to restoring his family’s reputation, smeared by an allegation that Gates’ great-great grandfather was a conspirator in the Lincoln assassination.

The movie’s convoluted hide-and-seek plot also demands a White House break-in that makes about as much sense as subprime mortgage rates, but that doesn’t stop Gates and his reunited sidekicks (Diane Kruger and Justin Bartha) from staying a step ahead of a villainous treasure-stealer (Harris), who’s got his own reputation to repair.

While Gates’ divorced parents (Voight and Mirren) bicker for witless comic relief, Gates resorts to irrational strategies such as kidnapping the current U.S. president (Bruce Greenwood) and re-enacting several scenes from “The Poseidon Adventure.”

Perhaps the clearest indication of creative bankruptcy is the contrived climax involving a massive tilting platform, upon which our heroes must delicately balance themselves or fall to their certain deaths down a seemingly bottomless chasm. This idea is blatantly stolen from the Oscar-winning West German animated short “Balance” (1989), which packed more cleverness, suspense and substance into seven minutes than this bloated arcade game can muster in two mindless hours.

Jeff Shannon: j.sh@verizon.net

JK Rowling has completed her first book not to feature the teenaged wizard Harry Potter - but don’t look for it on the best-seller chart.

The British author says only seven copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard are being printed. One will be auctioned in December to raise money for a children’s charity, while the others have been given away as gifts.

Rowling herself did the drawings for the collection of five magical fairy stories, along with writing the text by hand. In a statement, Rowling said “The Tales of Beedle the Bard is really a distillation of the themes found in the Harry Potter books, and writing it has been the most wonderful way to say goodbye to a world I have loved and lived in for 17 years.”

Bound in brown morocco leather and mounted with silver and semiprecious stones, the book will be auctioned at Sotheby’s on December 13. Starting price will be $62,000. Proceeds will go to The Children’s Voice, a European children’s charity.

Rowling’s seven Harry Potter books have been translated into 64 languages, selling nearly 400 million copies. Tales of Beedle the Bard played a role in this year’s final installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. As a gift left by headmaster Albus Dumbledore to Harry’s friend Hermione, it provides clues which help destroy the evil Lord Voldemort.

In a BBC radio interview broadcast on November 1, Rowling said she was working on “a half-finished book for children that I think will be the next thing I publish.”

On October 31, Rowling and the makers of the Harry Potter movies filed a lawsuit against RDR Books, a small U.S. publisher planning to bring out a companion volume based on the Harry Potter Lexicon fan Web site.

Rowling has said she plans to write her own encyclopedia of the wizarding world, and says the book would infringe on her intellectual property rights.

Whether it’s the next great American crime movie or simply this year’s professional stunner will be determined over the next few months. For now, it’s enough to say that the story of the rise and fall of an African American drug kingpin is relentlessly told by the English director Ridley Scott (”Gladiator,” “Black Hawk Down”); it just keeps on coming.