I first saw these pictures in The Daily Telegraph with the cheesetacular headline of, "First picture on set of even hungrier Games". Yep. If I ever meet the person who makes up those headlines, I'm pretty sure we will best friends. Here are a few more that I dug up online, all showing the cast members doing essentially the same thing (that is, standing on podiums somewhere off the coast of Hawaii). I must admit though - those jumpsuits are badass; definitely a big improvement over the first movie's "camping gear". Plus, Finnick is le sexy.

That last one so utterly embodies the character of Peeta. LOL jokes. I love Peeta :)

Oh, and shoutout to Nanny Nincompoop for yesterday! Happy Birthday my crazy non-cousin/neighbour/third musketeer person!

“Finnick?" I say, "Maybe some pants?"

 He looks down at his legs as if noticing his outfit for the first time. Then he whips off his hospital gown leaving him in just his underwear. "Why? Do you find this" -- he strikes a ridiculously provocative pose -- "distracting?"

- From "Mockingjay" by Suzanne Collins

It's been old news for a while - Robert Pattinson is NOT playing the role of Finnick Odair - but I thought I should just post this here. Mockingjay.net recently posted an article of R-Patz denying the rumours. I thought it was funny how he phrased the rejection:

“I woke up this morning and saw all these things about me being cast in The Hunger Games,” Pattinson tells USA TODAY. “I was kind of curious for a second. So I called my agent.”

The response?

“My agent was like, ‘No,’ ” Pattinson reports.

“(My agent) was like no one’s going to offer you that part,” Pattinson says, breaking into a laugh. “I was like, thanks for the reassurance.”

"No one's going to offer you that part." LOLOLOL. Ouch. I think that was supposed to be an insult.

and finishing The Hunger Games series, you get all the hugs,


and a complimentary comic.


And to Mr New Director out there, can we pretty please have Alex Pettyfer as Finnick?

Needless to say my mum was absolutely traumatised by The Hunger Games.

My sister loved it by the way but my both my parents totally missed the point of it. My dad called it a "rubbish Hollywood movie" LOL. But then again, my dad only watches the indie movies on SBS. He watches Bollywood, French films and Aussie indie flicks but he can't stand anything that comes out of the US.

I asked my mum what she thought and she said she couldn't enjoy it because it was too unrealistic.

................

........................................

.................................................................... well NAHHHHHH.

Thank you Captain Obvious. You win all the awards for pointing that out.

Basically she complained about how unlikely something like that would ever happen. How could a government resort to making kids kill kids just for entertainment? Inconceivable! And then I tried to explain to her that it was all about the government trying to suppress and control the people but she refused to believe that stuff like that ever happens in our world. Errr.... what about China? Tiananmen Square Massacre? No? Not ringing any bells? Plus it is a MOVIE adapted from a BOOK. Ergo, NOT REAL.

My mum does not understand sci-fi. She also doesn't understand the point of "what if" movies. Give her Tom Cruise and cheesy romances anyday over anything remotely intellectually stimulating and she'll be happy. (I suppose that's where my infatuation with shallow literature comes from. Maybe I shouldn't be judging her).

It was still worth it just to see the movie again though. The vast amount of stuff/details/scenes that they missed out on still bugged me but hey, the movie was long enough already. I can understand it I guess. Imagine if they included every single detail of the Harry Potter books. The movies would have to be 10 hours long!

Sorry guys, I couldn't resist.

Have fun trying to un-see that ^

*SPOILER ALERT* If you haven't watched the movie yet, you might want to steer clear of this post, just in case it spoils the experience.

So I watched 'The Hunger Games' today...

Yeah, I'm not really sure what I should say. It's a bit strange, having waited so long for a book to be adapted into a movie. I think I'm still a bit shell-shocked actually... What is my purpose in life now? I'm not sure if you've noticed but "The Hunger Games" made up about 60% of my blog posts, haha (I'm such a sad case). There's nothing else to look forward to in life! Unless you count waiting for Catching Fire to come out... Oh God I cannot wait. That book was even more epic than the first.

The Verdict:

I liked the movie. I think it was really well done. Converting a 300-something paged book into a 2 hour 15 minute film is no easy feat and I THINK it was done in a way that made it understandable to people who have never read said book. There were some really epic moments... but then there were also some duds and I will explain these below.

Yay! List time!

I liked:

The actors/actresses. Jennifer Lawrence was epic (obviously), and Josh Hutcherson was also pretty good. I especially liked his shocked face at the reaping scene LOL. His gobsmacked expression was unintentionally funny. Most of the tributes seemed to fit the descriptions in the book - although that probably has more to do with the fact that I've gotten so used to the casting. The only one who didn't look like the original character was Josh (Peeta). I always pictured him as tall and lanky but whatever, it's the acting that counts, right?

The Capitol. It was pretty. I like pretty things.

The training montage... where all the tributes go off and do thier own stuff. Clove was so badass with her knives and Foxface did that cool insect/plant thingy on the digital screen. Oh and Rue stole Cato's knife LOL.

When Peeta picked up the dumbbell and chucked it across the room, I felt like cheering. You show them Peeta! Chucked it like a sack of flour, he did.

Prim. She was good, in the few scenes that she had. Rue was great as well.

The explosion after Katniss shoots the apples. That felt immensely satisfying. It was like, psshhewww and then KABOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

The gore. Probably a strange thing to say but the book was really confronting. I would have hated it if they'd tried to sugercoat the whole thing. It wouldn't have been as effective.

Peeta's camouflage technique. Haha. Nothing like icing cakes to save your life.

Seneca Crane's beard. 'Nuff said.

I hated:

Just how... rushed it felt I suppose. I know it's really really hard to condense such a multilayered world into a 2 hour movie but they could have at least lengthened the moments after their victory. I swear that whole aftermath went by in like 5 minutes. AND THEY MISSED A VERY IMPORTANT SCENE. (See below).

The shaky cam. Oh God, that darned shaky cam! Whose idea was it to film it that way? Was it a low budget thing? Was it an intentional trying-to-be-suspenseful-and-realistic thing? I don't know. All I know is that it was distracting, especially when you have to really focus to try to picture the whole scene.

The special effects... if you can even call them that. That parade/float scene was one of the best moments of the book, mostly because of how epic Suzanne Collins described their costumes. I don't have the book here with me but if I did, I would quote from it. Those flames looked really fake and cheesy. The mutts were also supposed to be the dead tributes in mutated form but I guess that would be asking too much of the special effects team. I did like Katniss' dress though.

Some scenes just didn't have the same emotional resonance as what I'd experienced when reading the book. This was probably a time thing. They didn't let the Rue/Katniss relationship to develop (Rue never got to talk about her love of singing, etc) so when Rue died, it was a bit... lukewarm. Same goes for the Peeta/Katniss relationship. Their whole "romance" in the cave thing as well as outside the arena took up a significant portion of the book but I feel like they just glazed over it in the movie.

The cat was the wrong colour LOL. How hard is it to find an orange cat? Jokes. Now I'm just being petty.

Things they really should have included in the movie:

Peeta's line after Katniss steps on him while he's camouflaged on the banks on the river. He says, "You here to finish me off, sweetheart?" Heh. Also missed out a bijillion other lines but I won't get into that.

When Clove threatens Katniss with a knife, Katniss spits blood in her face. Pretty badass.

The whole "kiss Peeta and receive food" thing Haymitch and Katniss had going on. In the books, Katniss really milked the relationship with Peeta for all it was worth. For her, it was all a facade - something she had to do to keep the audience entertained and stay alive. But obviously, she got emotionally evolved in the end. On the other hand, Peeta was actually being sincere when he said he liked Katniss and there was such a palpable sense of conflict and pain in the books over that. There's a very important scene near the end of the book when Katniss and Peeta are on the train travelling back home to district 12. Peeta finds out that the whole "romance" was just for show and that Haymitch and Katniss had actually been planning it behind his back. They never really communicated that in the movie.

The whole confusion after the game thing. When Katniss wakes up to find that she's all healed and she's crazy with worry about Peeta. And then they only get to see each other for the first time after the game when Katniss goes on stage for the interview. She runs into his arms, knocks him over and they full make out LOL. On live television too.

The ending berry scene wasn't done well. Didn't feel it. Didn't believe it for one second.

After Katniss sings to Rue after her death, the mockingjays were supposed to pick up the song and do a kind of interwoven, harmony loop thing that echoed throughout the forest.

Rue's district was supposed to send bread to Katniss as thanks.

Foxface died. Just like that. Not even a proper explanation about the berries. It was like, "Oh hey look, she's dead. The berries must have been poisoned. Oh noes! We nearly ate them! Oh well."

Characters that magically disappeared. Like Madge. Although actually, that was probably a good thing.

They glossed over some minor details. Like the appearance of the other districts' floats and the interviews for the rest of the tributes.

In conclusion though, I did like the movie despite its faults. Obviously, the books will always be fifty times more entertaining/resonant/heart-wrenching but I think they did a pretty good job with the resources they were given. Didn't hurt to have Suzanne Collins as the script-writer either.

To end off, here have a picture of the tributes in Vanity Fair.

Kind of makes you forget that everyone ends up killing everyone else LOL.

So with all the assessments and stuff that have been going on lately, I nearly forgot that The Hunger Games was coming out next week. It's true; I've been posting all the videos and getting all hyped up and stuff but it kind of slipped my mind when the actual release date was (23rd March, if you're wondering).

Before I go any further, I think I WILL be going laser tag after all guys. I need to shoot something - preferably my Extension 2 Major Work but I'll make do with shooting Nancy instead.

Ahem. Okay so since we have our half yearlies in Week 10 and next week we'll probably be holed up in our rooms studying, I figured that if anyone's interested, we could go see the movie next, next Friday. As in on the 31st of March (End of week 10). I'm pretty sure exams finish on that day anyway (my last one is Legal Studies and honestly, I'm going to need the excitement, otherwise I'll fall into a coma whilst writing my shelter essay).

If there are clashes with the time then we can schedule it to another day.

So let me know if you guys are interested. Actually even if you're not interested, I'll probably end up pressuring you to go watch it with me. I'm very good at doing that.... wearing people down until they end up shouting, "FINE YOU LOSER, I'LL GO JUST TO MAKE YOU SHUT UP!"

Okay guys? OKAY! I'M SO EXCITEDDDDDDDD!!!! *flails arms around like a crazy Italian grandma*

BTW, the movie premiered in America yesterday and from what I can see from the fansites, it has stayed really really true to the books. Obviously, if Susanne Collins is writing the script, it's kind of expected. The response seems to be overwhelming positive so far.

Anyhow, here, have some pictures of beautiful people looking beautiful at The Hunger Games Premiere:





I like this one because the fire in the background looks like wings :)



Foxface (Jackie Emerson)



Prim, who by the way has awesome hair.... or maybe it's just the lighting, I'm not really sure.



Rue *cries tears of sadness forever*



Clove, played by that creepy girl from Orphan.



Alexander Ludwig - who I heard was BRILLIANT in the film.



Seneca Crane, I think?



And the lovely Suzanne Collins and Gary Ross.

Photo source: www.mockingjay.net