In that I can't seem to stop hearing about it now with the various movie casting announcements and the whole tone of said announcements seems to be "Pretty please, we would like to be the next big franchise after Harry Potter and Twilight." Also, the books sound kinda fucked up in a Battle Royale meets Handmaid's Tale way so I'm perversely impressed it IS being turned into a megafranchise.
― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 11 May 2011 01:04 (twelve years ago) link
http://kaynou.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/hungry_hungry_hippos.jpg
― gimme the lootpack (Lamp), Wednesday, 11 May 2011 01:06 (twelve years ago) link
I was considering reading these bcz a friend (who is getting a grad degree in YA lit) told me they were awesome + written in the present tense (this was the part that interested me). I am sure they are fine and all but I can't help but be wary of book series that have had Hot Topic merchandising! God bless YAs and all but I'm not so Y an A anymore (which, why am I in Hot Topic?).
― I just hope Jeff's music got people into William F. Buckley (Abbbottt), Wednesday, 11 May 2011 01:13 (twelve years ago) link
I would definitely be interested in this though if the main characters in the movie were owls.
Apparently her other big series had huge star-nosed moles!
― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 11 May 2011 01:17 (twelve years ago) link
My gf read and liked these. Tho she's a children's librarian so has some incentive to keep up on YA stuff. But she says they're well done for what they do.
― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 11 May 2011 01:33 (twelve years ago) link
ugh, these books are so good. I am re-reading them during my subway commute and I sometimes have to pretend that my eyes are tearing up due to allergies because I forgot how dark and bleak some parts of the book are.
― Yerac, Wednesday, 11 May 2011 02:45 (twelve years ago) link
My wife loved the books. And she's no fan of YA.
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 11 May 2011 03:18 (twelve years ago) link
Same with my fiancee. A coworker let her borrow the first two for when she went on a business trip, and she got so sucked in that she bought the third one in the airport.
I kinda want to read them, too.
The big casting controversy is that they picked Jennifer "Winter's Bone" Lawrence to star ahead of Hailee "True Grit" Steinfeld, who's closer to the main character in age and physical appearance. Suzanne Collins has had to assure fans that it's OK.
― jaymc, Wednesday, 11 May 2011 03:24 (twelve years ago) link
I thought this must be what "City of Ember" (the movie) was based on, since the film is also a YA thing in an underground city with a giant star-nosed mole and came out the year after the last book, but apparently it's completely unrelated! And apparently "The City of Ember" (the book) didn't have a star-nosed mole in, either.
Have not read the Hunger Games books but apparently a coworker's kid has been voraciously reading them, demanding multiple library trips per week to get the next one out, etc.
― russ conway's game of life (a passing spacecadet), Wednesday, 11 May 2011 10:30 (twelve years ago) link
xpost Yeah, pretty sure the lead character is supposed to be a olive skinned, dark haired, etc. teen, so of course heads were scratched (or not) when they cast a blonde, blue-eyed twentysomething. The dudes they cast, btw, looked distractingly hunky to me, in the soap opera sense. But whatevs. I've got no dog in this fight, though I do like Gary Ross.
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 11 May 2011 11:45 (twelve years ago) link
100 pages into this and so far it's reminding me of michael swanwick's 'iron dragon's daughter.' very pleasantly surprised at how blatantly class conscious this is
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 11 July 2011 01:13 (twelve years ago) link
i hate these books almost as bad as the rick riordan ones
― remy bean, Monday, 11 July 2011 01:41 (twelve years ago) link
Is there any point in reading this if you've already read Battle Royale?
― grey tambourine (wk), Monday, 11 July 2011 01:45 (twelve years ago) link
there's no point in reading it if you haven't
― remy bean, Monday, 11 July 2011 01:46 (twelve years ago) link
haha wait, you mean "just don't read it", right? not "you have to read BR first"
― grey tambourine (wk), Monday, 11 July 2011 01:52 (twelve years ago) link
only riordan book i read replaces hogwarts with lucian's olympus. tone's a little different so far in 'the hunger games,' more pg-13 gene wolfe or michael swanwick
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 11 July 2011 13:20 (twelve years ago) link
just started Mockingjay, haven't read anything so gripping and fun in a while. lots of gore for a YA book (or maybe they're all sex&violence these days, i dunno), be interesting to see how they handle it in the movies. the dumb names are starting to get to me though (Peeta, Cinna, Beetee blargh)
― herbal bert (herb albert), Monday, 11 July 2011 13:33 (twelve years ago) link
^ for a YA series, I read the first two over the past week
― herbal bert (herb albert), Monday, 11 July 2011 13:35 (twelve years ago) link
my objection is that these books are just ... easy fiction, kind of pandering 'boy stuff' w/ lots of graphic violence that milks video games and episodic TV for ideas and is otherwise woefully ignorant of the larger literary tradition or canon. it is written in present tense and basically free of any device or craft beyond basic storytelling aptitude. it perpetuates the same limerence-drenched soap-opera shit that's saturated YA for the past half-decade, and does a lot of the ham-fisted world-building that passes for 'imaginative' and refuses to allow the reader to experience wonder, confusion, or ambiguity. i like gore and gruesomeness in YA - it's such an overly mannered genre - but I think a lot of other authors have recently done better jobs conveying it, like Rick Yancey in his Will Henry series – 'The Monstrumologist' & 'Curse of the Wendigo'
― remy bean, Monday, 11 July 2011 13:42 (twelve years ago) link
never heard hunger games dismissed as 'boy stuff' before
― Ayatollah Colm Meaney (Princess TamTam), Monday, 11 July 2011 14:19 (twelve years ago) link
i'm not dismissing them out of hand – i read all three of them. in my classroom, however, it's 99.9% of the time the boys who grab for the books before the girls.
― remy bean, Monday, 11 July 2011 14:20 (twelve years ago) link
well i avoided twilight so i might give these a go i guess
― thomp, Monday, 11 July 2011 14:29 (twelve years ago) link
doesnt it have a huge female following because of, y'know, the strong and independent young female protag? theres a considerable number of feminist readings out there that seem to find value in it & i feel like its worth embracing just for that (NB. i havent read these but i hear in the later books she becomes more marginalized while the men assume a larger role, which is a shame if so)
― Ayatollah Colm Meaney (Princess TamTam), Monday, 11 July 2011 14:38 (twelve years ago) link
in the year 2011, YA literature shelves are filled with strong and independent female protagonists – and this, i don't think is one of the better examples. the predominance of feminist readings are, to my mind, occasioned by the popularity of the books and not their quality.
― remy bean, Monday, 11 July 2011 15:02 (twelve years ago) link
so this appears to be an interesting set of books, being adapted into films by a decent filmmaker with a strong cast. as far as megafranchises go, we could do worse.
― THIS IS SATIRE BTW (Simon H.), Monday, 11 July 2011 15:11 (twelve years ago) link
i'm the first guy i know who's reading it. lots of ladies i know have though. so far the girl from 'true grit' would make a way better katniss than the girl who played mystique in the last x-men. that's who they cast, right?
remy, are you serious that you expect literary erudition to shine throughout young adult novels? i just want them to invoke the spirits of the greats, like mervyn peake and joy chant. so far, so good
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 11 July 2011 15:22 (twelve years ago) link
absolutely, and i often find it. YA isn't the 'junk' genre it (largely) was 20 year ago. laurel wil back me up on this, i think, but there are a number of incredibly talented, capable, and innovative writers working in the field b/c its lack of pretension, willingness to bend genre and story conventions, and relative ease of getting published make it a good place to try out new ideas.
― remy bean, Monday, 11 July 2011 15:26 (twelve years ago) link
the girl who played mystique in the last x-men. that's who they cast, right?
Yeah, but I prefer to think of her as the girl from Winter's Bone, which makes her seem more promising, tbh.
― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Monday, 11 July 2011 15:27 (twelve years ago) link
― thomp
Those two things need to be decoupled: Everyone should avoid Twilight no matter what you plan to do later in the day/month/year/life.
xp remy is right! Don't lower your standards for young peoples' sakes, they don't need it!
― manager expects you to work past 6PM but won't allow you to change into (Laurel), Monday, 11 July 2011 15:28 (twelve years ago) link
i don't consider young adult fiction junk or i wouldn't be reading it. but have you ever read harold bloom's young adult fantasy novel, 'a flight to lucifer'? yuck
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 11 July 2011 15:29 (twelve years ago) link
remy, are you serious that you expect literary erudition to shine throughout young adult novels?
Also this is a patronizing and makes you sound like a jerk. Don't do that.
― manager expects you to work past 6PM but won't allow you to change into (Laurel), Monday, 11 July 2011 15:30 (twelve years ago) link
I don't see how a lifelong reader/critic not turning out to be a great YA author in the genre of fantasy is proof of anything, btw. False dichotomy, or at least an extremely lazy one.
― manager expects you to work past 6PM but won't allow you to change into (Laurel), Monday, 11 July 2011 15:33 (twelve years ago) link
Yeah she really has nothing to prove in the confident-lead department.
― THIS IS SATIRE BTW (Simon H.), Monday, 11 July 2011 15:33 (twelve years ago) link
like harry potter, i think these stories may succeed better as movies than books: there's very little in the story besides a kind of reportorial narrative.
― remy bean, Monday, 11 July 2011 15:37 (twelve years ago) link
laurel do you like hunger games
― Ayatollah Colm Meaney (Princess TamTam), Monday, 11 July 2011 15:38 (twelve years ago) link
laurel & r.bean recommend two or three good YA novels i should read for contrast to 'hunger games', if i read 'hunger games'
― thomp, Monday, 11 July 2011 15:39 (twelve years ago) link
Haven't read 'em. Storyline seemed a little too pat, and then they got the commercial success to match so I just didn't make the effort. remy is saving me from having to try again.
― manager expects you to work past 6PM but won't allow you to change into (Laurel), Monday, 11 July 2011 15:40 (twelve years ago) link
Remy already did!
Rick Yancey in his Will Henry series – 'The Monstrumologist' & 'Curse of the Wendigo'
― manager expects you to work past 6PM but won't allow you to change into (Laurel), Monday, 11 July 2011 15:42 (twelve years ago) link
@thomp, for the sci-fi/horror/gore/monster angle i'd recommend rick yancey's 'the monstrumologist.' it isn't really my cup of tea, but i think it is a well-written book and a good read for a certain type of kid. it introduces a lot of great elements, and ties well w/ frankenstein, lovecraft, etc.,
for total contrast w/in the genre i recommend peter cameron's 'someday this pain will be useful to you' for great, deceptively simple, characterization.
i've recently enjoyed green & levithan's 'will grayson, will grayson' and paolo bacigalupi's 'ship-breaker'
― remy bean, Monday, 11 July 2011 15:44 (twelve years ago) link
halfway through ellen klages 'the green glass sea' if historical fiction is your thing
― remy bean, Monday, 11 July 2011 15:45 (twelve years ago) link
Yay, Ship Breaker!!
― manager expects you to work past 6PM but won't allow you to change into (Laurel), Monday, 11 July 2011 15:45 (twelve years ago) link
so good, right?
― remy bean, Monday, 11 July 2011 15:47 (twelve years ago) link
thanking u
just out of curiosity, how would you rate the possibly-not-as-ubiquitous-as-i-think-they-are franchises:
i. artemis fowlii. diary of a wimpy kidiii. skulduggery pleasant
― thomp, Monday, 11 July 2011 15:47 (twelve years ago) link
Sorry, actually quite busy so reduced to being cheering section. Also in terms of new stuff, I get most of my reading from work these days and our YA is extremely "commercial" so apart from SB'er and some others, most of it isn't what you're asking for.
― manager expects you to work past 6PM but won't allow you to change into (Laurel), Monday, 11 July 2011 15:48 (twelve years ago) link
you attacked me for reading 'the hunger games.' then you call me a jerk? sorry if i offended you somehow
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 11 July 2011 15:48 (twelve years ago) link
(my vested interest here is that my nephew is being put off reading by being deluged with brightly coloured FOR THE KIDS type books that people get him which largely appear to be .. kind of awful, and it is a lot harder to go into the bookstore and buy YA books than it was to buy picture books)
― thomp, Monday, 11 July 2011 15:48 (twelve years ago) link
there's a general-purpose YA thread somewhere, isn't there? maybe i should revive that one
― thomp, Monday, 11 July 2011 15:49 (twelve years ago) link
you attacked me for reading 'the hunger games.'
You can keep thinking that's what I was "attacking" you for, or you can re-consider about how dismissive you were about the literary "merit" of books for kids/young people.
thomp, honestly I haven't read any of any of those three. They give me the lip-curl when I see them around...hadn't realized Skullduggery Pleasant had become a thing?
― manager expects you to work past 6PM but won't allow you to change into (Laurel), Monday, 11 July 2011 15:52 (twelve years ago) link
There is an excellent YA sf/f thread somewhere but it's probably like 700 posts.
― manager expects you to work past 6PM but won't allow you to change into (Laurel), Monday, 11 July 2011 15:53 (twelve years ago) link
artemis fowl are kind of silly –- they've got some good ideas, but they seem a little too calibrated (?) cynical (?) for my taste. there's definitely an audience, but they're so commercial that they sometimes seem more like a product than a series of books in their own right. whenever i'm reading artemis fowl, i sort of wish i were reading diane wynn jones
diary of a wimpy kid is fluff, but its formatting is obv. very appealing for struggling readers (marginalia, text design, illustrations, limited words/page) and it's pretty funny, i think. they series isv. easy, and doesn't go to any depth or characterization so the books don't have a cross-generational appeal in the way they might the format was used to better, and more interesting effect in tom angleberger's 'the strange case of the origami yoda' which came out last year.
i haven't read skulduggery pleasant; it hardly made splash over here. i've got an ARC of it sitting on the sofa and i'm meaning to get to it.
― remy bean, Monday, 11 July 2011 15:54 (twelve years ago) link
sorry abt. poor editing above ^^^
― remy bean, Monday, 11 July 2011 15:55 (twelve years ago) link
@thomp: how old is your nephew? how is his reading?
― remy bean, Monday, 11 July 2011 15:58 (twelve years ago) link
I think the really good stuff ends up coming out in areas that aren't popular at the time, it just goes unnoticed a bit until things quiet down. I don't think the repetitive and increasingly sensational sf/f that's everywhere right now is going to be the stuff of this era that lasts -- not when we've got Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and some gender-bendy/LGBTQ "issue" books by Julie Peters and others that are also v good and will probably burrow into kids' thinking more deeply and, one hopes, lastingly, but aren't going to make headlines now.
― manager expects you to work past 6PM but won't allow you to change into (Laurel), Monday, 11 July 2011 15:59 (twelve years ago) link
And I normally dislike like "issue" books, I'm just sayin'.
i sort of wish i were reading diane wynn jones is basically my motto in life.
― manager expects you to work past 6PM but won't allow you to change into (Laurel), Monday, 11 July 2011 16:01 (twelve years ago) link
when was i ever dismissive about the literary merit of books for kids/young people? i haven't said a single negative thing on this thread . . . that i revived! how very district one tribute of you
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 11 July 2011 16:04 (twelve years ago) link
i'm sorry. i said something negative about harold bloom
well, help yourself to that. he's kind of a turd.
― remy bean, Monday, 11 July 2011 16:05 (twelve years ago) link
i'm reading his new book alongside 'the hunger games.' definitely prefer 'the hunger games'
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 11 July 2011 16:06 (twelve years ago) link
black jelly bean: cold oatmeal
― remy bean, Monday, 11 July 2011 16:10 (twelve years ago) link
why people get so defensive about their aesthetic tastes i'll never understand
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 11 July 2011 16:12 (twelve years ago) link
i really enjoyed patrick ness's 'chaos walking' trilogy despite some incompetent and repetitive plotting. certainly i think its a little more sophisticated in how it approaches its dystopia & the way it presents moral questions to the reader than hunger games.
― my baby eats special k all day (Lamp), Monday, 11 July 2011 16:17 (twelve years ago) link
good call, lamp: I am actually thinking of reading the first novel in the series w/ my class in the fall. I think Knife of Never Letting Go raises some really interesting ontological questions.
― remy bean, Monday, 11 July 2011 16:19 (twelve years ago) link
qualmsley:i'd say that maybe for a lot of people 'aesthetic taste' represents a cultural investment or a hard-won knowledge and experience, and there's a lot of ego bound up in what is a kind of half- arbitrary judgement.
It wasn't even about my taste so I'm not sure what that was? It was about remy, are you serious that you expect literary erudition to shine throughout young adult novels? But let's agree that you're not going to understand what I was saying and I'm not going to keep trying.
― manager expects you to work past 6PM but won't allow you to change into (Laurel), Monday, 11 July 2011 16:24 (twelve years ago) link
fwiw i liked the first hunger games book & read it in a single afternoon. its working w/in a structure that i really like tho & i thought the simple, direct language a point in its favor. i did sort of think it was interesting how it seemed to be geared at readers who needed to be able to visualize the action clearly, & think it suffers a little emotionally/psychologically for that.
but honestly idk for a reluctant reader i think theres also value just in 'reading what everyone else is reading', in being able to take part in the conversation surrounding the books. helps make it more social/interesting/compulsive? this is just an idea i have about ~culture~ tho idk
― my baby eats special k all day (Lamp), Monday, 11 July 2011 16:25 (twelve years ago) link
Definitely, there's always the argument for encouraging kids to read whatever they WILL read, and to get the habit of reading and talking about reading, which conveniently dovetails with publishers' desire to sell a great number of copies. My cynicism about the second part shouldn't negate the good stuff about the first part.
― manager expects you to work past 6PM but won't allow you to change into (Laurel), Monday, 11 July 2011 16:28 (twelve years ago) link
remy my nephew is actually only like nine. but he's actually a moderately advanced reader for his age -- it's just that he seems to be rapidly losing enthusiasm & it seems kind of hard to find stuff that's suitable, neither overly-childish nor alien in its concerns. i'm not about to get him the hunger games, i gotta say
like okay when i was a kid i was hooked on dragonlance and shit by that age, that was easy enough; but i don't know what to do w/r/t the 'repetitive and increasingly sensational sf/f that's everywhere right now', as laurel puts it, which seems to be what kids want to actually read (how long until the first zombie series for kids) (brb, writing to a publisher) --
like what you say about a. fowl: they sometimes seem more like a product than a series of books in their own right: seems to apply to about 75% of what's in the kid's section of the bookstore at the moment
― thomp, Monday, 11 July 2011 16:31 (twelve years ago) link
Thread's already too long, but I thought the "Lemony Snicket" books were among the most subversive, post-modern, just plain smart and funny YA-ish books I've ever read.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 11 July 2011 16:34 (twelve years ago) link
Lamp: Agreed. I'm approaching these books as a teacher, if that helps to qualify my bile. I'm all for kids reading what they'd like, when they'd like. I don't totally buy the 'as long as they're reading' line, but I do think that independent reading – especially in the case of reluctant readers / LD kids – should be self-directed for a start, and gradually channeled into a careful, but not oppressive, appreciation for good books.
thomp: there's a lot of great realistic fiction for boys that is not reductive or lame, or overly issues-driven (ugh), which has not always been the case. YA sci-fi/fantasy is a mixed bag at best, but I agree w/ Laurel that it is not mostly lasting and some of it is passing fun.
― remy bean, Monday, 11 July 2011 16:34 (twelve years ago) link
The Forest of Hands and Teeth beat you to it.
― manager expects you to work past 6PM but won't allow you to change into (Laurel), Monday, 11 July 2011 16:35 (twelve years ago) link
I'm tired of marketable book series-to-film. I got over Harry Potter ages ago and Twilight was a pitiful joke. Hunger Games doesn't look much different. I miss when authors used to write individual novels rather than serials, I get tired of the sameness after the second book.
― Breezy Summer Jam (MintIce), Monday, 11 July 2011 16:36 (twelve years ago) link
xxxp lemony snicket was like thomas pynchon jr. plotwise but i could never quite handle the prose.
― my Sonicare toothbrush (difficult listening hour), Monday, 11 July 2011 16:36 (twelve years ago) link
not cuz it was so bad just because it was Always On.
― my Sonicare toothbrush (difficult listening hour), Monday, 11 July 2011 16:37 (twelve years ago) link
I think the Snicket prose is part of the joke. It'll suddenly digress into a discussion of King Lear or the water cycle with no warning, just to keep you on your toes. If anything, it reminded me a whole lot of Tristram Shandy, right down to the black page.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 11 July 2011 16:38 (twelve years ago) link
Like, wheel-spinning as an art.
http://www.grimmstories.com/images/sprookjes/image055.jpg
― remy bean, Monday, 11 July 2011 16:40 (twelve years ago) link
― Breezy Summer Jam (MintIce), Monday, July 11, 2011 12:36 PM (54 seconds ago) Bookmark
the 'best' part about the hunger games adaptation is they're making 4 movies out of 3 books
― Ayatollah Colm Meaney (Princess TamTam), Monday, 11 July 2011 16:42 (twelve years ago) link
My daughters are both obsessed with what a spindle even is. Most antiquated fairy tale staple?
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 11 July 2011 16:43 (twelve years ago) link
Now, see the L Snicket books are a good example of a successful book/series without too many predecessors that absolutely set off a mania for "wacky hijinx" stories involving groups of kids. That accounts for the Skullduggery Pleasant series, DEFINITELY, BIG-TIME for the "Secrets Series" (The Name of this Book Is Secret et al) by "Pseudonymous Bosch", and I'm sure for 17 other currently successful extended series, too.
― manager expects you to work past 6PM but won't allow you to change into (Laurel), Monday, 11 July 2011 16:46 (twelve years ago) link
The original had merits, but most of the other ideas that it made possible/successful will just be variations without the deftness or depth.
― manager expects you to work past 6PM but won't allow you to change into (Laurel), Monday, 11 July 2011 16:48 (twelve years ago) link
pseudonymous bosch is another pen name for daniel handler, aka lemony snicket. i think you're right about there being v. little precedent for series of unfortunate events, tbh
― remy bean, Monday, 11 July 2011 16:49 (twelve years ago) link
Oh bother, really? I read the first three and then was like, I don't know if I just lost the thread but I'm over this now.
― manager expects you to work past 6PM but won't allow you to change into (Laurel), Monday, 11 July 2011 16:50 (twelve years ago) link
i actually read two of the skulduggery pleasant stories, i quite liked them, it was a little odd that he was doing 'cthulhu ... y'know, for kids' but i gather that's a thing, right
― thomp, Monday, 11 July 2011 16:51 (twelve years ago) link
i read daniel handler's grownup novel once, it wasn't very good
i associate the whole lemony snicket thing w/ the girls in my high school who were deeply in love with neutral milk hotel
― my baby eats special k all day (Lamp), Monday, 11 July 2011 16:53 (twelve years ago) link
I think I might have read the first Skullduggery but it was under complicated circumstances, and I didn't follow their success afterward.
― manager expects you to work past 6PM but won't allow you to change into (Laurel), Monday, 11 July 2011 16:53 (twelve years ago) link
Awww I was just going to say I wish D Handler would keep writing The Basic Eight only in a way that was eternally fresh and new!
― manager expects you to work past 6PM but won't allow you to change into (Laurel), Monday, 11 July 2011 16:54 (twelve years ago) link
Ha, on Wikipedia:
Bosch has been widely believed to be Megan McDonald, Rick Riordan, Heinrich Hoffmann, Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket), Graeme Williams, Jon Scieszka, Trenton Lee Stewart, or Edie Bilmann.
That's pretty definitely non-commitmal.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 11 July 2011 16:57 (twelve years ago) link
Oh yeah, Trenton Lee Stewart, chalk up another one for the wacky hijinx.
― manager expects you to work past 6PM but won't allow you to change into (Laurel), Monday, 11 July 2011 17:00 (twelve years ago) link
the copyright is (c) daniel handler so i mean
― remy bean, Monday, 11 July 2011 19:23 (twelve years ago) link
Whoah that's funny, I'm holding 3 of the books right here and the copyright is under the pseudonym.
― manager expects you to work past 6PM but won't allow you to change into (Laurel), Monday, 11 July 2011 19:31 (twelve years ago) link
so the flashback-a-chapter rhythm is starting to wear on me. but she's maintaining a deep understanding of what it's like to grow up poor. starting to get curious about these underland books
― reggie (qualmsley), Tuesday, 12 July 2011 12:36 (twelve years ago) link
so some spading reveals that handler isn't the author, and i'm kind of a chump. a handler friend/cohort (?) from WA named raphael simon is responsible
― remy bean, Tuesday, 12 July 2011 13:31 (twelve years ago) link
Haha I wd have been even more of a chump if I didn't realize one of my old idols was writing for us!
― manager expects you to work past 6PM but won't allow you to change into (Laurel), Tuesday, 12 July 2011 13:39 (twelve years ago) link
'the forest of hands and teeth' looks pretty interesting. i'm curious how you rate 'st. lucy's home for girls raised by wolves'
― reggie (qualmsley), Tuesday, 12 July 2011 15:45 (twelve years ago) link
I wrote it down on my list but never got around to it, tbh. Seems like something I'd like if it's not too McSweeney's-y. I've enjoyed what I've read from Kelly Link, seems like this is in the same category?
I never read that Forest of Hands and Teeth, btw, or even heard of it -- I just googled "young adult" and "zombies" iirc!
― manager expects you to work past 6PM but won't allow you to change into (Laurel), Tuesday, 12 July 2011 15:55 (twelve years ago) link
the karen russell short stories have nothing to do w/ ya fiction?
― # (Lamp), Tuesday, 12 July 2011 15:57 (twelve years ago) link
depends on how you define it i guess
"Mr. Minotaur, could you kindly open this jar of love apples for us? Mr. Minotaur, when you have a moment, would you mind goring those wolves?"
but i'd define george saunders that way too, and flann o'brien. kids read wicked shit too
― reggie (qualmsley), Tuesday, 12 July 2011 16:08 (twelve years ago) link
Oh sorry, I thought he was asking because they were cross-marketed or sort of "for girls of all ages" or something. Like that McSweeney's collection for kids. Uhh... Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things That Aren't as Scary, Maybe, Depending on How You Feel About Lost Lands, Stray Cellphones, Creatures from the Sky, Parents Who Disappear in Peru, a Man Named Lars Farf, and One Other Story We Couldn't Quite Finish, So Maybe You Could Help Us Out - WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY LEMONY SNICKET
― manager expects you to work past 6PM but won't allow you to change into (Laurel), Tuesday, 12 July 2011 16:11 (twelve years ago) link
never heard of that. don't read much mcsweeney's
i was asking because it's next on a y/a recommendation list after 'the hunger games' a friend gave me
― reggie (qualmsley), Tuesday, 12 July 2011 16:14 (twelve years ago) link
i think forest ov hands & teeth looks interesting too, if i get around to the rest of this reading list i'm constructing myself, i don't know, i'll put that on it i guess. i feel like having a binge on straightforward, like, stories and shit.
― thomp, Tuesday, 12 July 2011 16:19 (twelve years ago) link
my objection is that these books are just ... easy fiction, kind of pandering 'boy stuff' w/ lots of graphic violence that milks video games and episodic TV for ideas and is otherwise woefully ignorant of the larger literary tradition or canon. it is written in present tense and basically free of any device or craft beyond basic storytelling aptitude. it perpetuates the same limerence-drenched soap-opera shit that's saturated YA for the past half-decade, and does a lot of the ham-fisted world-building that passes for 'imaginative' and refuses to allow the reader to experience wonder, confusion, or ambiguity.
Remy, I tried reading the first book in this series and did not finish it due to the reasons you have listed above. I found it to be astonishingly poor writing, the acclaim this series received is baffling to me.
― online pinata store (Nicole), Tuesday, 12 July 2011 16:28 (twelve years ago) link
Betrayal. That's the first thing I feel, which is ludicrous. For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first. Between Peeta and me. And trust has not been part of the agreement. We're tributes. But the boy who risked a beating to give me bread, the one who steadied me in the chariot, who covered for me with the redheaded Avox girl, who insisted Haymitch know my hunting skills . . . was there some part of me that couldn't help trusting him?
On the other hand, I'm relieved that we can stop the pretense of being friends. Obviously, whatever thin connection we'd foolishly formed has been severed. And high time, too. The Games begin in two days, and trust will only be a weakness. Whatever triggered Peeta's decision -- and I suspect it had to do with my outperforming him in training -- I should be nothing but grateful for it. Maybe he's finally accepted the fact that the sooner we openly acknowledge that we are enemies, the better.
that whole chapter rules. nice end to part i
― reggie (qualmsley), Tuesday, 19 July 2011 13:05 (twelve years ago) link
huh, i thought i'd revived this this morning but apparently i didn't
― thomp, Tuesday, 19 July 2011 13:10 (twelve years ago) link
remy otm, though, basically
ambiguity is dripping off the page up in here. so is wonder. but whatever
― reggie (qualmsley), Tuesday, 19 July 2011 13:47 (twelve years ago) link
i don't know if i've repped for this before, but paolo bacigalupi's 'shipbreaker' plays with the same themes as hunger games very effectively, and the writing quality is much, much better. the first half of shipbreaker is exceptional, and the second half is very good, but it's also a lot more of an interesting read, imho
― Капитан ☭ (remy bean), Tuesday, 19 July 2011 13:54 (twelve years ago) link
thanks for the tip. i'll check that out
― reggie (qualmsley), Tuesday, 19 July 2011 13:56 (twelve years ago) link
hunger games feels v schematic -- the world-building feels very back-of-an-envelope, and then katniss spends the entire time explaining it to the reader. all the character interactions suffer from the same -- this fear that a slow reader might miss something, somewhere along the way. everything bar the action feels like this; i'm confused what book qualmsley is reading
following recommendations itt will probably wait until i move house so as to not take a boxful of YA fiction w/me
― thomp, Tuesday, 19 July 2011 13:58 (twelve years ago) link
xp Please also notice how nicely the jacket is printed -- over foil, no less! So much foil....
― it's not that print journalists don't have a sense of humour, it's just (Laurel), Tuesday, 19 July 2011 13:58 (twelve years ago) link
Shipbreaker excerpt:
Richard Lopez was a rib-thin conglomeration of ropy muscle and burning energy. Tattooed dragons ran the length of his arms and sent their tails curling up his neck to twine with the faded patterns of his own long-ago light crew tattoos. Fresher, and far more ominous, a whole series of victory scars gleamed on his chest, showing all the men he'd broken when he'd been a ring fighter. Thirteen red and angry slashes there. His very own baker's dozen, he would say, grinning. And then he'd ask Nailer if he was ever going to be as tough as his old man.Richard lit the storm lamp that hung overhead, setting it swaying. Nailer held still, trying to guess his father's mood as the man pulled a scavenged chair around and straddled it. The lamp's swinging glare cast shadows across them both, looming and swooping shapes. Richard Lopez was sliding high, burning with amphetamines and liquor, His bloodshot eyes studied Nailer carefully, a snake waiting to strike."What the hell happened to you?"Nailer tried not to show fear. THe man didn't have anything in his hands: no knife, no belt, no willow whip. His blue eyes might be crystal bright, but he was still a calm ocean."I had an accident on the job," Nailer said."An accident? Were you being stupid?"
Richard lit the storm lamp that hung overhead, setting it swaying. Nailer held still, trying to guess his father's mood as the man pulled a scavenged chair around and straddled it. The lamp's swinging glare cast shadows across them both, looming and swooping shapes. Richard Lopez was sliding high, burning with amphetamines and liquor, His bloodshot eyes studied Nailer carefully, a snake waiting to strike.
"What the hell happened to you?"
Nailer tried not to show fear. THe man didn't have anything in his hands: no knife, no belt, no willow whip. His blue eyes might be crystal bright, but he was still a calm ocean.
"I had an accident on the job," Nailer said.
"An accident? Were you being stupid?"
― Капитан ☭ (remy bean), Tuesday, 19 July 2011 14:02 (twelve years ago) link
i'm reading a book about a poor girl who gets fucked with and learns to fight back. i'm partial to books about poor kids that are sincere about how much poverty sucks. i rooted for steerpike, for instance. i like 'oliver twist.' and this isn't bad prose by any estimation ~
The next hours are agonizing. At once, it's clear I cannot gush. We try me playing cocky, but I just don't have the arrogance. Apparently, I'm too "vulnerable" for ferocity. I'm not witty. Funny. Sexy. Or mysterious.
By the end of the session, I am no one at all. Haymitch started drinking somewhere around witty, and a nasty edge has crept into his voice. "I give up, sweetheart. Just answer the questions and try not to let the audience see how openly you despise them."
xp
― reggie (qualmsley), Tuesday, 19 July 2011 14:12 (twelve years ago) link
i'm with qwalmsley on this. loved the series.
and i'm looking forward to the movie.
― lxy, Tuesday, 19 July 2011 16:16 (twelve years ago) link
Collins is not only in possession of the most gruesomely inventive imagination since Hieronymus Bosch. (As David Plotz noted in Slate's discussion of Mockingjay last summer, the series is practically a Kama Sutra of violence.) She also has a precision engineer's sense of how to make her complex narrative structures work: Action-movie directors could learn a thing or 10 from her about how to construct elaborate yet perfectly suspenseful plots. But more impressive is Collins' fierceness. No one is safe from the story she wants to tell, and if that means offing some beloved, underage characters in alarming fashion or ending the series on a note she must have known was going to be divisive among her fans, so be it. Collins doesn't talk down to her young readers or sugarcoat her plot for them; she knows they're as bloodthirsty as her adult fans. By combining a bracing ruthlessness with old-fashioned storytelling skills, Collins cracked the code for making truly compelling—-and profitable—-fiction for all ages.
http://www.slate.com/id/2299513/
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 1 August 2011 11:13 (twelve years ago) link
ppl in mainstream media outlets writing about genre fiction: classic or dud?
― thomp, Monday, 1 August 2011 12:02 (twelve years ago) link
although that's more of an advertising notice than anything, i suppose
― thomp, Monday, 1 August 2011 12:04 (twelve years ago) link
the hostility to this book is more interesting than the substance of the complaints
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 1 August 2011 12:26 (twelve years ago) link
no, you are
― thomp, Monday, 1 August 2011 12:28 (twelve years ago) link
why don't you start an anti-hunger games thread, thomp?
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 1 August 2011 12:31 (twelve years ago) link
that would be slightly less ridiculous
no, you're ridiculous
― thomp, Monday, 1 August 2011 12:34 (twelve years ago) link
obviously
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 1 August 2011 12:34 (twelve years ago) link
but you're out of line rude. on a young adult fiction thread. which is interesting to me
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 1 August 2011 12:37 (twelve years ago) link
no, you're interesting
― thomp, Monday, 1 August 2011 12:42 (twelve years ago) link
do you kick kids reading harry potter books, thomp?
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 1 August 2011 12:45 (twelve years ago) link
how dare someone enjoy something you're too good for
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 1 August 2011 12:46 (twelve years ago) link
a book you apparently couldn't be bother to finish, either. interesting!
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 1 August 2011 12:47 (twelve years ago) link
where did i say that? also, please limit your posts in this thread to those i can respond to in the form "no, you're (x)"
― thomp, Monday, 1 August 2011 12:48 (twelve years ago) link
"hunger games feels v schematic -- the world-building feels very back-of-an-envelope, and then katniss spends the entire time explaining it to the reader."
possibly accurate for the beginning?
you're wonderful, by the way
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 1 August 2011 12:51 (twelve years ago) link
aw, thanks
& no, katniss (& collins) are guilty of that the whole way through: explaining every concept in the book's world as if they had been asked to explain it to a slow foreigner, rather than letting it be explained by the narrative. i.e. lots of narrative units along the lines of 'i went to the (whatever the black market is called) - that's the black market that exists in our town for reasons x and y.' 'i had been selected for the hunger games - that's the games that we have in which children are made to kill each other, which exist for reasons x and y and z.' even once it's just the children-kill-each-other part of the narrative there's still bits like this: 'i noticed i was next to a nest of (whatever the genetically modified bees were called) - those are some genetically modified bees that some guys made, once, that did this.' there's a lot of things you could call this: bad world-building, telling not showing, talking down.
the idea that there should be a thread for people who don't like the books because you don't want them on your thread is kind of a silly one. reminds me of this:
Lady Gaga needs her own thread
she only has two threads and they are both dedicated to metacritical analysis of her career in the context of contemporary pop mzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
― musically, Friday, November 13, 2009 1:24 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
i can't wait to read this thread of non-analytic posts
― see-those-tit-ies (J0rdan S.), Friday, November 13, 2009 1:27 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark
but, i mean, remy pretty much murks the first book here --"woefully ignorant of the larger literary tradition or canon. it is written in present tense and basically free of any device or craft beyond basic storytelling aptitude. it perpetuates the same limerence-drenched soap-opera shit that's saturated YA for the past half-decade, and does a lot of the ham-fisted world-building that passes for 'imaginative' and refuses to allow the reader to experience wonder, confusion, or ambiguity." these are not substance-free complaints! this is a fairly thorough summary of what is wrong with it!
― thomp, Monday, 1 August 2011 12:59 (twelve years ago) link
'gravity's rainbow' is written in the present tense. 'war and peace' proceeds as though the reader knows nothing of napoleon's russian campaign. one of the joys of tolkien's work is his exposition. what is a tesseract? i'm curious what larger canon collins isn't referring to. it's easy to indulge animus
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 1 August 2011 13:03 (twelve years ago) link
a tesseract is some kind of four-dimensional shape iirc, but i'm not entirely sure why that's relevant
― thomp, Monday, 1 August 2011 13:07 (twelve years ago) link
it's relevant because there is a tradition of making things up in young adult fiction, and explaining them. like hunger games. and mutant killer bees
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 1 August 2011 13:09 (twelve years ago) link
i'm not sure you've understood the nature of my complaint -- i'm saying, if you introduce mutant killer bees, don't have your narrator (who already knows what mutant killer bees are, and cannot within the bounds of the fiction be addressing anyone who does not already know what killer bees are) spend two pages explaining that they are mutant killer bees, and giving a brief history of them -- just let them be mutant killer goddamn bees! the reader will pick up that they are goddamn mutant killer goddamn bees when they go around being two foot long and stinging the shit out of people! the reader will go 'oh, huh, those must be some kind of mutant killer bees'
this syndrome is especially grating in present tense: "i stop and look at the mutant killer bee about to sting me, and as i think about what to do i also form every single fact i know about these mutant killer bees in my head as i would had i been set a school assignment about it"
― thomp, Monday, 1 August 2011 13:13 (twelve years ago) link
are you an expert in young adult literacy? because you're not necessarily the target audience for this narrative you find so beneath you
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 1 August 2011 13:15 (twelve years ago) link
that works equally well as an argument that you're not qualified to judge it as good, unless you are actually yourself an expert in young adult literacy (if you are i just clowned myself (in this discussion about a kids book (on the internet (oh god))))
but, really, if you want to argue that that is actually not bad writing, because children are stupid and incapable of picking up on contextual clues, go ahead
― thomp, Monday, 1 August 2011 13:18 (twelve years ago) link
thing is, your example is really bad. she was contemplating for hours about whether or not to make use of the mutant killer bee hive. shouldn't someone think through a life-or-death decision like that?
and without going into my professional qualifications, i have, let us say, some degrees in relevant fields
i am not challenging your reception of this book, by the way. you're entitled to your own opinion! i'm challenging how goes-without-saying universally applicable it is, and how that needs to applied to every positive comment someone might make about it
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 1 August 2011 13:21 (twelve years ago) link
this is currently the most retarded discussion on ILX
― remy bean, Monday, 1 August 2011 14:26 (twelve years ago) link
and yeah, i'll cop to being basically an expert on YA
if by 'expert' you mean 'guy who reads a lot of, writes a lot of, markets a lot of, and analyzes professionally a lot of' YA books. i don't think i'm all that bright or nothin'
― remy bean, Monday, 1 August 2011 14:27 (twelve years ago) link
aha thx remy
i just ordered these btw, will probably start a thread once they arrive / i read them:
Dispatch estimate for these items: 3 Aug 20111 "The Forest of Hands and Teeth"Carrie Ryan; Paperback; £2.80In stock Sold by: Essjays Enterprises Ltd1 "The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking)"Patrick Ness; Paperback; £3.96In stock Sold by: Essjays Enterprises Ltd1 "The Monstrumologist"Rick Yancey; Paperback; £1.74In stock Sold by: Julies Bookshop Ltd1 "Ship Breaker"Paolo Bacigalupi; Paperback; £3.77In stock Sold by: Amazon EU S.a.r.L.
― thomp, Monday, 1 August 2011 14:36 (twelve years ago) link
'the forest of hands and teeth' is written in the first person present. there is lots of exposition. hope you like it
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 1 August 2011 15:11 (twelve years ago) link
i'd be very curious to read something you've published, remy, despite your retarded territoriality here
― reggie (qualmsley), Monday, 1 August 2011 15:16 (twelve years ago) link
i'm not territorial, i'm just feisty
― remy bean, Monday, 1 August 2011 16:02 (twelve years ago) link
finished the first of these, starting on the second. maybe i'm just an old curmudgeon, but whenever the focus shifts to the love story, my interest plummets. it's not like the dystopian aspects are particularly sophisticated or coherent (the president travels to district 12 to threaten katniss personally, but she isn't under constant guard or anything? it's imperative that katniss and peeta create this "oh we're in love" narrative to quell an uprising, but they don't bother to, like, send a PR person along to make sure it works?), but i am much more interested in those parts than instance #48 of katniss fake-kissing peeta and then wondering whether or not she likes him.
― sea jasper, a vagina, rose quartz and quartz (reddening), Tuesday, 23 August 2011 07:50 (twelve years ago) link
katniss everdeen, more like katniss everannoying
― FLIP FLOPPING HILL BILLY! (reddening), Tuesday, 30 August 2011 18:00 (twelve years ago) link
finished "mockingjay" finally. despite being written in first-person present-tense, it completely lacked a sense of immediacy. on another thread i said "catching fire" read like a script treatment, but this felt more like someone trying to describe the plot of a video game -- practically a whole book of telling and not showing. the ending in particular felt crazy rushed, like the manuscript was overdue and she just dashed off an end to be done with it.
― toy and candy planet (reddening), Friday, 9 September 2011 22:11 (twelve years ago) link
I felt like the writing quality got worse as the series progressed. All the places and events of big action paled to the arena in the first book.
― that's cute, but it's WRONG (CaptainLorax), Friday, 9 September 2011 22:32 (twelve years ago) link
i was bitchy about these books but i'm feelin' this trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-5ANq4sAL0
― what the fuck does a horse know about the hero's journey anyway (reddening), Monday, 14 November 2011 16:05 (twelve years ago) link
yeah, great trailer
― sean gramophone, Monday, 14 November 2011 16:12 (twelve years ago) link
truth is j-lawr's character in winterz bone is pretty similar to hers here - fatherless child of the underclass fightin' for fams. maybe that's every YA adventure character though?
― the jazz zinger (s1ocki), Monday, 14 November 2011 16:38 (twelve years ago) link
more the latter, but some similarities
― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Monday, 14 November 2011 16:39 (twelve years ago) link
even the ozarkian setting
― the jazz zinger (s1ocki), Monday, 14 November 2011 16:41 (twelve years ago) link
reddening what was your beef with the books?
― horseshoe, Monday, 14 November 2011 16:43 (twelve years ago) link
No John Hawkes, no credibility.
― bouquet beatdown (Nicole), Monday, 14 November 2011 17:50 (twelve years ago) link
I've got a couple of posts about it upthread, right before the trailer. Basically I liked the first one, except for all the fake making-out between Katniss and Peeta. After that, I thought the quality of the writing declined; huge swaths of the last book are just summaries of what's going on told in a flat, reporterly fashion, which killed the momentum and emotional resonance for me. And Katniss's relationship with Prim is given such short shrift after book 1 that I thought the end of Mockingjay was manipulative and unearned.
― what the fuck does a horse know about the hero's journey anyway (reddening), Monday, 14 November 2011 19:47 (twelve years ago) link
i agree with you about the end, and i think i would have preferred the books without all the romantic twilighty stuff, but i still think it's sort of an amazing series. unbelievably bleak for a ya book, or is this the way they all are now?
― horseshoe, Monday, 14 November 2011 19:48 (twelve years ago) link
Yeah, I think my main issue with the books -- feeling distanced by the writing -- is going to be kind of "solved" by the movie treatment. The end of Mockingjay didn't engage me like I wanted on paper, but with actors carrying the emotional heft, and seeing all the effects? I find myself REALLY looking forward to it.
― what the fuck does a horse know about the hero's journey anyway (reddening), Monday, 14 November 2011 19:55 (twelve years ago) link
Basically I liked the first one, except for all the fake making-out between Katniss and Peeta. After that, I thought the quality of the writing declined; huge swaths of the last book are just summaries of what's going on told in a flat, reporterly fashion, which killed the momentum and emotional resonance for me.
Thats pretty much where I sat on the first one, really liked it as a fun, light read without all the relationship stuff. Haven't read any of the others yet, mostly because I'm afraid of diminishing returns.
― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Monday, 14 November 2011 20:26 (twelve years ago) link
i like how you guys hated the MUSHY stuff
― the jazz zinger (s1ocki), Monday, 14 November 2011 20:27 (twelve years ago) link
haha, I don't know, after reading a summary of it in the first place, I wanted to read about brutal killings and survivalist stuff, not mushy romance
― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Monday, 14 November 2011 20:29 (twelve years ago) link
"ewwww i hated it when they kissed and hugged"
― the jazz zinger (s1ocki), Monday, 14 November 2011 20:32 (twelve years ago) link
I didn't like the mushy stuff in context of the book: the main dude is in love with Katniss, but she kind of has feelings for another guy, but the people watching the Hunger Games are invested in them having a romance and it increases their chances for survival
― what the fuck does a horse know about the hero's journey anyway (reddening), Monday, 14 November 2011 21:26 (twelve years ago) link
Oops, posted too soon. So basically Katniss kisses and hugs him a lot for the cameras in a play-acted way. If anything, I like mush, but this was weird and insincere.
― what the fuck does a horse know about the hero's journey anyway (reddening), Monday, 14 November 2011 21:28 (twelve years ago) link
Also there's something to be said for the sweetly delayed consummation of a romance, anticipation and build-up, etc. The jump straight to frenching in a cave for the cameras felt like putting the cart before the horse.
― what the fuck does a horse know about the hero's journey anyway (reddening), Monday, 14 November 2011 21:30 (twelve years ago) link
I need to find a copy of Catching Fire somewhere. It's impossible to get a library copy these days, and I don't want to spend $20 for a hardcover.
― Bon Ivoj (jaymc), Monday, 14 November 2011 21:31 (twelve years ago) link
reddening, i thought all of that stuff actually complicated the traditional romantic arc in a book like this and was coo
― the jazz zinger (s1ocki), Monday, 14 November 2011 21:37 (twelve years ago) link
― what the fuck does a horse know about the hero's journey anyway (reddening), Monday, November 14, 2011 4:26 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
― what the fuck does a horse know about the hero's journey anyway (reddening), Monday, November 14, 2011 4:28 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark
i mean yeah... this is what happens. is this meant as a criticism?
Just making a distinction between "Ew this is a kissing story, gross!!! Get back to the blood!!!!" and "the romance here was weird and didn't move me".
― what the fuck does a horse know about the hero's journey anyway (reddening), Monday, 14 November 2011 21:57 (twelve years ago) link
Oops, I'm on my phone and missed your initial post. idk it just rubbed me the wrong way, might just be a personal preference when it comes to how romance plots play out.
― what the fuck does a horse know about the hero's journey anyway (reddening), Monday, 14 November 2011 22:01 (twelve years ago) link
For instance I remember the first time they kissed, it was surprising and effective. It was Peeta getting what he wanted which was great and resonant to me. But then when the physical stuff between them got to be this fake perfunctory thing on her part...I see why it's interesting as a plot device but it was no longer satisfying emotionally
― what the fuck does a horse know about the hero's journey anyway (reddening), Monday, 14 November 2011 22:05 (twelve years ago) link
there's an interesting division in this thread between "too mushy gross" and "not mushy enough gross"
― the jazz zinger (s1ocki), Tuesday, 15 November 2011 03:52 (twelve years ago) link
i would have been okay if it complicated the traditional romantic arc if it hadn't been so contrived. i think this had to do with katniss as a character...i sort of dig what an emotional idiot she is but it's hard to believe/care that she has feelings for two different dudes, one of whom is never really fleshed out as a character. also sometimes her wide-eyed, i don't have feelings for Peeta, i'm just performing thing was like, COME ON, like i know you don't understand emotions but no one is this stupid. but i think i also have beef with how YA novels for girls always prioritize the romance plot so there was probably no version of it i would have been totally okay with.
― horseshoe, Tuesday, 15 November 2011 03:57 (twelve years ago) link
also how she refused to understand he was all crushed out on her in the first book. i don't know i would have loved that when i was 13, but all her, "why is this dude always staring at me....he must be faking his love for me" moments were so annoying.
― horseshoe, Tuesday, 15 November 2011 03:59 (twelve years ago) link
After that, I thought the quality of the writing declined; huge swaths of the last book are just summaries of what's going on told in a flat, reporterly fashion, which killed the momentum and emotional resonance for me
second book is the weakest, but i really like mockingjay. that's the book i wanted all along, the political one. what Collins did with Primm killed me, though; i had that throw the book across the room moment.
― horseshoe, Tuesday, 15 November 2011 04:02 (twelve years ago) link
I enjoyed the first book and ended up reading the whole trilogy...but Katniss is just so stupid and whiny, by the end of mockingjay I just hated her and the whole thing.
I also hope never again to consume any cultural product where a girl is torn between two different boys, one "good" and one "bad" and both not particularly enthralling. This is kind of why I ended up losing faith in the gilmore girls too.
― the emancipation of distraction (askance johnson), Tuesday, 15 November 2011 04:13 (twelve years ago) link
yeah, basically. love triangles are just not appealing to me nor is the every dude who meets this girl falls madly in love with her narrative. i like katniss okay, though.
― horseshoe, Tuesday, 15 November 2011 04:16 (twelve years ago) link
movie looks kind of boss though, could end up being better than the book maybe
― the emancipation of distraction (askance johnson), Tuesday, 15 November 2011 04:18 (twelve years ago) link
i'm about six chapter into this book, didn't read thread as i want no spoilers
― Bee OK, Tuesday, 3 January 2012 07:02 (twelve years ago) link
watched the trailer just now, as i knew it would be here, looks awesome
I just have a few more pages left to go with Mockingjay.
Anyway, I mostly liked the series. I can see what people mean about it seeming flat sometimes, esp. with characterization, but ultimately, I found the straightforward descriptions and narrative kind of refreshing. I liked how zippy it was. Nicely imaginative, too.
Fwiw, these might be the first YA books I've read since I was in that demographic, so I have basically no frame of reference.
― Bon Ivoj (jaymc), Tuesday, 3 January 2012 21:51 (twelve years ago) link
wd be interested to get yr take on the Golden Compass series
― Much Ado About Nuttin (DJP), Tuesday, 3 January 2012 21:54 (twelve years ago) link
Skimmed the Wiki page on it: female protagonist is a plus, character named Lord something-or-other is a minus.
― Bon Ivoj (jaymc), Tuesday, 3 January 2012 21:57 (twelve years ago) link
Also I love that Abbott pointed out, at the beginning of this thread, that The Hunger Games is written in the present tense. I have an affinity for this device. It's part of what I liked about Updike's Rabbit tetralogy, too.
― Bon Ivoj (jaymc), Tuesday, 3 January 2012 21:58 (twelve years ago) link
so i have about 75 pages left in Catching Fire, the second book. had to watch the trailer for this movie again and so looking forward to seeing it. less than a month away!
― Bee OK, Thursday, 26 January 2012 06:22 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.onlinemovieshut.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/the-hunger-games-movie-poster-550x816.jpg
― Bee OK, Thursday, 26 January 2012 06:28 (twelve years ago) link
or i should have said two months away, will probably be done with all the book by than
― Bee OK, Thursday, 26 January 2012 06:29 (twelve years ago) link
my son read the first book in one 6 hour jag last weekend, and finished the second today. greatest books ever according to him, and we got to talk about what dystopian means.
― the star of many snuff films (Edward III), Thursday, 26 January 2012 06:43 (twelve years ago) link
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2012/02/the-hunger-games-breaks-online-ticket-sales-record.html
Lions Gate's upcoming adaptation of the best-selling book series has broken Fandango.com's record for sales on the first day a film's tickets become available. The previous record was for the 2010 release of "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse."
― Bee OK, Friday, 24 February 2012 07:25 (twelve years ago) link
i have met far too many 20-somethings who enjoy these lately
― desperado, rough rider (thomp), Friday, 24 February 2012 09:08 (twelve years ago) link
rough life.
― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Friday, 24 February 2012 14:23 (twelve years ago) link
p pumped for this
― catbus otm (gbx), Monday, 12 March 2012 15:22 (twelve years ago) link
I imagine there will be a sizable presence of old men into foxy boxing/plus at this film
― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Monday, 12 March 2012 15:36 (twelve years ago) link
should i read the first book? i love margaret atwood + battle royale, cf first post in thread.
― Mordy, Monday, 12 March 2012 15:41 (twelve years ago) link
wow, Lenny Kravitz AND Wes Bentley are in the cast
― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Monday, 12 March 2012 15:43 (twelve years ago) link
I read the first book and it was fine, served its purpose as a fun and quick couple day read between headier subjects.
― stan this sick bunt (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, 12 March 2012 15:45 (twelve years ago) link
I am totally okay with Lenny Kravitz becoming an actor full time, since he is very attractive but his singing and music makes me want to die.
― Respectfully, Tyrese Gibson (Nicole), Monday, 12 March 2012 15:48 (twelve years ago) link
things happen. telegraphic sentences. katniss does things, like hurdling over a bush. exclamation points! sacrifice, family, resonant themes for teens are abundant. there is closure, but endings open for the two sequels. and transcendence, but not without pain. blood spurts, i believe. i recommend the summary on wikipedia.
― a serious minestrone rockist (remy bean), Monday, 12 March 2012 15:48 (twelve years ago) link
SAw it this morning. It was...improbably decent.
― Simon H., Friday, 16 March 2012 17:47 (twelve years ago) link
haha someone mentioned these to me at party twice last week
― Lamp, Friday, 16 March 2012 17:51 (twelve years ago) link
xp That counts as a ringing endorsement for me. I took the day off work next Friday. (Well, not just to see the movie, but I am going to see the movie.)
― Cuba Pudding, Jr. (jaymc), Friday, 16 March 2012 17:52 (twelve years ago) link
I do worry that the things I like most about it will be negated somewhat by the sequels, though. (Haven't read the books. Or the wiki summaries.)
― Simon H., Friday, 16 March 2012 17:54 (twelve years ago) link
countdown is a week away now, have read all the books so i'm ready.
probably won't go see it right away though.
― good luck Peeta Mellark (Bee OK), Saturday, 17 March 2012 02:29 (twelve years ago) link
i like the idea it's the same guy
― thomp, Saturday, 17 March 2012 03:14 (twelve years ago) link
it's three a.m. you have your coat on. you are about to leave. bleary-eyed, gin-breathed, he plucks your sleeve. mockingbird, man, he says. mockingbird. do you get it? mocking ... bird.
― thomp, Saturday, 17 March 2012 03:15 (twelve years ago) link
i really loved this film
― lex pretend, Friday, 23 March 2012 00:26 (eleven years ago) link
haven't read the books, hadn't really known much except the basic premise.
it does feel like a v relevant phenomenon; despite the "fantasia dystopia" setting the issues it tackles/parallels were...rather close to the bone. i didn't realise it would be so obviously red state vs blue state (or...a more general working class vs elites?). all the villains poncing around like lady gaga while the heroes are all-hunting all-toiling mining folk.
So basically Katniss kisses and hugs him a lot for the cameras in a play-acted way. If anything, I like mush, but this was weird and insincere.
this was one of the things i liked most, it's a direct parallel of how "romances", even fake ones, increase the popularity of contestants on reality tv shows. thought it was an interesting reflection of how, even though the narrative is ostensibly about katniss not playing their game and "showing them up" or whatever, she still had to play a different sort of game in order to get to that position. the penultimate scene of the cheesy victors' interview felt like a slightly hollow victory.
i found the scene where the little girl dies incredibly affecting - not, actually, because of katniss laying flowers on her, but the sudden unexpected moment where she looks up and salutes the cameras, which cut to that being screened in the girl's district.
wondering whether i should read the books atm.
― lex pretend, Friday, 23 March 2012 00:34 (eleven years ago) link
the books are a fun read. now thinking about it i liked the first book best.
― good luck Peeta Mellark (Bee OK), Friday, 23 March 2012 00:55 (eleven years ago) link
SPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERS
what's interesting about the books is that in the end it is less red vs blue, and more like, everyone sucks, just sometimes sometime ppl appear to suck a little less. i found the end of the final book pretty bleak tbh.
― just1n3, Friday, 23 March 2012 01:23 (eleven years ago) link
i read the books a couple of weeks ago and they are no margaret atwood + battle royale, but they are entertaining and suitably dystopian and easy to breeze through, movie-like. but the writing itself isn't literature or anything, and i think whoever edited the books was drunk half the time. i dl-ed them and actually checked the first book against the sample pages on amazon because i thought i was reading something that had been translated back to english from another language. the characters are pretty one-note, but their interactions are usually interesting. the plot is great though: stuff happens! a lot of stuff!
― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Friday, 23 March 2012 02:32 (eleven years ago) link
^^ otm
― just1n3, Friday, 23 March 2012 03:31 (eleven years ago) link
reading these has reminded me how much i really enjoy YA lit, though, need to join the local library and get back into it.
― just1n3, Friday, 23 March 2012 03:32 (eleven years ago) link
it is less red vs blue, and more like, everyone sucks, just sometimes some ppl appear to suck a little less.
fuck, Hunger Games otm
― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Friday, 23 March 2012 03:40 (eleven years ago) link
seeing it on Saturday morning. Mr Veg was even curious enough to come with. Hope it's good!
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, 23 March 2012 04:38 (eleven years ago) link
I just started the first book. It's enjoyable!
― THIS TRADE SERVES ZERO FOOTBALL PURPOSE (DJP), Friday, 23 March 2012 13:41 (eleven years ago) link
the outrage over the Prue casting really does show that people are racist idiots though
is that rue in the film? what's the outrage?
thought that girl gave an astoundingly effective performance considering how small a part it was - for all the attention that the ~love triangle~ gets, i thought the relationship between katniss and rue was a strikingly real contrast to the are-they-faking-it-or-does-she-just-not-reciprocate awkwardness of the relationship between katniss and peeta.
(i can't get over the stupid names :( i mean katniss is kind of acceptable but PEETA? ffs)
― lex pretend, Friday, 23 March 2012 13:55 (eleven years ago) link
sorry yeah, Rue (obv the names are not quite sticking yet)
re: controversy - http://www.racialicious.com/2011/11/15/yes-there-are-black-people-in-your-hunger-games-the-strange-case-of-rue-cinna/
― THIS TRADE SERVES ZERO FOOTBALL PURPOSE (DJP), Friday, 23 March 2012 13:58 (eleven years ago) link
This is nerdy but interesting.
― Respectfully, Tyrese Gibson (Nicole), Friday, 23 March 2012 14:07 (eleven years ago) link
ugh @ the rue controversy. though to be fair, some of those tweets are gross but things like "i didn't picture her like this but rue is amazing" aren't that bad, i'm not surprised at people not reading YA literature closely and so missing pertinent details.
i wonder if it's a case of rue's delicacy being emphasised more than her race in the text, and people defaulting to a stereotype of "delicacy" as...blonde and white and fragile.
i presume collins ensured that the privileged capitol-dwellers were multi-ethnic on purpose, but the segregation of the districts struck me (and in the book, rue's district, which seemed to be primarily black in the film, is agriculture-focused...echoes of plantations? the amazing thing about this is how it contains echoes of so many disparate things that have actually happened or are still happening - it really does cover the entire range of ways in which humans can be appalling to each other)
― lex pretend, Friday, 23 March 2012 14:32 (eleven years ago) link
<3 that yglesias article!
yet more parallels with Real Life that i hadn't thought of.
― lex pretend, Friday, 23 March 2012 14:35 (eleven years ago) link
def think that there is an element of this going on.
― catbus otm (gbx), Friday, 23 March 2012 14:37 (eleven years ago) link
http://entertainment.salon.com/2012/03/22/the_sexual_politics_of_the_hunger_games/singleton/
― catbus otm (gbx), Friday, 23 March 2012 14:58 (eleven years ago) link
Yeah the book states a few times that Rue and people in her district have "dark/er skin and dark hair," but I guess people read how they read...xpI lolled at the dying of skin and multi-coloured wigs of people in the Capitol partly because it made me think of Ilx thread title "I don't care if you're black white orange or purple...". Something to that I'm sure, though I could be reading in too much...
― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Friday, 23 March 2012 15:16 (eleven years ago) link
can't figure out who is in more of a nerdout frenzy to see this movie tonight, my son or my wife... prolly the latter
― diamanda ram dass (Edward III), Friday, 23 March 2012 16:41 (eleven years ago) link
I thought the movie was pretty great -- can't imagine anyone who's a fan of the book being disappointed.
― Cuba Pudding, Jr. (jaymc), Friday, 23 March 2012 22:05 (eleven years ago) link
Also, I wrote a bit about the parallels between The Hunger Games and ancient Rome (deliberately not hyperlinked b/c this was for work):www.britannica.com/blogs/2012/03/bread-circuses-the-hunger-games-ancient-rome/
― Cuba Pudding, Jr. (jaymc), Friday, 23 March 2012 22:06 (eleven years ago) link
One thing that's gnawed at me about the Hunger Games world, though: How big are each of the districts? I know District 12 is supposed to be one of the smaller ones, but in both the books and the movie, it feels more like a single town than an entire state/province. Did whatever calamity that befell civilization long ago wipe out most of the continent's population?
― Cuba Pudding, Jr. (jaymc), Friday, 23 March 2012 22:15 (eleven years ago) link
I think so?
― catbus otm (gbx), Friday, 23 March 2012 22:35 (eleven years ago) link
also I did not know that about the word "panem"! thanks based spreadsheet
― catbus otm (gbx), Friday, 23 March 2012 22:38 (eleven years ago) link
I haven't read the books but i found this to be a real slog. Didn't know the running time going in but i did have a sneaking suspicion that it would be long cos these things generally are. 2 hours and 22 minutes though? Such a shoddily conceived future too.
― Number None, Friday, 23 March 2012 23:14 (eleven years ago) link
apparently the future is a duran duran video
― diamanda ram dass (Edward III), Saturday, 24 March 2012 01:35 (eleven years ago) link
what in god's name is this whole phenomenon? it seems i can't get away from it--on the bus, on the train, in a bookstore, in the rain...
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Saturday, 24 March 2012 03:55 (eleven years ago) link
teenage nation. vile.
― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 24 March 2012 03:59 (eleven years ago) link
STAY HUNGRY
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Saturday, 24 March 2012 04:10 (eleven years ago) link
i liked this; jennifer lawrence is pretty amazing in it, she definitely elevates the movie.
― akm, Saturday, 24 March 2012 04:50 (eleven years ago) link
I thought Prue was great, I wish they'd given her more time early in the movie to establish why she was ranked high and attached her self to Jennifer Lawrence, but tbh I did envision her as the albino crazy girl from Harry Potter. Lenny Kravitz was fantastic, dude just has so much charisma.
Movie felt like it took forever, over-explained a bunch at the beginning and kind of botched any of the mental battles Jennifer Lawrence's character goes through in the book.
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Saturday, 24 March 2012 06:04 (eleven years ago) link
Think it kind of fails as a dystopia - the Capitol wackiness is overdone (book and film), and generally I think techno-dystopias need to be fraying at the edges. Like, Blade Runner has amazing future-tech (aside from tiny CRT screens everywhere) but it's dirty and off enough that you know this isn't a future promised land.
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Saturday, 24 March 2012 06:06 (eleven years ago) link
also, the shakey cam was out of control in this
― Number None, Saturday, 24 March 2012 10:52 (eleven years ago) link
loved the movie, feel like it "fixed" all the things i disliked about the book. we're not trapped in katniss's first-person present-tense narration so we get all this new material, like the game-maker's headquarters, president snow's strategizing, the riot in rue's district, etc. book-katniss has to kind of guess what's going on or hear about it second-hand in future books, and it always felt flat and less than lifelike to me. seeing it all as it was happening was awesome and gave a much fuller sense of the actual world and stakes.
i'm cool that we lost most of katniss's mental battles in the movie version because i found book-katniss to be pretty unlikable, tbh. maybe it's a cop-out to make her more noble/less flawed here, but i actually gave a shit about her + her family in the movie while i was always annoyed by her in the book. part of that was jennifer lawrence being really compelling in the role, but it helped that they pared down the "katniss acts fakey cheerful/schmoopy with peeta for the cameras" to the bare minimum. when she did "act" she seemed genuinely conflicted and confused about her own true emotions, and it played off nicely imo.
rue's death scene was devastating. i kept waiting for it to be over so i could get a handle on my emotions, but then they cut to the district saluting, and then rioting, and then they cut back to katniss full-on sobbing in the forest...aghhhhhh
― techno pink (reddening), Saturday, 24 March 2012 11:19 (eleven years ago) link
but then they cut to the district saluting
this bit made me genuinely tear up. it might be katniss' story but rue is really the heart of the film.
would've liked, perhaps, a bit of focus on the tv audience reactions - it's taken as a given that a "romance" will boost ratings but i'd have liked to actually see that happen - maybe to see the gamemakers talk about how ratings were going up or down, or maybe to see the action as it was broadcast on tv.
it made someone i went with feel seasick - i thought it was a little overdone but also very effective in ratcheting up the tension - when she hallucinates and when her hearing goes you really feel how vulnerable she is.
― lex pretend, Saturday, 24 March 2012 11:40 (eleven years ago) link
I presume part of the reason it was in there was to avoid showing too much violence but it was still annoying. The one moment i enjoyed in this was "Peeta" doing his camouflage thing, which looked hilarious. He was such a drip
― Number None, Saturday, 24 March 2012 11:45 (eleven years ago) link
feel like these books could conceivably make good movies, sadly
― thomp, Saturday, 24 March 2012 11:49 (eleven years ago) link
many xps John, that was a good article! (also "thank you based spreadsheet" made me LOL)
― carl agatha, Saturday, 24 March 2012 12:36 (eleven years ago) link
Thanks!
Yeah, I liked all those backstage scenes -- cool to see the HG command center, and the convos between Snow and Seneca were nicely effective (esp. in terms of foreshadowing future events). I do, however, think that the absence of an interior monologue makes the Katniss-Peeta relationship harder to read. In the book, it seems pretty clear that her affections toward him in the arena are all for show (or at least that's what she tells herself); I wasn't sure the film made that clear.
― Cuba Pudding, Jr. (jaymc), Saturday, 24 March 2012 17:08 (eleven years ago) link
actually i think that was one of the better aspects, keeping it fairly ambiguous
― Number None, Saturday, 24 March 2012 17:19 (eleven years ago) link
Yeah, maybe.
― Cuba Pudding, Jr. (jaymc), Saturday, 24 March 2012 17:26 (eleven years ago) link
I couldn't remember whether the "deprived future = clothes revert to the Great Depression" was actually that explicit in the book.
I thought the shaky cam was a cheap but effective way of raising tension and uncertainty, I was terrified in places despite the fact that it was a very faithful adapation, no plot surprises really.
Also very good at the Reaping, the sense of "Oh shit this is going to happen and we can't do anything about it, oh shit this is actually happening to me" - the handling of shock really reminded me of something - I actually want to say Saving Private Ryan?
Also very good with the hallucination effects! Though I was amused that the hallucinatory effects may include exposition.
― Andrew Farrell, Saturday, 24 March 2012 17:56 (eleven years ago) link
otm! it's a difficult balance tho. i wanted some actual wide, steady shots as opposed to the ridiculous all-claustrophobic-closeups-all-the-time shakey cam. but that could either result in a beautifully shot film that presents its world definitively, or it could be corny as fuck. (speaking of which, they should've upped the roy-battiness of cato's monologue at the end by a million)
as someone who's never read the books, i'm sure i'd have more problems with it if i'd read the books. it seemed like they skimmed over a lot of decent character stuff in order to hit all the right points. went by very fast; wasn't confusing but it didn't really get very deep into anything. and there were obviously a lot of actual statements for the film to make, but it didn't really try to be plain about any of them. like most of the HP films, it was just content to transfer the scenes to screen in a manageable way, rather than trying to transport themes in a way that would let them shine cinematically. bleh. also, really surprised that they hardly showed the broadcast itself. how can you avoid showing the audience how the narrative is being edited and presented?
― JIM THOMETHEUS (zachlyon), Saturday, 24 March 2012 19:19 (eleven years ago) link
on the plus side, tucci is the best
― JIM THOMETHEUS (zachlyon), Saturday, 24 March 2012 19:20 (eleven years ago) link
also, why did they have to make katniss white, GOD
― JIM THOMETHEUS (zachlyon), Saturday, 24 March 2012 19:21 (eleven years ago) link
the tooch! didn't even know he was in it.
― horseshoe, Saturday, 24 March 2012 19:22 (eleven years ago) link
he's the future-seacrest. highlight of the film imo.
― JIM THOMETHEUS (zachlyon), Saturday, 24 March 2012 19:26 (eleven years ago) link
In the book, it seems pretty clear that her affections toward him in the arena are all for show (or at least that's what she tells herself); I wasn't sure the film made that clear.― Cuba Pudding, Jr. (jaymc), Saturday, March 24, 2012 10:08 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― Cuba Pudding, Jr. (jaymc), Saturday, March 24, 2012 10:08 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Ha, saw this yesterday morning but never read the books. I had no idea her affection for the blonde dood was fake, taking all my knowledge of the story straight from the film.
― musicfanatic, Saturday, 24 March 2012 20:02 (eleven years ago) link
Tooch is badass in this. I was sold on him after his amazing performance in an otherwise terrible "The Lovely Bones". Hope he gets more leading man roles.
Also, jokes on me for rolling my eyes while watching the HG trailer and seeing freaking Lenny Kravitz in it. He was great.
― musicfanatic, Saturday, 24 March 2012 20:05 (eleven years ago) link
i have only ever seen lenny kravitz in two films and in both cases i only realised it was him days after i'd seen it
― lex pretend, Saturday, 24 March 2012 20:31 (eleven years ago) link
I've never read the books, but in their favor, they've got to be better than this unfortunately mostly boilerplate movie. I honesty did like that it erred on the side of boring rather than non-stop action. Liked Lenny Kravitz and Woody in this a lot, because they had flair, but didn't really like too much else, but I can only imagine it's because they didn't develop anyone terribly. This may be the most annoying dystopian future, too.
Book readers: what do the people at home watch? Because I kept wondering what they were actually watching, or why anyone would actually watch it. Like, would a put-upon home viewer appreciate the game-runner people cheating or playing dirty? Or do they not know about that? And why do they make a big deal about attracting sponsorships? Does that deus ex machina stuff play a bigger role in future books? Also, why do they care about ratings, when the president concedes the whole deal is about instilling false hope? Who would benefit from high ratings, exactly?
However, I did have a great time pretending this was some surreal sequel to "Winter's Bone," the "Babe 2: Pig in the City" to "Babe."
(I should not that the movie did make me want to read the book, tbh.)
― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 24 March 2012 20:46 (eleven years ago) link
I concur with this. Really, really hoping the love-triangle aspect will continue to be understated as opposed to significantly ramped up in the sequels.
― Simon H., Saturday, 24 March 2012 20:47 (eleven years ago) link
Yeah, I also thought Tucci was superb.
― Cuba Pudding, Jr. (jaymc), Saturday, 24 March 2012 20:49 (eleven years ago) link
Like, would a put-upon home viewer appreciate the game-runner people cheating or playing dirty? Or do they not know about that? And why do they make a big deal about attracting sponsorships? Does that deus ex machina stuff play a bigger role in future books? Also, why do they care about ratings, when the president concedes the whole deal is about instilling false hope? Who would benefit from high ratings, exactly?
this is stuff i wanted to know too, though re: the third question - it's the sponsors who send packages of eg medicine in those little parachutes (the film doesn't show this, i've just been, uh, spending a lot of time reading up on the hunger games universe today)
(i think the audiences are aware of the gamekeepers' role - also, apparently there was a former contestant who went completely savage and resorted to cannibalism in the arena - this, it's implied, would be frowned on, so he was killed in an avalanche that most people suspect was deliberately engineered by the gamekeepers)
― lex pretend, Saturday, 24 March 2012 20:55 (eleven years ago) link
Yeah, saw this today and really liked it.
Was a bit shocked at how young kids are seeing this in the cinema. Maybe I'm a complete wimp, but I found this edge of the seat violently shocking in places.
― Bob Six, Saturday, 24 March 2012 20:58 (eleven years ago) link
bob six: i read a review bemoaning the lack of gore, and i think that's silly. it's like a new industry requirement that YA adaptations, even if they're PG-13 by necessity, have to majorly appeal to children. i have trouble seeing this as an "adult" film. but i was still surprised, i never thought that the book was actually Children Killing Each Other: The Book, i figured the kids all teamed up to fight the evil adults or w/e.
― JIM THOMETHEUS (zachlyon), Saturday, 24 March 2012 21:16 (eleven years ago) link
also re: above, felt like the implication was that the govt is highly commercialized/partnered with corporations, but i might be projecting.
― JIM THOMETHEUS (zachlyon), Saturday, 24 March 2012 21:18 (eleven years ago) link
This is more than sufficiently implied in the film, though some might have been thrown off by the attached notes from Haymitch.
― Simon H., Saturday, 24 March 2012 21:46 (eleven years ago) link
Yeah I was thrown off by the notes. I didn't realize that Woody was lobbying for them. I just thought he was the one sending the stuff.
Also couldn't tell how big the arena was. I wish I had a sense of how Katniss was being seen by others, to see how she was or was not portrayed.
What I preferred about The Running Man was how the game-runners, who had total control of the media/viewers, had no trouble "pausing" the game and interfering. Like, they knew it was rigged, just as this "show" could have rigged any conclusion it wanted. Seemed weird that the Hunger Games wouldn't be similarly rigged. Also, couldn't believe that this barbaric, blatant bit of plebe manipulation could have possibly made it 74 iterations of whatever, considering just this one alone was enough to send that one District batshit rebellion. But I suppose this is neither here nor there.
― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 24 March 2012 21:56 (eleven years ago) link
http://i.imgur.com/0xJrb.png
― mick signals, Saturday, 24 March 2012 22:06 (eleven years ago) link
BTW, there was plenty of gore in this. Just because it was depicted subtly doesn't mean anyone would miss the gist of viscous blood spraying across the screen or bloody weapons being bashed about.
― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 24 March 2012 22:17 (eleven years ago) link
I really enjoyed this! I read a couple of chapters of the book and really kind of hated how it was written, felt like the movie was a more pleasant way to follow the story.
But I hated, HATED, the smashed-in closeups/shakeycam. In the pulling the names out of the bowl scene it was so annoying, like I don't want to see Elizabeth Bank's goddamn lips! Or part of her hair and the corner of someone else's face. FRAME THE BLOODY SHOT. But more so in the action sequences, it was almost impossible to tell where anyone was in relation to each other when fighting, it was way too Bourne for my liking in that regard.
But the Katniss girl was fantastic. Nice and stoic, vulnerable, all the right notes. And so pretty. My mother-inlaw and Mr Veg both read the books and really enjoyed the movie too, Mr Veg even cried when Rue died <3
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Saturday, 24 March 2012 22:59 (eleven years ago) link
What are the odds that the same actress would play two squirrel-killing, Appalachian dwelling, look out for her sibling' 'cause her mom is no use sorts in two very different movies based on two very different books?
― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 24 March 2012 23:16 (eleven years ago) link
I thought it would be more interesting if Katniss had to, at some point in the story, fight someone who wasn't obviously a "bad guy" (ie those 1st-2nd district peeps). Seemed the relatively good or morally neutral people were killed off by some combination of nature/show manipulation/bad guys.
― musicfanatic, Saturday, 24 March 2012 23:31 (eleven years ago) link
lol I definitely had the same thought. her whole character introduction seemed to have been deliberately modeled on Winter's Bone.
― Simon H., Saturday, 24 March 2012 23:49 (eleven years ago) link
― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, March 24, 2012 7:16 PM (26 minutes ago)
lol, was talking to a hunger games fan today and I started describing winter's bone, got halfway thru before realizing they're the same character
― diamanda ram dass (Edward III), Saturday, 24 March 2012 23:50 (eleven years ago) link
in the book, the District citizens are forced to watch the Hunger Games telecast in order to further grind them down; when they talk about "ratings" i think they're just talking about the Capitol viewers. some people have said (and i agree) that it kind of doesn't make sense that "you sit there and watch your children die" = a cowed populace, because if anything is going to inspire you to rebel, it's your children dying, right? idk.
it's also a little cheap that these Games have been going on for 74 years, but no tribute has ever tried to kill the assholes sitting ten feet away judging their use of weaponry, and apparently there's no contingency plan in place for tributes becoming suicidal. in the book they were like "don't do anything stupid or they'll kill your whole family," but even with that caveat i have to believe SOMEONE has tried it in the past 74 years.
― techno pink (reddening), Sunday, 25 March 2012 01:19 (eleven years ago) link
lol I was sitting there thinking, yeah this whole teaching the populace a lesson for rebelling by killing their children every year has got to bite them on the ass eventually.
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Sunday, 25 March 2012 01:25 (eleven years ago) link
i'm two chapters in, and apparently they're kept obedient by the constant threat of having their whole district obliterated, though you'd think that'd be enough already without the hunger games.
― JIM THOMETHEUS (zachlyon), Sunday, 25 March 2012 01:41 (eleven years ago) link
also dear god suzanne collins' writing style is the worst
― JIM THOMETHEUS (zachlyon), Sunday, 25 March 2012 01:43 (eleven years ago) link
I couldn't hang
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Sunday, 25 March 2012 01:44 (eleven years ago) link
Doesn't Donald Sutherland offer some blather about giving the people some hope being better than simply executing a few kids every year? Regardless, didn't buy for a sec that anyone would stand for this silly arrangement for more than a year or two, sci-fi dystopia or not. Maybe the movie needed a more explicit show of government force to demonstrate the power of The Man?
Also agreed that I wish that one other team wasn't composed entirely of dicks and bullies. It would have added a bit more moral ambiguity had they been at least a little sympathetic, and not, you know, actively encouraged you to root for their deaths.
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 25 March 2012 02:06 (eleven years ago) link
Some things from the book that may have given context - I was lead to believe that the games were more or less mandatory viewing for the citizens - the people in the Capitol never have entrants, so it's all fun for them, but punishment for the other districts because of the rebellion.
I thought that losing Katniss' narration did mean that the movie would be more confusing for those who hadn't read the book. Katniss' salute to Prue's district happens in the second(?) book - that was a bit out of place. It *does* raise a scandal among the game makers that she places all the flowers on Rue - she thinks they'll edit it out for reminding the viewers that they are people, children, etc.
The sponsorships they receive during the games are said to be quite expensive. We saw Haumitch schmooze but it might have been more helpful to hear Jim pushing for donations! A big thing in the book is that after Rue and Thrush died, the people from their district sent Katniss a loaf of bread (which was distinct enough she knew it came from them). This touches her a great deal because she knows that must have been a great expense and an unheard of cross-district sign of support.
― she started dancing to that (Finefinemusic), Sunday, 25 March 2012 02:14 (eleven years ago) link
Sorry - Jim=him, I plead autocorrect.
― she started dancing to that (Finefinemusic), Sunday, 25 March 2012 02:19 (eleven years ago) link
Got the salute. One of the cooler moments
― Number None, Sunday, 25 March 2012 05:09 (eleven years ago) link
so this flopped big time huh
― Large Sack (Empty) (latebloomer), Sunday, 25 March 2012 05:14 (eleven years ago) link
yeah i did think a lot of the deaths were very convenient for katniss to retain her moral high ground - she only outright kills the dude who killed rue and that's presented as purely reactive self-defence. (and i think the bad guy at the end, but he's being torn apart by hounds anyway.) even in her only one-on-one fight, someone else handily shows up to kill the girl who attacks her.
― lex pretend, Sunday, 25 March 2012 06:57 (eleven years ago) link
The great thing about sci-fi is that it can show us stuff like a reality TV program being manipulative with the situation it's presenting and viewers learning to take less than entirely trusting view of this, when in reality it would take thousands of years for this to evolve.
― Andrew Farrell, Sunday, 25 March 2012 07:10 (eleven years ago) link
also isn't the point the multiple allegories - we might throw our hands up and say "how can they possibly accept this barbarity" but almost every aspect of the hunger games society is a direct reflection of stuff that has happened or is happening in real human history - just smooshed together to magnify the horror
― lex pretend, Sunday, 25 March 2012 07:15 (eleven years ago) link
Sarcasm? It was the biggest single-day non-sequel opening.
― Cuba Pudding, Jr. (jaymc), Sunday, 25 March 2012 07:55 (eleven years ago) link
so it flopped then
― Large Sack (Empty) (latebloomer), Sunday, 25 March 2012 08:10 (eleven years ago) link
sorry but with John Carter tearing up the box office, this movie just doesn't have any chance.
― Large Sack (Empty) (latebloomer), Sunday, 25 March 2012 08:15 (eleven years ago) link
oh, wait i flipped on my alternate universe browser.
― Large Sack (Empty) (latebloomer), Sunday, 25 March 2012 08:16 (eleven years ago) link
One thing that the film I think drops is the fact that the district that wins gets like double its food rations for the next year, so for the subsidence districts, that's nearly life-or-death for a lot of them. Peeta's talk about how if no-one watched, that would really fuck'em up is veering close to "Workers Control the Means of Production!" - which is obviously one of the things I love about the film, that since the book has been written, the OWS has brought particular topicality to it.
One thing I'm curious about is what else the people at home watch - like is the rest of the programming Panem's Next Top Garishly Coloured Model, or Food Tips for Bark and Small Rodents? Or is that the only thing actually broadcast all year?
I was pretty certain (but maybe wrong) that they dealt with the sponsorships? You have Woody Harrelson in the train car talking about how you have to get sponsors to get you stuff like fire and cover, and you have to be likable to get them (the scene where he advises Katniss to keep the knife, as Peeta is much better at glad-handing than her), and later you have that Woody looking worried / Woody slapping backs and shaking hands / package for Peeta montage.
Also agreed that I wish that one other team wasn't composed entirely of dicks and bullies.
Team 11 = Rue and Thrash (the big guy who offs the knife-thrower) did alright, and you could imagine that some of the dudes who last ~10 secs were nice if you met them in a social setting.
But yeah, I think Katniss gets her chance in the early-game scene where she meets Foxface in the forest and they just run in separate directions - her plan is much more "Survive with my appalachian skills" than "kill everyone".
Or she gets her high moral ground from her high district number :)
Just because it was depicted subtly doesn't mean anyone would miss the gist of viscous blood spraying across the screen or bloody weapons being bashed about.
This was the weird thing - I think the scene where Rue dies is pretty much the only bloody weapon!
― Andrew Farrell, Sunday, 25 March 2012 08:50 (eleven years ago) link
nah there's bloody weapons elsewhere. Katniss isn't wielding them though
― Number None, Sunday, 25 March 2012 09:00 (eleven years ago) link
Ah though, that might just be the UK
― Andrew Farrell, Sunday, 25 March 2012 09:03 (eleven years ago) link
from that article: Could that grim and gritty Baby-sitters Club revamp be far behind?
oh my god i would be the happiest person if they did this. speaking of, whatever happened to the diablo cody-helmed Sweet Valley High movie? or did she give up on it and write Young Adult instead?
― techno pink (reddening), Sunday, 25 March 2012 09:28 (eleven years ago) link
they covered the sponsorships - i guess i'd have just enjoyed seeing a rich capitol sponsor being ~moved~ by the showmance and deciding to send them medicine because of it - could've been a pretty effective scene.
they covered why some of the kids were "baddies" too, ie the ones from the richer districts are trained for it from an early age (hence "careers") and traditionally ally with each other at the start. obviously it suits suzanne collins' purpose that katniss is only ever put in a position of having to fight the careers, rather than eg if she and rue had succeeded in eliminating them first and were left as the last two themselves.
i was reading ahead and some of the winning tributes who crop up later in the series have pretty interesting strategies - eg there's one who spends her time in training weeping and acting weak and deliberately gets a low score so no one thinks she's a threat (which is why katniss was targeted more than foxface in this film) - then hides for most of the games then reveals herself to be fairly good at killing right at the end.
― lex pretend, Sunday, 25 March 2012 09:36 (eleven years ago) link
i love the fact that you're really into this lex
― Number None, Sunday, 25 March 2012 12:03 (eleven years ago) link
All I know is that the Hunger Games, the TV show, must be the most boring required viewing ever. Like when Katniss is asleep for two days? Or Team Asshole is just camping by the river or whatever? Not riveting.
So my wife told me that when things like the killer dogs and whatnot happen in the book, you don't know they're the TV show's doing, since it's all Katniss POV.
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 25 March 2012 13:10 (eleven years ago) link
Hey, look, it's "The Running Man," condensed to 11 minutes!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZOeIsbj1fQ&feature=related
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 25 March 2012 13:15 (eleven years ago) link
i'm sure if katniss and rue were the last two katniss would kill herself though. it never really deals with the moment allies have to turn into enemies -- that would've been real interesting from the baddie crowd. (and again, if cato and the rest of them were turned into roy batty figures instead of just that disposable "this is all i know how to do!!" line, they would've gotten some humanity to them. maybe the book humanizes them more.)
one thing i liked is that katniss isn't some magical hero-who-sees-the-light figure (in this book at least). i'm always prepared for the young hero to make silly "CAN'T YOU SEE WHAT THEY'RE DOING TO US!?!?" monologues and then destroying the system, but nope. no matter how heroic and goodhearted she is, she's still just another kid playing their game.
― JIM THOMETHEUS (zachlyon), Sunday, 25 March 2012 13:17 (eleven years ago) link
lol josh you can easily sub in big brother w/r/t this complaint and yet that era happened to us!
― lex pretend, Sunday, 25 March 2012 13:20 (eleven years ago) link
(and again, if cato and the rest of them were turned into roy batty figures instead of just that disposable "this is all i know how to do!!" line, they would've gotten some humanity to them. maybe the book humanizes them more.)
i understand the sequels feature former "career" tributes in more depth, so maybe that happens then
But Big Brother is not required viewing! If our dystopian future included mandatory Big Brother viewing, the entire population would either be up in arms after a season or two or suicidal.
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 25 March 2012 14:23 (eleven years ago) link
(MILD SPOILER)There's a whole thing in Mockingjay about the propaganda aired regarding District 13.
― Cuba Pudding, Jr. (jaymc), Sunday, 25 March 2012 15:38 (eleven years ago) link
BTW, I'm kind of fascinated that Jennifer Lawrence has become this lightning rod for body politics. Like, people calling her too "big boned" or whatever for this role. And then I just read (and maybe this is old news) that the reason she did that skeezy Esquire spread was to prove to apparently many doubters that she could be sexual post-"Winter's Bone," which is what got her the "X-Men" role, which surely helped her land this tentpole opportunity. Just weird all around, and kind of cruel, this oddly Zeitgeisty debate. Lawrence does "Winter's Bone" and people say she can't be hot. Then she does "Hunger Games," and people call her fat. I'm worried she's either going to be a tough as nails adult or go off the deep end.
Does the book specify Katniss as model-thin?
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 25 March 2012 16:32 (eleven years ago) link
"Almost all of the boys and at least half of the girls are bigger than I am, even though many of the tributes have never been fed properly. ... I may be smaller naturally, but overall my family's resourcefulness has given me an edge in that area. I stand straight, and while I'm thin, I"m strong. The meat and plants from the woods combined with the exertion it took to get them have given me a healthier body than most of those I see around me."
― Cuba Pudding, Jr. (jaymc), Sunday, 25 March 2012 16:46 (eleven years ago) link
Xp I feel there was some mention of fat people=rich, thin people=poor, but Katniss is also a hunter! She/her family get by fairly well between that and the many extra times her name is in the draw for grain, so her (very tiny, model thin with boobs) size is pretty reasonable. Of course I'm a fat old lady so what do I know. She runs pretty well for Hollywood Obese :*(
― she started dancing to that (Finefinemusic), Sunday, 25 March 2012 16:49 (eleven years ago) link
Too bad I can't see what gets posted when I'm typing in Zing! Well quoted jaymc.
― she started dancing to that (Finefinemusic), Sunday, 25 March 2012 16:50 (eleven years ago) link
holy shit that's some awkward prose
― Number None, Sunday, 25 March 2012 16:50 (eleven years ago) link
MILD BUT VAGUE SPOILER Book readers - what will they do with Rue's district's riot now that they pulled it out of her tour? I hope they won't skip that altogether - I wanted to see all the districts.
― she started dancing to that (Finefinemusic), Sunday, 25 March 2012 16:51 (eleven years ago) link
basically any discussion about a woman's body is going to be cruel iirc
― JIM THOMETHEUS (zachlyon), Sunday, 25 March 2012 17:11 (eleven years ago) link
and the "fat people rich thin people poor" idea is so antiquated i can't defend any story taking place in the present or future using it.
― JIM THOMETHEUS (zachlyon), Sunday, 25 March 2012 17:14 (eleven years ago) link
Okay, wtf is actually "awkward" about that prose?
― Andrew Farrell, Sunday, 25 March 2012 18:21 (eleven years ago) link
So basically Katniss in the book is a typical late bloomer girl, sort of skinny and awkward? Regardless, it's not like she looks like some hulk in the movie. Maybe they should have given her mountain teeth again?
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 25 March 2012 18:21 (eleven years ago) link
Never read the book, but there's a literal-mindedness of that paragraph that does scan weird. "My family's resourcefulness has given me an edge in that area" just doesn't sound like anything anyone would ever say or think. It's like what someone pointed out way upthread with some character exclaiming "OMG, killer mutant bees genetically engineered by the government!" Like, everyone would know what they are so they don't need to be described except for the sake of the reader. Same with that "I am thin but stand straight, for I have foraged and eaten healthily" stuff.
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 25 March 2012 18:24 (eleven years ago) link
Just an observation, why someone would find it awkward.
the whole book is like that. just plain, lifeless, over-explanatory prose. collins seems like the type of writer who would have to be convinced not to write exact mathematical measurements of things in lieu of actually describing them.
― JIM THOMETHEUS (zachlyon), Sunday, 25 March 2012 18:33 (eleven years ago) link
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/01/hunger-games-movie_n_1314053.html
you'll have to overlook the "high schooler writing for huffpo" thing, but this is a pretty interesting article. i was joking before about "making katniss white" but i had no idea that there's been a lot of debate over her race within the fandom. lawrence was great, but it would've been good to see a POC in that role.
― JIM THOMETHEUS (zachlyon), Sunday, 25 March 2012 19:38 (eleven years ago) link
what sucks isn't that they cast jennifer lawrence, who is absolutely fantastic, but that they limited the casting call to white actresses. wtf.
iirc i read somewhere that JL is from appalachia (ie where district 12 is supposed to be)? you might see that as positive representation, or maybe a reason she could capture the character so well.
(i wasn't familiar with JL prior to the film, didn't know what she "really" looked at, and would not necessarily have guessed she was 100% caucasian.)
― lex pretend, Sunday, 25 March 2012 20:14 (eleven years ago) link
some coverage from when the debate happened:
http://www.racebending.com/v4/featured/media-takes-note-of-the-hunger-games-casting/
― rayuela, Sunday, 25 March 2012 20:24 (eleven years ago) link
the scene if the opening f the hunger games was legit jarring and then the Steve reich music came in and I was like c'mon are u tryina hit all my emotional buttons
― arsenio and old ma$e (m bison), Sunday, 25 March 2012 20:28 (eleven years ago) link
i had no idea it was steve reich! that was the best bit of the film, gave me high hopes about the rest of the Games scenes, but alas.
xp to lex: i'm not sure it's relevant to mention the actual geography in relation to today's demographics. i don't know what year the book takes place in but it sounds like centuries have passed since north america was a thing. following current trends you'd expect there to be much much fewer white people throughout the entire country regardless of where different racial demos are concentrated (though you'd expect that to change too).
― JIM THOMETHEUS (zachlyon), Sunday, 25 March 2012 20:55 (eleven years ago) link
can't believe I'm writing this, but... denby is OTM. surely the end is nigh.
But the rest of “The Hunger Games” is pretty much a disaster—disjointed, muffled, and even, at times, boring. Collins herself labored on the script, along with Gary Ross and Billy Ray, and Ross (“Pleasantville,” “Seabiscuit”) directed. Working with the cinematographer Tom Stern, Ross shoots in a style that I have come to despise. A handheld camera whips nervously from one angle to another; the fragments are then jammed together without any regard for space. You feel like you’ve been tossed into a washing machine (don’t sit in the front rows without Dramamine). Even when two people are just talking calmly, Ross jerks the camera around. Why? As the sense of danger increases, he has nothing to build toward. Visually, he’s already gone over the top. And the action itself is a thrashing, incoherent blur—kids tumbling on the ground or wrestling with each other. Katniss stalks various kids with her bow and arrow, but she kills only one intentionally—a domineering sadist—and you don’t see the arrow hit him; you don’t even see him fall. Ross consistently drains away all the tensions built into the grisly story—the growing wariness and suspicion that each teen-ager must feel as the number of those still alive begins to diminish, or the horror (or glee) that some of them experience as they commit murder. The camera rushes through the wilderness, but, in the end, the movie looks less like a fight to the death than like a scavenger hunt. Katniss is always finding something useful in a tree or lying on the ground.
― all yoga attacks are fire based (rogermexico.), Wednesday, 28 March 2012 22:58 (eleven years ago) link
this was good, jerky camera aside, and j-lawr is a total movie star, she's amazing
― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Wednesday, 28 March 2012 23:03 (eleven years ago) link
^^ agree with all of this except "it was good"
― all yoga attacks are fire based (rogermexico.), Wednesday, 28 March 2012 23:39 (eleven years ago) link
i wasn't particularly bothered by the jerky-cam like a lot of ppl, or at least i don't recall ever being like "whoa, dude, chill out with that"
― y'tulip, y'pea-brained earwig (donna rouge), Wednesday, 28 March 2012 23:44 (eleven years ago) link
you literally couldn't see anything during the action scenes. It was like Bourne times a million
― Number None, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 23:45 (eleven years ago) link
honestly during the initial bloodbath i was pretty glad for that
― y'tulip, y'pea-brained earwig (donna rouge), Wednesday, 28 March 2012 23:47 (eleven years ago) link
yeah i said upthread it was probably partly deliberate cos kids killing each other and everything. Still annoying though
― Number None, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 23:48 (eleven years ago) link
much bigger problem during the action scenes is that when peetah and that vicious psychopath kid were fighting at the end they looked so much alike i couldn't tell who was who (blonde buff young caucasians all look the same to me i guess)
― Mordy, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 23:49 (eleven years ago) link
ok yeah actually i remember that being annoying
― y'tulip, y'pea-brained earwig (donna rouge), Wednesday, 28 March 2012 23:49 (eleven years ago) link
You know, I like Gary Ross, and I think he's a really smart guy, but he was probably the wrong person to make this.
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 23:57 (eleven years ago) link
― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Wednesday, March 28, 2012 6:03 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― catbus otm (gbx), Thursday, 29 March 2012 02:31 (eleven years ago) link
just learned that the girl who played the district 1 tribute (spoiler: the one thresh kills) was the (spoiler) "little girl" in Orphan. i'm old and losing touch with just how quickly teenagers age.
― JIM THOMETHEUS (zachlyon), Thursday, 29 March 2012 03:09 (eleven years ago) link
also one of the boy tributes is a quaid
― JIM THOMETHEUS (zachlyon), Thursday, 29 March 2012 03:10 (eleven years ago) link
whoa like dennis or randy's kid?
― Cuba Pudding, Jr. (jaymc), Thursday, 29 March 2012 04:11 (eleven years ago) link
The shakycam only bothered me in the first, introductory segments. That said, Ross clearly isn't much of an action director. But the non-action segments were handled with reasonable proficiency. (Basically, I concur w/ s1ocki's assessment.)
― Simon H., Thursday, 29 March 2012 04:35 (eleven years ago) link
jack quaid, son of dennis quaid and meg ryan, as spearboy
― JIM THOMETHEUS (zachlyon), Thursday, 29 March 2012 05:28 (eleven years ago) link
also foxface was in Dev2.0!
http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/47729979/Devo+20+devo20.jpg
The song "Beautiful World" remains mostly unchanged until the end, where the words, "It's a beautiful world for you/It's not for me" have been changed to "It's a beautiful world for you/I guess me too". In addition, the bridge lyrics "Boy and girl with the new clothes on/You can shake it to me all night long hey hey" have been changed to "Boy and girl with the new clothes on/You can pose and party all day long hey hey".
Additionally, the song "The Winner" is a re-recording with new lyrics of "If the Shoe Fits" by Jihad Jerry & the Evildoers. The anti-George W. Bush sentiment was replaced by a song about perseverance and thinking for oneself.
― JIM THOMETHEUS (zachlyon), Thursday, 29 March 2012 05:33 (eleven years ago) link
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, March 28, 2012 11:57 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark
otm. he's pretty decent at the non-action scenes, and in bigging up the political elements, but ugh he couldn't come up with anything better to circumnavigate the R rating this material deserves?
i think it was a cop-out in regards to Katniss dealing with the morality of the situation (she didn't have to kill anyone decent, and the bad were hilariously awful with their maniacal laughter). I think the sequels can be better though. I've never read the books so I don't know anything about how it all turns out. I know they won't but I hope they nix the love triangle, because that just looks like pain.
― stay in school if you want to kiw (Gukbe), Thursday, 29 March 2012 08:06 (eleven years ago) link
just finished the first book. the prose gets a bit better but only because you start to internalize how strange everything is. the love story with peeta, and the confusion there, i think is actually sort of brilliant in the book. of course katniss is unbearably dense about his true feelings, but it's still an interesting dynamic. the movie sacrifices it mostly because unless they had JLaw narrating everything it would've been hard to actually express her confusion/assumptions.
and re: above, it's actually implied in the book that the career tributes (esp cato) are unhinged and slightly maniacal, presumably because of their upbringing.
― JIM THOMETHEUS (zachlyon), Thursday, 29 March 2012 09:05 (eleven years ago) link
Took my daughter to see it yesterday. She's 11. She loved it, I thought it was way above par for a film aimed at early teens. (Have not read books btw.)
I don't have any problem with the non-ramping up of the glee of killing, or the fear of death, nor with the actual action being subdued. If they'd done anything else it wouldn't have been a film 11-15 year olds could have actually got in to see. The film isn't meant to be a telling meditation of human cruelty, it's meant to be an exciting film for teenagers with JUST ENOUGH meditation of human cruelty to give it a point. I thought it succeeded on those terms.
xpost I wondered how they would deal with Katniss having to kill people. I'm just pleased they actually managed it. I thought she'd somehow scrape through without having to actually kill anyone. What did you expect, given she's the heroine and she clearly has a moral code? That she'd go on a WTF killing spree? The rules of storytelling mean she is not allowed to do that, otherwise she could no longer be the heroine? So killing only psychos, and helping the good but being unable to prevent their deaths seemed to me to be a reasonable compromise.
― Viva Brother Beyond (ithappens), Thursday, 29 March 2012 09:25 (eleven years ago) link
i could tell them apart but this was the only time the shakeycam got annoying for me too, because it was so jerky that you couldn't tell what katniss actually shot such that she'd hit cato without him taking peeta with him.
(i looked it up afterwards, she shoots cato's hand so he's forced to release peeta as he falls backwards.)
― lex pretend, Thursday, 29 March 2012 09:34 (eleven years ago) link
The scene in the book is impressively hardcore, where they spend several hours trying not to slip off the cornucopia and being cold and hungry and pretty much near death, and after Cato falls there's, like, several more hours of him fighting and the dogs chewing him up. I think it's like next morning when they realise that they haven't heard the death-cannon and then Katniss fires a mercy arrow at the shambling hulk in the mouth of the cornucopia.
― Andrew Farrell, Thursday, 29 March 2012 10:00 (eleven years ago) link
Also in the books, the dogs contained the souls(?) of the dead contestants - Katniss notices Glimmer's eyes are in one that's chasing her, etc. Wish they'd tried a little harder to give them the contestants' characteristics, could've been kind of trippy.
― she started dancing to that (Finefinemusic), Thursday, 29 March 2012 12:49 (eleven years ago) link
god, this sort of stuff is so precisely what lends itself so well to teenage obsession - the story doesn't just contain the story but all these rabbithole back stories which are unwritten (by collins) but fascinating to think about
― lex pretend, Thursday, 29 March 2012 13:33 (eleven years ago) link
i'm sure the fanfic community are on it though
I think the dogs are just genetically modified to resemble the previous contestants and freak the surviving ones out - it's a great creepy detail, but you can see that it'd be jumping up and down yelling "cut me! cut meeeee!" at the first script rewrite.
― Andrew Farrell, Thursday, 29 March 2012 13:52 (eleven years ago) link
Yeah, w/o 1st-person narration, it'd be hard to indicate exactly what the deal was.
― Cuba Pudding, Jr. (jaymc), Thursday, 29 March 2012 14:01 (eleven years ago) link
bela tarr's the hunger games
― diamanda ram dass (Edward III), Thursday, 29 March 2012 16:49 (eleven years ago) link
Via Geeta:
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/03/rare-electronic-music-hunger-games/
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 29 March 2012 17:57 (eleven years ago) link
i actually thought the opposite while reading it, at least in comparison to JK Rowling (who of course wrote hundreds of pages of backstory that were never used). Collins didn't seem to immerse herself in her own universe as much; half the tributes were never given names or characteristics and the world itself isn't terrifically defined. honestly, the Careers are better characterized in the film. some of this is the difference between fantasy and dystopian sci-fi i guess, but some of it just doesn't reflect well on the author.
otoh, the book is very good at creating implications without having katniss outright say them. i was split on her character -- half the time she's either unconvincingly poor (ie written by someone who didn't really work very hard at making her life of hunger very convincing) or she's quite convincing as typical member of an oppressed society, in that she isn't some magical figure who sees through all the bullshit when everyone else doesn't. one of the best things that happens towards the end is katniss thinking about how, if she wins, she'll be doomed to taking up Haymitch's mantle and mentoring kids every year; at that point, you have to realize how good of a mentor she would be and how far she's come since the initial train ride to the capitol. she's clearly come to understand the game and how to win it. and then you realize how arbitrary it is, that all of her character development has happened within the arena (literally and figuratively) of this arbitrary game that has no real value to anyone outside the capitol. sort of a brilliant move on Collins' part imo
anyway i'll stop the armchair book critic stuff now
― JIM THOMETHEUS (zachlyon), Thursday, 29 March 2012 17:58 (eleven years ago) link
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, March 29, 2012 1:57 PM (13 minutes ago)
this is awesome. plus she's gonna make out pretty good on performance royalties.
― diamanda ram dass (Edward III), Thursday, 29 March 2012 18:13 (eleven years ago) link
between that and the steve reich it's definitely one of the cooler soundtracks ive heard in years
― these pretzels are makeing me horney (Hungry4Ass), Friday, 30 March 2012 15:37 (eleven years ago) link
i thought this was pretty okay. it had some good themes and jlaw has star quality. seems like a good thing for kids to be into
― these pretzels are makeing me horney (Hungry4Ass), Friday, 30 March 2012 15:38 (eleven years ago) link
also good training for apocalpyse scenarios, zombie or otherwise
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, 30 March 2012 15:41 (eleven years ago) link
Further on Laurie Spiegel and "Sediment" (and royalties):
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/03/30/laurie_spiegel_s_sediment_in_the_hunger_games_how_the_new_movie_righted_a_musical_wrong.html
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 30 March 2012 21:03 (eleven years ago) link
And if you (like me) haven't seen the film but would like to see the scene and hear how the music was used...
http://lincolnmoreira.tumblr.com/post/19877170785/the-hunger-games-cornucopia-scene
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 30 March 2012 21:11 (eleven years ago) link
Funny review from bassist extraordinaire Tony Levin (!):
The Hunger Games: (and Catching Fire, Mockingjay) by Suzanne Collins *** Not bad... why is it that young adult books are sometimes the most fun reads? And I had to check out the movie, of course, in case it was as good as the book. Not bad, but not great at all. Jiggly camera technique made me want to walk out. Will books someday include jiggly camera elements? "She ran through the forest, clutching her bow, while she and the whole forest jiggled up and down, making you the reader a bit nauseous. Then she stopped to rest, but everything continued to jiggle and twitch."
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 11 April 2012 16:16 (eleven years ago) link
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/04/the_hunger_games_is_sexist_fai.html
― these pretzels are makeing me horney (Hungry4Ass), Monday, 30 April 2012 20:17 (eleven years ago) link
assume you have a 5 year old daughter with one hit point left whose life depends on your selection.
― Mordy, Monday, 30 April 2012 20:43 (eleven years ago) link
And the reason why showing off-- or, as the movie ever so subtly puts it, "showing them up"-- is so important is that women still secretly believe they are inferior to men. I know most of you aren't going to want to hear that, and, indeed, the vast majority of you will woefully willfully misquote me as having said, "women are inferior to men," but that's because your brain is broken. I read the book. You need to read with a highlighter.
yeah idk this is pretty terrible
― Mordy, Monday, 30 April 2012 20:45 (eleven years ago) link
did this person read the followup books as well as The Hunger Games, because the overriding theme of the story has absolutely nothing to do with patriarchal oppresion and everything to do with power being a corrupting force
― I'M THAT POSTA, AAAAAAAAAH (DJP), Monday, 30 April 2012 20:50 (eleven years ago) link
hey ladies, u only think katniss is a badass bc u secretly believe u are inferior to men, u know who is a real badass? this character:
http://biffbampop.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/milla_jovovich_alice.jpg
― Mordy, Monday, 30 April 2012 20:52 (eleven years ago) link
I mean, in the context of the story, Katniss's blatant impotence is pretty much the point; she's a 16-year-old girl who has been pulled into a meat grinder, much like the other kids.
Also the whole thing about Thresh being retarded is some hardcore "look into a mirror" shit
― I'M THAT POSTA, AAAAAAAAAH (DJP), Monday, 30 April 2012 20:53 (eleven years ago) link
"Do you know why Thresh doesn't kill Katniss but instead lets her go? Because Thresh is black."
what the fucking fuck
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Monday, 30 April 2012 20:55 (eleven years ago) link
Really any post that throws in a passive-aggressive "Sorry" at the end is going to be terrible.
― Respectfully, Tyrese Gibson (Nicole), Monday, 30 April 2012 21:09 (eleven years ago) link
it's one thing to have a point of view but I don't think I've ever seen escalating "I see through the veil" rhetoric (including my own) that didn't culminate in the author proving the efficacy of his/her argument by lovingly his/her head up his/her own ass
― I'M THAT POSTA, AAAAAAAAAH (DJP), Monday, 30 April 2012 21:12 (eleven years ago) link
I have a hard time believing that blogger isn't actually a 15-year-old.
― Meanwhile, on some cars... (Austerity Ponies), Tuesday, 1 May 2012 15:04 (eleven years ago) link
ugh these books are SO ANNOYING
― max, Sunday, 20 May 2012 23:12 (eleven years ago) link
i sort of agree but my sister loves them and is like the hunger games-whisperer and has a real point of view about them and is so eloquent in their defense that she's kind of worn me down.
the movie was horrible, though.
― horseshoe, Sunday, 20 May 2012 23:16 (eleven years ago) link
yeah the more distance i get from the movie, the worse it seems to me. and from what i understand the rest of the books are all much worse than the first one??
― Hungry4Ass, Sunday, 20 May 2012 23:19 (eleven years ago) link
i thought the second book was terrible, third book is absolutely bizarre and actually kind of redeemed the trilogy for me in some weird way, just by being so stubbornly weird
― max, Sunday, 20 May 2012 23:21 (eleven years ago) link
i'm not sure what max's beef is. none of them are particularly well-written. the first and the last ones do the thing my sister likes the best, which is basically testify to the truth that all social order is founded on violence. earlier in this thread i said i liked the last book because it's the political one but truthfully this series is kind of apolitical, which is baffling to me. my sister and i get in arguments about this, and she's always like, look, susan collins is an army brat, if you want a revolutionary dystopian young adult novel you have to write it yourself. but still, it seems like a missed opportunity.
the second one is probably the weakest.
― horseshoe, Sunday, 20 May 2012 23:22 (eleven years ago) link
my sister likes how katniss is a battered shell at the end of the third one because that's what war does. she resents that rape is not depicted as a war crime in the books, though, which might give you some sense of the intensity of the perspective she brings to these books.
― horseshoe, Sunday, 20 May 2012 23:26 (eleven years ago) link
i should just invite my sister to this thread; she has a lot of thoughts4u
― horseshoe, Sunday, 20 May 2012 23:27 (eleven years ago) link
the third book i think is hamstrung by that goddamned first-person present-tense narration. important events and potentially interesting character moments are just narrated-past willy-nilly, when otherwise they might be good opportunities for world-building and character shading. and while i can see the validity of saying "catatonic katniss works because it reflects the realities of war," it annoys me because collins isn't very good at reflecting other "realities" -- like the relationship between katniss and her family. imo it becomes an amateurish scribble after the first book, there is no nuance to how prim/the mom deal with their sudden wealth/change in status or how everything that happens changes the way katniss relates to them.
― the minister of RAILWAYS (reddening), Sunday, 20 May 2012 23:47 (eleven years ago) link
yeah, collins really drops the ball on primm as a character after the first novel
― horseshoe, Sunday, 20 May 2012 23:48 (eleven years ago) link
my sister says the books should be adapted in a band of bros-style miniseries, btw, not three movies.
― horseshoe, Sunday, 20 May 2012 23:49 (eleven years ago) link
all three are brought way down by first-person present tense
― of family bonds and individual triumph. Narrated by Tim Allen, (zachlyon), Sunday, 20 May 2012 23:52 (eleven years ago) link
xp i doubt 1/3 of a miniseries would've made anyone $400 million
― of family bonds and individual triumph. Narrated by Tim Allen, (zachlyon), Sunday, 20 May 2012 23:54 (eleven years ago) link
yeah i mean it's an impractical suggestion for sure. she was really mad after we saw the movie. i just feel like all opinions i had on these books have been replaced by her very strong feelings.
― horseshoe, Sunday, 20 May 2012 23:56 (eleven years ago) link
I keep getting asked at work if I have read these books.
I guess that's better than family members telling me I should read Twilight.
― tokyo rosemary, Monday, 21 May 2012 00:06 (eleven years ago) link
let's throw fifty shades of grey into the matrix too
― remy bean, Monday, 21 May 2012 02:08 (eleven years ago) link
i mean http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/fifty-shades-of-grey-wayback-machine_b49124
― remy bean, Monday, 21 May 2012 02:12 (eleven years ago) link
i want to read horseshoe's sister's thoughts4u!
― liberté, égalité, beyoncé (lex pretend), Monday, 21 May 2012 10:45 (eleven years ago) link
not bovd about the books but the film disappointed, chris nolan kinda thing of good premise and strong exposition thwarted and retrospectively diminished by lack of basic action film competence - series of set pieces but no sense of rising tension, like at the finale where its abruptly down to three and you had little idea, and then drably petering out ahead of the doubtless already-in production sequel
guess if they'd called it "hunger games part i" some of that would have been ameliorated but even still its no less unacceptable to overlook the satisfactions of a standalone film imo. old man shaking his fist @ cloud at this point though i know
― r|t|c, Monday, 21 May 2012 11:32 (eleven years ago) link
it's not even action film competence tbh, i mean these are basic film values in whatever
― r|t|c, Monday, 21 May 2012 11:35 (eleven years ago) link
i guess i found the books partic. annoying because there are all these flashes of good and interesting ideas that get completely lost in collins terrible writing and characterization.
― max, Monday, 21 May 2012 15:23 (eleven years ago) link
thomp otm upthread about her exposition, christ
It's strange to me that this series is held up as being well written or more quality than Twilight when it's not. I mean, some of the ideas in the series might be more interesting than a girl mooning over a virgin vampire but what's the point when they're not executed in a satisfying or thoughtful way?
― Respectfully, Tyrese Gibson (Nicole), Monday, 21 May 2012 15:29 (eleven years ago) link
I didn't think these books were terribly written, or at the very least the concept was interesting enough that the writing style didn't get in my way.
― I'M THAT POSTA, AAAAAAAAAH (DJP), Monday, 21 May 2012 15:31 (eleven years ago) link
i mean dont get me wrong, i finished them, but collins needs to stop telling and start showing
― max, Monday, 21 May 2012 15:35 (eleven years ago) link
Eh, not really.
― I'M THAT POSTA, AAAAAAAAAH (DJP), Monday, 21 May 2012 15:39 (eleven years ago) link
haha ok
― max, Monday, 21 May 2012 15:43 (eleven years ago) link
nah max otm, even some minor changes would've strengthened the books considerably while retaining the cool parts of the plot. like when katniss and peeta toured all the districts at the start of catching fire, it would've been greatly improved if it had been like 30% more showing what the different districts were like, and 30% less katniss talking about all the different outfits cinna made for her and having night terrors unless she sleeps in peeta's arms.
― producer / dj / humanitarian (reddening), Monday, 21 May 2012 16:55 (eleven years ago) link
The main point, though, is that Katniss isn't paying attention to the various districts because she's so preoccupied with appeasing the mayor to protect her family, plus she kind of didn't give a shit about any of the other tributes besides Rue so why should she she give a shit about their districts?
I mean, what you're talking about would be an interesting story, possibly even a more interesting one, but it's not actually the story being told, which is how Katniss is massively self-involved and mostly non-observant to the forces pushing her around like a chess piece until late into the third book.
― I'M THAT POSTA, AAAAAAAAAH (DJP), Monday, 21 May 2012 17:00 (eleven years ago) link
i saw the movie w/ my wife, who's read the books, and coming out of the theater the #1 thing that bothered me about the movie turned out to be one of the things that according to her was changed the most from the book -- that District 11 rioting after Rue dies thing was apparently not in the book? felt kind of forced and tacked on even before i knew that.
― some dude, Monday, 21 May 2012 17:06 (eleven years ago) link
iirc it happens, but you dont learn that it happens until book 2?
― max, Monday, 21 May 2012 17:07 (eleven years ago) link
I think that's right; there's no way Katniss could know about it in book 1 anyway given that she was in a death arena at the time
― I'M THAT POSTA, AAAAAAAAAH (DJP), Monday, 21 May 2012 17:08 (eleven years ago) link
yeah i guess the bigger change is the book POV to movie POV from first person to omniscient third person
― some dude, Monday, 21 May 2012 17:09 (eleven years ago) link
I think the thing I liked the most about the book was the limited point of view; Katniss was central to the conflict but spent most of the story behaving like the self-involved teen she was, not really breaking out of that role until the end of the third book. A lot of the details weren't really necessary to get across the point of the story, which seemed to me to be about the corruption of power paralleled with the consequences of actions/inaction.
― I'M THAT POSTA, AAAAAAAAAH (DJP), Monday, 21 May 2012 17:21 (eleven years ago) link
i really liked the movie. books r 4 nerds.
― Mordy, Monday, 21 May 2012 17:34 (eleven years ago) link
i mean, it is better-written than twilight, and less horribly anti-feminist, but that is the lowest of bars.
― horseshoe, Monday, 21 May 2012 17:36 (eleven years ago) link
a friend of mine reads katniss as gay, and that's why she's such an unbelievable opaque-to-herself weirdo in general and about peeta and gale in particular. i don't really believe that was collins's intention, but it totally makes sense to me.
― horseshoe, Monday, 21 May 2012 17:40 (eleven years ago) link
an english grad student way to make bad writing more interesting than it is, maybe
― horseshoe, Monday, 21 May 2012 17:41 (eleven years ago) link
i keep calling the books badly written, but like Dan, it didn't really stop me from reading them in a day. i do think they're compelling even if i mostly wish they had been totally different.
― horseshoe, Monday, 21 May 2012 17:42 (eleven years ago) link
i read them all in a day, too! & they are totally compelling and interesting in all kinds of ways. but collins is a terrible writer.
― max, Monday, 21 May 2012 17:45 (eleven years ago) link
I do think "I didn't buy the way the story was presented" and "this wasn't the story I wanted her to tell" are both entirely valid criticisms btw; I just think in general "this is badly-written" is a lazy way of saying that and I wish people would cut to the chase.
― I'M THAT POSTA, AAAAAAAAAH (DJP), Monday, 21 May 2012 17:47 (eleven years ago) link
there are lots of great writers who don't really 'cut to the chase,' so i'm not sure that's true
― Mordy, Monday, 21 May 2012 17:48 (eleven years ago) link
if i had written these novels, they would be all about thresh and gale and i wish she had done more with those characters (not killed thresh off, made gale a person) but i have to admit i think peeta is a really interesting and complex and uncommon character. fuck the love triangle but props to collins for coming up with him.
― horseshoe, Monday, 21 May 2012 17:49 (eleven years ago) link
no no i want to be very clear, i think suzanne collins is a bad writer on basically every level. so yes while its true i wish shed told a different story, and barring that i wish shed told the story she did tell in a different way, but barring even the two of those things i think shes a horrible writer on a very basic stylistic level
― max, Monday, 21 May 2012 17:50 (eleven years ago) link
by badly written, i mostly mean long strings of undifferentiated, unsubordinated straight narration. this happened and then this happened and then this happened.
― horseshoe, Monday, 21 May 2012 17:50 (eleven years ago) link
the peeta in the movie is godawful btw; not convinced the director read the books.
― horseshoe, Monday, 21 May 2012 17:51 (eleven years ago) link
How is one supposed to avoid that in a book written in first person present tense?
(The obvious answer is "don't write in first person present tense", which to me is a "I don't buy the way the story is presented" criticism, which is also a more specific point to make and actually allows for a conversation about storytelling technique and what could have been more effective/interesting. Hence my assertion "this is badly written" is usually a sign that the person making the comment is being lazy.)
― I'M THAT POSTA, AAAAAAAAAH (DJP), Monday, 21 May 2012 17:54 (eleven years ago) link
Well, her background is as a writer for children's TV. She claims that when she first started writing fiction (the Underland Chronicles), narrative prose (as opposed to dialogue) was particularly difficult for her.
― Never translate Dutch (jaymc), Monday, 21 May 2012 17:55 (eleven years ago) link
you can still use grammatical subordination, i think. but yes, reddening is right. some tracking between katniss's pov and a narrative voice would have improved the writing. you're also right; i'm being lazy. i lent these books to my other sister, the non-hunger-games-evangelist, so i don't have them to refer to.
― horseshoe, Monday, 21 May 2012 17:56 (eleven years ago) link
Ah, here it is:
“Prose is full of many challenges and unexplored territory for me because I came to it later in my life… I’ve been doing scriptwriting for 27 years and books for maybe 10 years now. I think I started the first Gregor book, Gregor the Overlander, when I was 38.“I’d be clicking along through dialogue and action sequences. That’s fine, that’s like stage directions. But whenever I hit a descriptive passage, it was like running into a wall. I remember particularly there’s a moment early on when Gregor walks through this curtain of moths, and he gets his first look at the underground city of Regalia. So it’s this descriptive scene of the city. Wow, did that take me a long time to write! And I went back and looked at it. It’s just a couple of paragraphs. It killed me. It took forever.”
“I’d be clicking along through dialogue and action sequences. That’s fine, that’s like stage directions. But whenever I hit a descriptive passage, it was like running into a wall. I remember particularly there’s a moment early on when Gregor walks through this curtain of moths, and he gets his first look at the underground city of Regalia. So it’s this descriptive scene of the city. Wow, did that take me a long time to write! And I went back and looked at it. It’s just a couple of paragraphs. It killed me. It took forever.”
― Never translate Dutch (jaymc), Monday, 21 May 2012 17:57 (eleven years ago) link
haha yeah her physical descriptions are so terrible
it took me forever to figure out what the big murder clock looked like in the second book. still dont think i could draw a picture of it
― max, Monday, 21 May 2012 17:59 (eleven years ago) link
You mean the Quarter Quell arena?
― Never translate Dutch (jaymc), Monday, 21 May 2012 18:00 (eleven years ago) link
that makes sense, John. the dialogue is sometimes good. peeta gets some funny lines.
― horseshoe, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:00 (eleven years ago) link
during all the dialogue-free gritty shaky cam scenes i kinda thought 'this is nice but i'd hate to think what these parts of the book are like'
― tell peeta my fire dress is draggin on the floor (some dude), Monday, 21 May 2012 18:01 (eleven years ago) link
yes.
btw heres the kind of pargraph that thomp is complaining about upthread, and that makes me call SC a horrible writer:
"When I was younger, I scared my mother to death, the things I would blurt out about District 12, about the people who rule our country, Panem, from the far-off city called the Capitol. Eventually I understood this would only lead us to more trouble. So I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts. Do my work quietly in school. Make only polite small talk in the public market. Discuss little more than trades in the Hob, which is the black market where I make most of my money. Even at home, where I am less pleasant, I avoid discussing tricky topics. Like the reaping, or food shortages, or the Hunger Games. Prim might begin to repeat my words and then where would we be?"
― max, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:02 (eleven years ago) link
the movie is worse, i have to say. like she's not a great describer, but i had some sense of the world of the books that was totally absent from the movie. also the movie did nothing with the proliferation of screens, always performing, being watched, which, really? movies were built for that kind of thing.
― horseshoe, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:03 (eleven years ago) link
i dunno that felt like a dominant theme of the movie to me?
― tell peeta my fire dress is draggin on the floor (some dude), Monday, 21 May 2012 18:06 (eleven years ago) link
no way. there has never been a movie as bad as "So I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts."
― Mordy, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:08 (eleven years ago) link
and i thought i would enjoy how good tucci and elizabeth banks are but it's almost depressing? they're so much better than the movie. also that girl who played rue. too good for the movie.
xxp but we just got simple shots of them talking to stanley tucci. no like literal proliferation of screens onscreen. maybe it's a small thing but it seemed like such a gimme.
― horseshoe, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:08 (eleven years ago) link
also how did they manage to fuck up the reaping scene at the opening! also a total gimme; you wouldn't think it would be possible to film a non-harrowing version of that, but i was like, yawn.
― horseshoe, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:09 (eleven years ago) link
I found it harrowing, ~shrug~.
― Never translate Dutch (jaymc), Monday, 21 May 2012 18:12 (eleven years ago) link
i thought it was pretty harrowing! strong holocaust imagery + stuff. all the kids were out in their shtetl finest waiting in lines
― Mordy, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:12 (eleven years ago) link
http://hungergamesmovie.org/images/KatnissAtReaping-600x399.jpg
― Mordy, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:13 (eleven years ago) link
not to ruin this thread but she is Such A Babe
― max, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:13 (eleven years ago) link
i blame the director; a lot of the acting was bad in a way that suggested to me that he didn't understand the characters. like, jennifer lawrence is supposed to be good, right? but she just played katniss as blankly confused. katniss is constantly furious! and the lenny kravitz casting could have been so good, but he wasn't arch enough. (maybe lenny kravitz can't act, i don't know.)
― horseshoe, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:14 (eleven years ago) link
i don't know; i like and get books a lot more than i like and get movies. but the movie was terrible imo.
jennifer lawrence looks a little like renee zellweger to me, before renee zellweger started hating her life, or whatever happened there.
― horseshoe, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:16 (eleven years ago) link
as a longtime opponent of the advancement of squinty-american actresses in hollywood, i am pro-jlawrence and object to the zellweger comparison
― tell peeta my fire dress is draggin on the floor (some dude), Monday, 21 May 2012 18:18 (eleven years ago) link
i mean renee zellweger circa empire records! she used to be adorable. i want to like jennifer lawrence, but i can't bring myself to watch winter's bone because i can't watch sad movies anymore.
― horseshoe, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:20 (eleven years ago) link
oh god horseshoe winters bone is really so good
― max, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:20 (eleven years ago) link
So I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts.
To be honest, I find this sentence to be very evocative of the type of high-minded, self-absorbed, convinced she is amazing teen that Katniss is at the beginning of the trilogy. Basically, I don't think Katniss is either likable or particularly clever at the beginning of the trilogy and I feel it's reflected in the prose, which after all is supposed to be her real-time inner monologue.
I don't think she ends up waxing poetic by the end but from what I remember, she is much less arch and self-righteous by the end of the trilogy.
Also keep in mind I read a lot of TERRIBLE science fiction and fantasy to the point where a lot of bad writing doesn't even faze me anymore so there should be an unspoken mountain of salt taken with this defense, because that sentence is pretty awful.
― I'M THAT POSTA, AAAAAAAAAH (DJP), Monday, 21 May 2012 18:21 (eleven years ago) link
you must must must watch WB horseshoe!
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 21 May 2012 18:22 (eleven years ago) link
:( fine, but if i become inconsolably sad for weeks, i blame you
― horseshoe, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:22 (eleven years ago) link
I will take that responsibility
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 21 May 2012 18:23 (eleven years ago) link
djp, that sentence isn't really "high-minded, self-absorbed, convinced she is amazing teen" so much as not something a human being would ever think
― Mordy, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:27 (eleven years ago) link
like if someone told you that they were turning their face into an indifferent mask, you'd be like wtf lulz stfu
a human being would at least throw a comma in there somewhere
― horseshoe, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:28 (eleven years ago) link
if the the only 2 options are overly serious young adult novel diction and wtf lulz stfu text speak then perhaps it is you who should stfu
― tell peeta my fire dress is draggin on the floor (some dude), Monday, 21 May 2012 18:29 (eleven years ago) link
xpost
i think this sentence is worse:
"Discuss little more than trades in the Hob, which is the black market where I make most of my money."
― max, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:31 (eleven years ago) link
i believe there's an interesting way to write about someone trying to conceal their feelings from other ppl, even from a present tense first person perspective. that's kinda one of the problems here, i think, and in general what i think ppl actually mean when they say a book is poor writing. i don't think it's laziness. i think it's that ppl can recognize when an author spent a minimal amount of time thinking about how they write things and how they represent ideas in language. collins is an author who - for better or for worse (for better for her, she's rich!) - would rather tell the story in the most expedient way possible. that's what makes the writing poor.
― Mordy, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:31 (eleven years ago) link
yeah clumsy exposition is always the most hilarious thing to me (xpost)
― tell peeta my fire dress is draggin on the floor (some dude), Monday, 21 May 2012 18:31 (eleven years ago) link
haha sometimes these books read like the publishing company had a gun to collins's head and she had to pump them out in 24 hours each.
xxp
― horseshoe, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:32 (eleven years ago) link
I wouldn't!
― Never translate Dutch (jaymc), Monday, 21 May 2012 18:34 (eleven years ago) link
fine, smart guy, a comma wouldn't be correct, but it's there's too much explaining packed into one sentence.
― horseshoe, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:35 (eleven years ago) link
i find show, don't tell to be an annoying and not always accurate piece of editorial advice, but collins could have benefited from it.
― horseshoe, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:36 (eleven years ago) link
When I was younger, I scared my mother to death, the things I would blurt out about District 12, about the people who rule our country, Panem, from the far-off city called the Capitol.
― max, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:37 (eleven years ago) link
lotta commas there
h8 u guys
― horseshoe, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:37 (eleven years ago) link
i picture that sentence with an engine room, and a tiny scottish man yelling, "i cant do it suzanne, i cant add another expository clause, theres just not enough power"
― max, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:38 (eleven years ago) link
only vaguely related: i was rereading pale king the other day and wondering how long dfw spent on some of those sentences. i know he didn't write them in one go. he clearly labored over them.
― Mordy, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:39 (eleven years ago) link
there are posters on this very board who write things like that on a daily basis in their interactions with each other so I really don't know what to say to you
at this point I really just want to go back to my original statement, which was "the way she wrote didn't get in the way of my enjoyment of the story"
― I'M THAT POSTA, AAAAAAAAAH (DJP), Monday, 21 May 2012 18:39 (eleven years ago) link
i'm kinda really picky about the fiction prose i read tbh, so probably a bad example on the other end of things. i've complained loudly on ilx about how terrible i thought GoT was (another piece of media where i thought the movie/tv show was much better than the original work)
― Mordy, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:41 (eleven years ago) link
Yeah, I would agree w/that. Her prose is definitely clunky and graceless in places, but the imaginative plotting compensated, IMO. Honestly, I read so few novels outside the realm of Serious Literary Fiction that I was excited to submit to a page-turner.
― Never translate Dutch (jaymc), Monday, 21 May 2012 18:44 (eleven years ago) link
(xpost to Dan)
also, i don't hold a super high opinion of every single poster on this board (tho i do of some!)
― Mordy, Monday, 21 May 2012 18:57 (eleven years ago) link
I am holding my tongue and turning my features into an indifferent mask so nobody guesses who DJP is referring to
― tell peeta my fire dress is draggin on the floor (some dude), Monday, 21 May 2012 18:58 (eleven years ago) link
this feels exactly like the harry potter arguments
it's a page-turner for kids, it's kind of like...stylish prose isn't even important, plotting is. at this kind of book's best you don't notice the lumpen prose because you've already turned the page
― liberté, égalité, beyoncé (lex pretend), Monday, 21 May 2012 20:49 (eleven years ago) link
j.k. rowling was a decent stylist, though.
― max, Monday, 21 May 2012 20:49 (eleven years ago) link
and its not just a style vs. plotting question, its also about -- as remy put it upthread -- refusing to "allow the reader to experience wonder, confusion, or ambiguity"
― max, Monday, 21 May 2012 20:50 (eleven years ago) link
nah
i read all the harry potter books in about an afternoon to a day each and...nah
― liberté, égalité, beyoncé (lex pretend), Monday, 21 May 2012 20:51 (eleven years ago) link
ha i dont think j.k. rowling is james salter or anything but youre CRAZY if you think she and collins are at the same level
― max, Monday, 21 May 2012 20:58 (eleven years ago) link
oh i haven't read collins yet! i assume she's good at plotting or at least creating a compelling world given how just the film sucked me into it. if/when i do read her books i'm not going to partic care if the prose is a bit dodgy
― liberté, égalité, beyoncé (lex pretend), Monday, 21 May 2012 21:02 (eleven years ago) link
criticizing The Hunger Games for not allowing the reader to experience wonder, confusion or ambiguity when compared to Harry Potter when one series is about a young wizard coming of age and learning all this cool magic while his dad's enemies try to murder him and the other series is about an indentured teen put in an arena to kill other indentured teens for the entertainment of the leisure class strikes me as a fundamental antipathy to the type of pathos-ridden story The Hunger Games is telling
having said that, Lex you should read Battle Royale instead; it's a much better book than The Hunger Games
― I'M THAT POSTA, AAAAAAAAAH (DJP), Monday, 21 May 2012 21:34 (eleven years ago) link
remy's complaint wasn't about comparing it to harry potter! and i dont think you need to bring harry potter in to make the same complaint! the "wonder/confusion/ambiguity" thing, as i read it, is about SC's obsessive need to explain *everything* the minute it happens. "the hunger games which are this," "the mockingjays which are this," "the muttations which are this." the way thomp complains upthread.
― max, Monday, 21 May 2012 21:40 (eleven years ago) link
you brought up remy's argument in the context of a comparison of Collins and Rowling, just now
― I'M THAT POSTA, AAAAAAAAAH (DJP), Monday, 21 May 2012 21:45 (eleven years ago) link
and my Nook app is being annoying and not opening correctly atm but I am about 50% certain the mockingjays weren't explained the instant they appeared and I am positive the revelations about the muttations weren't, since Katniss didn't figure out what was going on with them until after they'd been chased/attacked for a while
― I'M THAT POSTA, AAAAAAAAAH (DJP), Monday, 21 May 2012 21:48 (eleven years ago) link
yeah, this is true but also not really the point. is anyone saying the hunger games should invoke wonder? rowling is not a good prose writer, but she was still capable of making her prose feel alive. the tones of these books are obviously going to be different, but writing a story as dark as THG isn't the same as writing a story as DEAD as THG. collins writes dead, smelly prose, with flies buzzing around it. you're driven to keep reading because the plot is intriguing, but her sentences and paragraphs get in the way.
and she's awful at plotting. her devotion to the three act structure hampered all the stories immensely. probably the biggest reason catching fire was so messed up. especially telling that although movies are so much better than books at telling a story in three acts, whoever's directing the next one is going to have to completely restructure and re-center the plot to make it look like an actual movie.
― of family bonds and individual triumph. Narrated by Tim Allen, (zachlyon), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 03:00 (eleven years ago) link
It sounds very much like something a teenager would think to me.
(I enjoyed the movie more than I enjoy most action movies. I haven't read the books. I'm interested in why the sentence in question seems so horrible to people here because it is not obvious to me. Is it just the reliance on clichés? It has been a long time since I read YA lit but that sentence does not strike me as worse than most of the writing in the YA books that I remember.)
― EveningStar (Sund4r), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 05:33 (eleven years ago) link
OK, I did read the first Harry Potter book. Without having it around, I suppose Rowling would be less likely to rely on a cliché like "hold my tongue". I guess it's just that Collins's sentence is an unimaginative way of expressing that idea as opposed to being technically wrong or unrealistic? I think that's what Mordy was getting at here:
― EveningStar (Sund4r), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 05:40 (eleven years ago) link
(Thinking out loud, I guess, sorry. Also half-drunk so possibly slow.)
― EveningStar (Sund4r), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 05:45 (eleven years ago) link
the crappiness of her prose can't really be discerned by just looking at a few sentences. collins doesn't embarrass herself every few words like stephanie meyer bc her writing is much too plain and safe. every sentence is an unimaginative way of expressing an idea and after a few chapters it grows suffocating.
― of family bonds and individual triumph. Narrated by Tim Allen, (zachlyon), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 05:58 (eleven years ago) link
i should WATCH battle royale too given how many years it's been on my must-watch list (i am just incapable of ever committing to a DVD though) (also not quite sure how they work)
you're driven to keep reading because the plot is intriguing
that bit is the bit i'm getting at. if YA authors like collins and rowling were straight-up bad writers you wouldn't be driven to read on b/c that's what bad writing boils down to imo - a book that loses my interest or that i don't want to finish. if you're driven to keep reading they're doing something very crucial right. it might not be the prose style but the prose style isn't necessarily the most impt ingredient
― liberté, égalité, beyoncé (lex pretend), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 06:35 (eleven years ago) link
bad or good writing doesn't boil down to any one thing. it's both macro and micro. maybe your standard boils down to "do i want to keep reading this or not" but that doesn't stop bad prose from being bad prose, and for the most part people here aren't saying anything beyond that. though i am also saying that she is terrible at plotting her books.
being driven to keep on reading... i don't think that's enough. given the lack of payoff that typically greets stories based on intrigue. and after reading through the three books in a few days (and obv towards the end i was reading just to be done with it already) there wasn't much of that 'payoff' (ie 'a feeling that reading these books has contributed anything to me aside from a brief distraction'). i might have said this earlier, but the one thing i think collins is really good at is constructing individual scenarios that are original and compelling. but those were largely only compelling within their own meta universe. it didn't strike me on an emotional level or an intellectual one, the writing itself wasn't beautiful enough to keep my heart pounding, the action was incomprehensible. i wanted to keep reading but that hardly matters because i don't put much weight in a writer's ability to keep me curious.
and from my understanding, if a YA novel/series does not keep eyes glued on the page, they're DOA.
― of family bonds and individual triumph. Narrated by Tim Allen, (zachlyon), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 06:58 (eleven years ago) link
also there's a love triangle
― of family bonds and individual triumph. Narrated by Tim Allen, (zachlyon), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 07:00 (eleven years ago) link
maybe your standard boils down to "do i want to keep reading this or not" but that doesn't stop bad prose from being bad prose
But it does stop it from mattering.
the writing itself wasn't beautiful enough to keep my heart pounding
But this isn't the writing's job!
the action was incomprehensible
Yeah no, I'm not sure you read these books now.
― Andrew Farrell, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 07:04 (eleven years ago) link
its cool how the 'capital' is this place with all this fascist architecture and everyone who lives there is a humongous fruit, really makes you yearn for the simple honest country folk of the districts
― Hungry4Ass, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 07:11 (eleven years ago) link
yes, if that's all you care about, but that is not a standard i even understand. i've read plenty of crap things to the end because they knew how to keep me curious. if i started reading twilight i'd probably want to keep reading out of MORBID curiosity. that doesn't make it quality writing.
you separated that from my list of jobs writing COULD do to win me over. it failed all of them, including that. and you are most likely taking my usage of "beautiful" and "keep my heart pounding" too literally. you could replace them with "good" and "make me appreciate the english language" (not an easy task!)
ha my movie criticism was leaking into my book criticism. incomprehensibility was only a big problem in the last third of mockingjay, when i had no idea how to visualize anything she was writing, and when i could, the images were ridiculously OTT. also had the same problem someone mentioned earlier with the murder clock in catching fire. oh, and that other action part of mockingjay when that one district is under attack. actually if i hadn't seen the movie first, i have no idea if the action of the first book would've worked any better. it mostly comes down her describing things badly, which she more or less admits.
― of family bonds and individual triumph. Narrated by Tim Allen, (zachlyon), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 07:29 (eleven years ago) link
What I mean by that is that if the book is telling an interesting and compelling story in an effective way, what good is good writing? Also I am wondering if many of the people complaining about stinky writing in this thread have actually read EG Dan Brown, where the writing is actually fighting the story, but the story is still compelling (NB I am not considering DB anything to aim at)
Fair point, I have indeed mistaken what you were saying there, taking you too literally.
I don't think she describes things badly (though I haven't actually read anything beyond The Hunger Games), but I am totally down with her being uninterested in picture-painting beyond what's necessary for the plot + characterisation (though like DJP it's possible I've burnt out the bit of my brain that should care about it with an infusion of pulp when I was younger).
― Andrew Farrell, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 11:52 (eleven years ago) link
haha "younger", ahem
btw read the Wool omnibus, that was fun
― I'M THAT POSTA, AAAAAAAAAH (DJP), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 11:56 (eleven years ago) link
I didn't expect to, but I actually liked the movie. One question, were those dog creature things at the end holograms or were they real?
― bark ruffalo (latebloomer), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 12:12 (eleven years ago) link
it was kind of confusing in the movie, and there's no way I'm bothering with fan wikis or reading the damn book.
― bark ruffalo (latebloomer), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 12:15 (eleven years ago) link
i was informed afterwards that the dogs were made from like the uh... fucking souls of the dead contestants or something. or dna. i dont know
― Hungry4Ass, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 12:24 (eleven years ago) link
Yeah, in the book they have the faces of the dead contestants, but it's really not clear whether this is just the games masters fucking with the remaining Tributes or what.
― Andrew Farrell, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 12:25 (eleven years ago) link
Not the entire faces, just the eyes.
― Never translate Dutch (jaymc), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 13:10 (eleven years ago) link
― Hungry4Ass, Tuesday, May 22, 2012 2:11 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
ah yes, hmmmmm
― goole, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 14:02 (eleven years ago) link
fwiw the subsequent books do go into that whole setup a little bit more
I'm kind of lolling at myself for defending these books so much, I must be really bored
― that is a weird thing to bring up over lean cuisine (DJP), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 14:04 (eleven years ago) link
that line just makes me think "i can't turn my face into a heart"
― thomp, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 14:23 (eleven years ago) link
I know what I'm getting DJP for Christmas.
― He's sick of the Swiss. He don't like em. (Austerity Ponies), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 14:27 (eleven years ago) link
I know what I'm getting Austerity Ponies for Christmas.
― that is a weird thing to bring up over lean cuisine (DJP), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 14:30 (eleven years ago) link
Would you like that gift-wrapped?
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 14:33 (eleven years ago) link
thanks for the etsy link. i'm buying one of those bracelets right now.
― Mordy, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 15:02 (eleven years ago) link
or maybe...
― He's sick of the Swiss. He don't like em. (Austerity Ponies), Tuesday, 22 May 2012 15:40 (eleven years ago) link
Philip Seymour Hoffman cast as Plutarch!
― Never translate Dutch (jaymc), Monday, 9 July 2012 22:16 (eleven years ago) link
ooh, that's good casting!
― the bibles fake lol don't trust a book (reddening), Monday, 9 July 2012 23:21 (eleven years ago) link
too lazy to verify but twitter is saying they're splitting "mockingjay" into two movies? dumb but not NEARLY as dumb as splitting "breaking dawn" into two movies. at least mockingjay has the pretense of like, introducing district 13 and the war and stuff.
― the bibles fake lol don't trust a book (reddening), Tuesday, 10 July 2012 21:59 (eleven years ago) link
Haven't read anything beyond the first yet, but at this point I think its just so they can milk a sure-fire franchise a little longer, nothing to do with actually following the plot.
― heated debate over derpy hooves (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Tuesday, 10 July 2012 22:00 (eleven years ago) link
the 'break the last book of a series up into 2 movies' trend is kind of silly and transparently greedy, but probably even pretty short novels usually have enough happening that you can get 4-5 hours of film out of it as easily as 2 so i'm kinda like ah go for it who cares.
― some dude, Wednesday, 11 July 2012 02:13 (eleven years ago) link
yeah it's obv a cash grab but p much all the HP movies after the third one had enough stuff going on to warrant split movies, and the three that weren't split had so much incomprehensible crap crammed into a couple hours and they sucked for it. the first three books fit pretty perfectly so it's going to be a problem when the next four books are more than twice as long but WB keeps the same time limit on the movies. deathly hallows movies weren't great movies but they at least had enough room to be good movies (in the hands of a less boring director and screenwriter)
problem with this is the hunger games books are all the same length and the first book adapted very easily
― NASCAR, surfing, raising chickens, owning land (zachlyon), Wednesday, 11 July 2012 02:30 (eleven years ago) link
probably even pretty short novels usually have enough happening that you can get 4-5 hours of film out of it as easily as 2
yeah one of the best novel-to-film adaptations i've seen was brokeback mtn, which was tellingly a slim 100-page novella - the film had so much space to breathe and linger on stuff rather than having to cram plot points and exposition in at every turn
― bitch I'm on the 242 (lex pretend), Wednesday, 11 July 2012 08:05 (eleven years ago) link
OK, Melissa Leo is in talks to play Mags? I know haggard-looking characters are kind of her thing, but she's like 30 years younger than the character.
― Never translate Dutch (jaymc), Wednesday, 18 July 2012 15:42 (eleven years ago) link
its cool how the 'capital' is this place with all this fascist architecture and everyone who lives there is a humongous fruit, really makes you yearn for the simple honest country folk of the districts― Hungry4Ass, Tuesday, May 22, 2012 6:11 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― Hungry4Ass, Tuesday, May 22, 2012 6:11 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
yeah i mean really
plus what several people said upthread about how katniss never has to confront the conflict that the entire premise of the movie points to with big flashing arrows: what happens when allies have disposed of their enemies? at the very least let's see how the band of baddies deals with this situation? but it's completely elided in favor of what, a kind of disheartening ending where the heroes become what they aren't, the very thing peeta said he was determined not to do, and it sort of dribbles out.
NB i have not read the book
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 23:53 (eleven years ago) link
and i mean the districts' down-by-the-old-mill aesthetic is picturesque but in a society where inequality is stretched to such extremes having clothes in an entirely different vocabulary doesn't make sense; they'd be living on cast-offs, kansas city mega-chiefs championship jerseys from 8 years ago, a birthday frock worn once by a capitol citizen and then donated selflessly to the hoi polloi, subsequently mended 20 times but still retaining a spangle here and there
also wtf with "anti-chekhov's brooch" - constantly referred to, zero payoff
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 16 August 2012 00:03 (eleven years ago) link
You mean the mockingjay pin? That'll become more significant in later films.
― doglatting (jaymc), Thursday, 16 August 2012 00:50 (eleven years ago) link
the last book is called it
― NASCAR, surfing, raising chickens, owning land (zachlyon), Thursday, 16 August 2012 02:06 (eleven years ago) link
kansas city mega-chiefs championship jerseys from 8 years ago
i was gonna answer this with "this world would have practically no memory of any current sport" but then i started wondering just WHEN this all takes place? the way katniss talks about how little she knows of 'when panem was america' and the entire structure of the country being different made me think it was 500-1000+ years in the future. but their most advanced technology (CHOOSE-YOUR-OWN-SHOWERS) seems to be pretty much attainable to us now, or in the near future if we really wanted to make genetically modified killer animals.
― NASCAR, surfing, raising chickens, owning land (zachlyon), Thursday, 16 August 2012 02:21 (eleven years ago) link
I'm not sure if it's even clear if there's much in the way of books? Though this is related to the questions above re: what's on the TV the rest of the time?
Well, I don't think that's accidental, like - the story, and the characters inside the story interested in "a good story" are very deliberate about providing the obvious tensions, and when they run out, Katniss and Peeta have to face that question, attempt mutual suicide. And when they decide against that (because their other motivation, to bring food back home for their Sector, kicks in), then it's C for Complicity.
― Andrew Farrell, Thursday, 16 August 2012 06:59 (eleven years ago) link
i was gonna answer this with "this world would have practically no memory of any current sport"
then depression-era clothes make even less sense! i just meant that as an example, though. my point is that the exploited of our world live off the scraps and leftovers of the rich yet in this movie they appear to have their own separate haberdashery or something.
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 16 August 2012 09:18 (eleven years ago) link
right andrew i understand what's happening at the end of the movie, it just feels hollow and tremendously unsatisfying. you can argue that it's a brave subversive thing for a movie to attempt, this kind of non-resolution, and maybe you'd be right, i dunno? something to do with what "we" need from a narrative, and katniss and peeta provide it, but it's bullshit? and that reveals something about how we're similar to the capitol viewership of this future society? or something?
i could buy that. worse to me is the dodging of the question of what happens once alliances in the game crumble. when you have to kill a friend. or a frenemy. surely this alone is the drama that has sustained this television show/ritual for seven decades despite all the other reasons why it makes no sense. but we never see this conflict addressed. i felt surely the gang of baddies would provide a "safe" way for us to see how this might play out, as a kind of warm-up for how our heroine's going to face the same issue - with rue, with the red-haired girl, with peeta, whomever.
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 16 August 2012 09:33 (eleven years ago) link
also to echo the wtfs upthread about sponsorships. such a big deal is made of them in the movie, it's the justification upon which rests the need to appeal to the public, to get a high score in the assessment, etc - we are constantly told by woody that sponsorships are absolutely critical to success because you can get a leg up with equipment and supplies. but then we are.... never shown anyone receiving anything from a sponsor? in the game? unless i missed something?
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 16 August 2012 09:44 (eleven years ago) link
guys, i don't think Suzanne Collins put much thought into her future world
― Number None, Thursday, 16 August 2012 09:45 (eleven years ago) link
but then we are.... never shown anyone receiving anything from a sponsor? in the game? unless i missed something?
yeah we are, at least twice - medicine both times i think
― lex pretend, Thursday, 16 August 2012 09:46 (eleven years ago) link
that's not from a sponsor she "won" through being appealing it's a special treat from her mentor isn't it?
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 16 August 2012 10:10 (eleven years ago) link
the beginning of the game was thrilling and nightmarish, when they're all on those pedestals and the corcnucopia is waiting for them, and the first dash which cuts the number of contestants in half
i was sort of wondering why everyone is so stupid as to run straight for the goodies when they've presumably seen the results of such a strategy (and every strategy) every year on their TVs
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 16 August 2012 10:24 (eleven years ago) link
no it's def from a sponsor
and because they think they're big and strong enough to survive, esp if they're from the trained districts
― lex pretend, Thursday, 16 August 2012 10:26 (eleven years ago) link
i also think a lot of the things we're not shown, that could be entire stories in themselves, are kinda key to why this has become such a phenomenon - creating a fantasy world and leaving tons of room for your imagination to fill in the blanks is what's always made this kind of literature compelling (as opposed to, like, the prose). and that's especially the case when kids nowadays are relating to the material through online discussions, fan fiction etc etc - the story does not end at the actual story as written by the author and suzanne collins understands this
― lex pretend, Thursday, 16 August 2012 10:29 (eleven years ago) link
yeah, that sounds very right
i dunno i just figured we were gonna get some treasure-of-the-sierra-madre type paranoid shiz out of this, it's the whole reason i watched. it had nothing, i repeat nothing to do with watching the impossibly gorgeous jennifer lawrence shoot magically replenishing arrows around the place in tight clothing
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 16 August 2012 10:45 (eleven years ago) link
i think we were shown very brief shots of haymitch chatting up some rich people, presumably convincing them to be sponsors. then haymitch is the one in charge of sending items along using that sponsorship money. it makes more sense in the movie than the book actually, because in the book it gets MORE expensive to send things the farther along in the game it is...for some reason? and the districts themselves send along, like, a chunk of bread to their player and it represents incredible cost and sacrifice for them to do so. idk
― deist mountain dew (reddening), Thursday, 16 August 2012 10:48 (eleven years ago) link
Oh i see, Woody's the go-between! Ahhh. I was confused because in the movie he's watching her on TV, we see her wincing in pain from her wound and then we cut to him looking determined and striding purposefully away, like he's about to "get on the case" somehow and then next thing you know there's a parachute floating toward her with a note from him inside. I guess he went to his contact list of sponsors and was like "OK now's the time to make good on your promises, this girl's goin down"
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 16 August 2012 10:57 (eleven years ago) link
i think we covered upthread how the "hunger games as tv show" was a bit of a missed opportunity from the perspective of seeing it through the viewers' eyes
― lex pretend, Thursday, 16 August 2012 10:59 (eleven years ago) link
the "hunger games as moral dilemma" was a missed opportunity as well, which leaves you with nothing much left over, other than close-ups of jennifer lawrence looking gorgeous which, you know what i'm OK with that actually
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 16 August 2012 11:08 (eleven years ago) link
My memory is that Woody gladhanding is inbetween the "Katniss needs help" and "Katniss gets help" scenes, I think. What's not as clear in the movie is that being the only person from District 12 to win the games doesn't actually confer much status on him - he's basically the town drunk 51 weeks of the year.
― Andrew Farrell, Thursday, 16 August 2012 11:27 (eleven years ago) link
I thought he lived in the Capitol cause of his celeb status
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 16 August 2012 11:31 (eleven years ago) link
Maybe I should have watched this movie at some point before 1am
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 16 August 2012 11:34 (eleven years ago) link
They established this very neatly in the book, but I can see why the scene where he first meets Katniss and Peeta and then throws up all over the floor might've been the first to go.
― Andrew Farrell, Thursday, 16 August 2012 12:56 (eleven years ago) link
I felt with the clothing that the more working class districts had kept to sort of functional, plain wear because they have to work in them. Harder to work in a castoff bright blue wig and fake McQueen heels or whatever! Also: they probably sew their own clothes, so a simpler pattern would be easier/use less fabric? It's been a while since I read the books so not certain if that's touched upon. The Capitol people by and large are very wasteful [TINY SPOILER: they have a pill or drink that makes them throw up so they can gorge themselves on food at parties!], unlikely that they'd even think to donate!
The sponsorship thing could definitely have been clearer in the movie - I almost missed the scene of Woody talking to them, iirc you can't even hear what he's saying? Poor planning for those who hadn't read the books! It was pretty shit to cut out the scene where Rue's district sends Katniss a piece of their distinctive bread after Rue's death. That was a pretty touching moment in the books. Because the district is so poor, she assumes almost everyone in the district chipped in to get that piece to her.
― she started dancing to that (Finefinemusic), Thursday, 16 August 2012 13:13 (eleven years ago) link
functional's one thing but heritage vintage patterns from ca. 300 years ago?
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 16 August 2012 22:45 (eleven years ago) link
well, if they are even using patterns? just simple, functional clothes imo. what would you have them wear?
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ayV4QQAggPY/T4LxSdCW1DI/AAAAAAAAHOk/P3vBvM1dtEg/s1600/katniss+reaping+sign.jpg
― she started dancing to that (Finefinemusic), Friday, 17 August 2012 14:30 (eleven years ago) link
I haven't seen the movie but please, those are not somehow fashion-neutral "simple, functional" clothes. Simple and functional would be T-tunics and shapeless, pull-on pants with drawstring waists. There would be no pleats, no gathers, no belts, and one size would fit most. Every single person in that picture is wearing something that has extra, unnecessary fabric and work in it.
― check the name, no caps, boom, i'm (Laurel), Friday, 17 August 2012 14:36 (eleven years ago) link
Buttons? BUTTONS? Do you know how much work buttonholes are??? The poors of the future will be wearing shapeless pull-over tunics made of recycled fibers flattened into a colorless mulch.
― check the name, no caps, boom, i'm (Laurel), Friday, 17 August 2012 14:37 (eleven years ago) link
iirc (from teh books) that dress was her mother's 'fancy' dress and her mother came from a higher-class than her father and had kept a bunch of fancier stuff
― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Friday, 17 August 2012 14:39 (eleven years ago) link
well, I was talking about in comparison to the Capitol's dress, which is the 'current fashion' in Panem:
http://theinsider.retailmenot.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/2/files/2012/03/Capitol-citizens.jpg
― she started dancing to that (Finefinemusic), Friday, 17 August 2012 14:39 (eleven years ago) link
just cuz they're poor doesn't mean they don't deserve buttons ;_; I had forgotten about that detail, rrobyn!
― she started dancing to that (Finefinemusic), Friday, 17 August 2012 14:40 (eleven years ago) link
and everybody kind of dressed up for that dayxp
― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Friday, 17 August 2012 14:40 (eleven years ago) link
Well then that was a poor choice of photos to show people wearing "simple, functional" clothes, wasn't it.
― check the name, no caps, boom, i'm (Laurel), Friday, 17 August 2012 14:41 (eleven years ago) link
such is my memory, haha - i can remember little details about people's lives but i can't remember the name of the day people get picked to go to the hunger gamesxp
― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Friday, 17 August 2012 14:42 (eleven years ago) link
meow meow! lol ;)xp
Laurel, I feel like you're being a bit condescending? Maybe you don't mean to be. I was simply responding to TH's post where he says "in a society where inequality is stretched to such extremes having clothes in an entirely different vocabulary doesn't make sense; they'd be living on cast-offs, ... subsequently mended 20 times but still retaining a spangle here and there"
Do you disagree with my ideas that the Capitol people probably *don't* donate a lot of castoffs to the districts, or that the clothes they wear are useless for working in anyway? Next time I will say simpleR to appease the seamstresses around, but those outfits (and as rrobyn pointed out - those are their fineries, they dress up because that is a big 'event') are still much more functional than the crazy shit going on in the capitol. And it's set in the future, would be weird to have them decided to throw all construction knowledge aside and go back to draw-string pants.
― she started dancing to that (Finefinemusic), Friday, 17 August 2012 14:46 (eleven years ago) link
So the riches of the future will dress like insane, colorblind Victorians, good to know.
― check the name, no caps, boom, i'm (Laurel), Friday, 17 August 2012 14:46 (eleven years ago) link
i think there's def a "movie ugly" thing going on with costumes though, yknow, the designer sack
― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Friday, 17 August 2012 14:48 (eleven years ago) link
i just thought the aping of Depression-era tech and fashion was obviously v effective as a shorthand for "these people have it tough" but unimaginative and pretty unlikely, not two qualities i really want from speculative fiction
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, 17 August 2012 14:50 (eleven years ago) link
and there are still seamstresses and dressmakers and tailors in district 12 i would thinkand katniss has her dad's leather jacket and who knows where that came from - the past! i assumethe hunger games is obv so full of holes, as previously pointed out, but whatevs!
― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Friday, 17 August 2012 14:51 (eleven years ago) link
TH otm. I hate this movie and I haven't even seen it.
― check the name, no caps, boom, i'm (Laurel), Friday, 17 August 2012 14:52 (eleven years ago) link
this conversation reminds me of how my parents rave over a movie or tv programme's attention to costume detail and barely care about the plot or characters while i'm the other way around
you are all probably right that the costumery is inaccurate but it's not something that matters to me, really
― lex pretend, Friday, 17 August 2012 16:50 (eleven years ago) link
there's no "accuracy" here, it's sci-fi, it just seems dumb, much like the plot and the characters
it's a shame because the PREMISE and the general outline of the setting is just killer (no pun intended), sort of a mashup of lord of the flies, the lottery, the most dangerous game, battle royale and brave new world - right in my wheelhouse
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, 17 August 2012 16:54 (eleven years ago) link
Catching Fire trailer. Phillip Seymour Hoffman's in this?!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jyPnQw_Lqds
― DavidM, Monday, 15 April 2013 14:21 (ten years ago) link
I didn't know where else to put this but LOLOLOL
http://d3j5vwomefv46c.cloudfront.net/photos/large/767569614.gif?1367957167
― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, 8 May 2013 20:09 (ten years ago) link
(JLaw photobombing Sarah Jessica Parker at Met Ball - Marillon Cotillard and Lena Dunham loling in background)
― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, 8 May 2013 20:10 (ten years ago) link
Maybe it's just me, but for me, this movie doesn't really BEGIN until Lenny Kravitz walks on screen.
― Murder in the Rue McClanahan (jaymc), Sunday, 30 June 2013 03:46 (ten years ago) link
Also, Alicia Keys? You totally just read Hunger Games before you wrote that song, don't even front like you didn't.
― Murder in the Rue McClanahan (jaymc), Sunday, 30 June 2013 04:00 (ten years ago) link
btw tho this is my 2nd viewing
― Murder in the Rue McClanahan (jaymc), Sunday, 30 June 2013 04:01 (ten years ago) link
hunger games is like the cure, you know. Like "subsersive" stuff for normals.
― Murder in the Rue McClanahan (jaymc), Sunday, 30 June 2013 04:02 (ten years ago) link
Uniforms in the arena are like 2004 u.s. badminton team uniforms.
― Murder in the Rue McClanahan (jaymc), Sunday, 30 June 2013 04:04 (ten years ago) link
girl power
― Murder in the Rue McClanahan (jaymc), Sunday, 30 June 2013 04:11 (ten years ago) link
I saw this about two months ago at home with my wife on DVD. It was ok. The story was tethered to the book, so it had more exposition than the movie actually needed and (I don't doubt) far less than the book contained. The costumes, sets and effects looked good enough that you knew what they were aiming at. The acting was nothing special, but the lead who played katniss carried her part well enough on the whole and she was the only person who really mattered. Of course the veteran actors were much better in their small roles.
It struck me as a decently workmanlike adaptation of a very long book written for a YA audience. I'm sure that audience lapped it up. Good for them. Just ok for me.
― Aimless, Sunday, 30 June 2013 04:26 (ten years ago) link
Just finished books two and three in short succession. It might be just exhaustion from doing too much at once, but boy did these fall off. Book one had lots of problems but it was relatively tight, and the central questions/conflicts for the main character locked in with the themes of the book and basically it made sense.
Books two and three, besides being just a brutal exercise in thinking up every sadistic thing you could do to the cast (and blaming it on the villains) are repetitious, flabby and unfocused - episodic rambles punctuated by unearned deaths, indistinguishable convalescence scenes, and a thousand sleepless nights. On one level I get some of this: our protagonist is a subaltern trauma victim many times over and I'm glad that's not prettified out of the picture; as well, I think she (mostly) manages to make the violence totally unglamorous and horrifying, and keep up the attack on the world that finds it entertaining (in the first book) and a necessary evil (in the last). Even the endlessly fretted-over romance story has all kinds of good ideas going in - I imagine the line between liking someone and performing that affection resonates like crazy for the teen audience. But things are just so unimaginative. She has more or less 1-2 ideas per character, all based on how they relate to Katniss and nothing more, and they almost never surprise you. It's all about plot, then, but the plot is stuck on replay for so much of the series. There are huge chunks of the second book I can't remember and I read the entire thing yesterday.
Also suffers intensely from the Harry Potter problem where our protagonist grows nowhere and learns nothing, or maybe learns the same lesson repeatedly to no avail. This is a real problem for a series whose climax hinges on a big, ambiguous moral choice (the outcome of which being btw covered up by both characters and author); the reasoning behind it is fuzzy and can as easily be chalked up to the same kind of emotionally-driven impulse with which she starts the series. It's telling that the other characters can interpret it as insanity, and that so many times the narration has to insist how much has changed since page one of book one, because you might otherwise not realize it. Versus something like the end of Nausicaa (with a similar choice made), it's all very hollow. And I agree about how undeveloped the world feels - very detailed in certain ways and bafflingly vague in others.
It's annoying, because the outline/major themes really SHOULD be in a smash kids' book series. Like, this is basically Society of the Spectacle crossed with The Culture Industry, set in the Tripod trilogy by John Christopher, and specifically trying to make a point about reality TV and pro sports and what they might say about us. Okay, sure. But they could be better books along the way.
I did like a few things - the political intrigues, some of the monsters/etc., and everything we learn about the past winners (which is coincidentally some of the most useful world-building, maybe because it's Katniss finding things out rather than her laying them out for us, and there remain unanswered questions).
The ending is bugging me more and more even as I'm typing this. Ugh!
― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, 27 August 2013 05:48 (ten years ago) link
Also something very ''Star Wars prequels'' about a lot of the characters from later on...sketchily introduced and they show up constantly in conferences/battles but all they do is talk and die. If they have physical traits or individual personalities or speech patterns or ways of moving around a room, the book doesn't let it show. They just talk and die, talk and die, in shot-reverse-shot.
― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, 27 August 2013 05:55 (ten years ago) link
I saw this Catching Fire film and I can safely say beyond any shadow of a doubt that it was the worst most incredibly dull film I have ever seen.
― bets wishes (jel --), Sunday, 24 November 2013 14:00 (ten years ago) link
you are nuts.
― Lesbian has fucking riffs for days (Neanderthal), Sunday, 24 November 2013 14:03 (ten years ago) link
like ok if you didn't like it but if you think this is the 'worst most dull thing' ever I got a stack of DVDs for you.
― Lesbian has fucking riffs for days (Neanderthal), Sunday, 24 November 2013 14:04 (ten years ago) link
Well, I may have been going for dramatic effect...
― bets wishes (jel --), Sunday, 24 November 2013 14:07 (ten years ago) link
Walter Chaw/my thoughts exactly:
It'll make the money it will make, earn no new converts to the flock, and be the type of movie you hope no one ever brings up in polite company because you don't want to look like an asshole.
― a fifth of misty beethoven (cryptosicko), Sunday, 24 November 2013 17:10 (ten years ago) link
I loved it. But I also loved the first film.
― Murgatroid, Sunday, 24 November 2013 17:53 (ten years ago) link
if it was worse than the first one "worst most incredibly dull film" seems entirely possible bring on yr stack of dvds bro
― resulting post (rogermexico.), Monday, 25 November 2013 03:14 (ten years ago) link
The first one felt like it was five hours long. Not bad so much as interminable.
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Monday, 25 November 2013 03:16 (ten years ago) link
Some movies should be labeled clearly "This movie is for someone else, but not for YOU!" I'm pretty sure that those who found the movie insufferable are just not in the intended audience demographic. I don't plan to see it any time soon for just this reason.
― Aimless, Monday, 25 November 2013 05:22 (ten years ago) link
See also: the Twilight film series.
― Aimless, Monday, 25 November 2013 05:36 (ten years ago) link
I already saw The Running Man and Rollerball and Battle Royale, I think I'll sit this whole thing out out.
― Viceroy, Monday, 25 November 2013 06:06 (ten years ago) link
So weird how it's always art geared towards women, children, etc. that people (I won't say that I know you well enough to say that people doing this are always men, like the poster above me) feel they should announce that they're not partaking in. I'm not saying it's a strict rule, there's definitely stuff geared towards straight white men that people do this to as well, but it's mostly stuff like Hunger Games, Twilight, Taylor Swift, pop music in general, etc. that dudes are like, I'M GONNA SIT THIS ONE OUT AND LET THE WHOLE WORLD KNOW.
― Murgatroid, Monday, 25 November 2013 06:19 (ten years ago) link
http://images.chron.com/blogs/askacat/hatcat.JPG
― buzza, Monday, 25 November 2013 06:22 (ten years ago) link
Murgatroid OTM
This was pretty good
― goth drama is universal (latebloomer), Monday, 25 November 2013 06:33 (ten years ago) link
First one was pretty entertaining too.
― goth drama is universal (latebloomer), Monday, 25 November 2013 06:38 (ten years ago) link
Seriously, I'll take the vaguely left-leaning dystopian scifi action over boarding school wizards any day
― goth drama is universal (latebloomer), Monday, 25 November 2013 06:43 (ten years ago) link
I honestly don't get why people are saying how Catching Fire is a MASSIVE improvement over the first movie. I mean, it IS an improvement, but the improvements are subtle (more moments of levity, the cast seems generally more into it this time, etc.) so the improvements don't make it that much better.
― Murgatroid, Monday, 25 November 2013 06:43 (ten years ago) link
Artforum:
"What are The Hunger Games books, and now movies, really about? Exactly what it looks like: war. ...
Two things are certain in America: War and sequels."
http://www.artforum.com/film/id=44211
― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 1 December 2013 18:47 (ten years ago) link
i went with mr veg to see this today -- haven't read the books...i was kinda bored through most of this. dug PSH but mostly just because he was just being PSH without a mohawk ponytail or a tophat or stupid circus clothes
― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 30 December 2013 02:27 (ten years ago) link
well of course
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Course-Hunger-Games-Has-Digitally-Recreate-Philip-Seymour-Hoffman-Mockingjay-41552.html
― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 9 March 2014 15:12 (ten years ago) link
It's a good thing we have important satirical works like The Hunger Games to remind us of the horrors of a possible future where human life and death become irrelevant to the needs of narrative in a palliatory mass-media spectacle.
― Doctor Casino, Sunday, 9 March 2014 15:40 (ten years ago) link
that's not what hunger games is about at all!
― balls, Sunday, 9 March 2014 16:12 (ten years ago) link
i love the voice of cinema blend
― mustread guy (schlump), Sunday, 9 March 2014 16:17 (ten years ago) link
it's in there! xpost
― Doctor Casino, Sunday, 9 March 2014 16:45 (ten years ago) link
so I got into a semi-argument the other night about this. I haven't read the books because I am not a 13yo girl; watched the first movie at the urging of my wife and a friend of ours. Friend was over on the weekend and we got to talking about it - basically I find the whole fascist police state conceit reactionary and that ruined everything else about it for me (the Minotaur myth parallels, the Jon Armstrong-style pop/fashion oppression parodic bits etc.) My problem with it is that if you're going to go the sci-fi dystopian route than your dystopia is only as effective as far as it mirrors actual current conditions/threats/fears. But the whole fascist police state thing is out-of-date - fascist police states aren't a threat in America, and the only people who think so are Tea Party reactionary idiots who think Obamacare's gonna take away their guns and give them to illegal immigrants etc. So why contruct a dystopia where an authoritarian state is the boogeyman? The current threats to our society are more explicitly capitalist in nature. Oligarchy, destruction of the ecosystem, corporate surveillance - the state is primarily a tangential player/enabler in these threats, it's not the driving force at all. So placing the state at the center of it and then building this silly pop culture scaffolding around it to support it doesn't really speak to any kind of fear I have, if anything it seems like misdirection by a right wing crank, which makes me suspicious of the whole enterprise.
I get that this doesn't even register w most people, who just want to see girl kick ass ooh look silly meta-media commentary and oh which guy will she end up with but it irritates me to have this reactionary crap out there in the broader culture. It seems like a misuse of the dystopian trope.
― Οὖτις, Monday, 16 June 2014 20:33 (nine years ago) link
and then there's the Battle Royale thing, a book/movie that I preferred and seemed to be more relevant and w a more interesting angle
― Οὖτις, Monday, 16 June 2014 20:34 (nine years ago) link
But... the angle of Battle Royale was also the reinforcement of the power of a fascist police state so I'm not sure how it's more relevant? (Better executed absolutely, but the Hunger Games story does twist in upon itself in some very interesting ways by the end of the third book.)
― Star Gentle Uterus (DJP), Monday, 16 June 2014 20:37 (nine years ago) link
Battle Royale was way more entertaining - but as I remember the backstory is never really explained very well. Hunger Games is supposed to be a spectacle at least, but Battle Royale was done in secret, wasn't it? The kids seemed to have no idea about it.
― Brio2, Monday, 16 June 2014 20:46 (nine years ago) link
found the evil government painfully relevant tbh in the first 2 movies. it's much more about the way power reinforces itself and how it operates from the individual outwards than it is about critiquing a particular formation of government.
the parallels to Battle Royale aren't that close either. the gov in BR is much more frightened of/repulsed by its teenage victims. HG's gov's relationship with youth is more celebratory, and it sacrifices them to get at their families, not because it fears youth itself.
― Naamloze vennootschap (Noodle Vague), Monday, 16 June 2014 20:47 (nine years ago) link
Battle Royale also takes place on the Korean peninsula iirc
― Οὖτις, Monday, 16 June 2014 20:48 (nine years ago) link
BR - the first one, anyway - at its heart is a neat inversion of the sentiment behind Lord of the Flies
HG seems more about how a hypermediated environment eats up youth to serve adult ends
― Naamloze vennootschap (Noodle Vague), Monday, 16 June 2014 20:51 (nine years ago) link
The Battle Royale precedent is really not that bothersome to me tbh - I will say that given China and North Korea and the uniquely weird conservative bent of Japan's gov't and their history as an actual fascist state, the Asian fascist police state dystopia seems more resonant/relevant.
But Hunger Games takes place in America. and it's an America that is by and large completely unrecognizable to me, apart from the ludicrous gameshow window dressing.
― Οὖτις, Monday, 16 June 2014 20:54 (nine years ago) link
i don't think the gameshow is window dressing, seeing as it gives the series its title and the plot revolves around it - hence also the Roman names - the whole thing is about bread and circuses
― Naamloze vennootschap (Noodle Vague), Monday, 16 June 2014 20:56 (nine years ago) link
An unpopular opinion, I know, but I really hate Battle Royale. If it's a satire, what exactly is being satirized? If the adults are the villains, why introduce some evil kids if not solely for the purpose of a big Lethal Weapon-style showdown? That Hunger Games essentially looks like a watered down copy of something I already disliked is the main reason why I've stayed away from that whole thing.
― Funk autocorrect (cryptosicko), Monday, 16 June 2014 20:59 (nine years ago) link
kids in battle royale aren't aware they've been chosen until they're there (w/ a few exceptions). there is awareness in the media, you have the media swarming around a 'winner' at the beginning but it's not a tv show like the hunger games iirc. the program there is some sort of deliberate anti-youth thing, obv echoes of columbine w/ it but the paranoia it's tapping seems more similar to the early 90s fear of 'superpredators'. battle royale 2 probably closer thematically to hunger games w/ it's war on terror metaphor. hunger games pretty openly and somewhat on the nose response to iraq war, poor youth being sent to their deaths in a spectacle for the benefit of the rich. the fascist state is anti-bush crit though my understanding is the politics of the books are more nuanced and cynical than that (my understanding is the rebels are revealed to be fairly worthless as well, meet the new boss same as the old boss).
― balls, Monday, 16 June 2014 21:01 (nine years ago) link
as i say BR is quite specifically Lord of the Flies reversed, and thus satirizes and not wholly unpopular opinion amongst a section of adults: kids are naturally wild beasts. BR turns that on its head by having an adult world that goes to elaborate lengths to transform its kids into wild beasts, simply to exorcize that underlying fear. not so much satire as documentary.
― Naamloze vennootschap (Noodle Vague), Monday, 16 June 2014 21:02 (nine years ago) link
Hunger Games is obviously a mashup of a lot of tropes and clichés, but at heart it wants to be a epic of The Hero. The Evil Government trope is just there to give the Hero a nemesis, to throw obstacles at her and her fellow heros, and to be an evil counterpart to all that is Good and Clean and Loving and Human. Οὖτις has every right to find the HG a particularly unthinking and reactionary misuse of the trope of Evil Government, but the number of 13 year old girls who are into the politics of HG as opposed to the Hero Quest aspect (with super cool archery feats!) are probably not numerous enough to be worth worrying over.
― Aimless, Monday, 16 June 2014 21:28 (nine years ago) link
ah great some ott misogyny
― balls, Monday, 16 June 2014 21:58 (nine years ago) link
w/ it's war on terror metaphor. hunger games pretty openly and somewhat on the nose response to iraq war, poor youth being sent to their deaths in a spectacle for the benefit of the rich
idg this. American troops weren't forced to fight each other, they were fed a bunch of fictitious lies about a demonized, external enemy.
― Οὖτις, Monday, 16 June 2014 22:24 (nine years ago) link
I don't think that word means quite what you think it means, balls.
― Aimless, Monday, 16 June 2014 23:35 (nine years ago) link
I remember reading an interview with the author where she said the inspiration for HG was flipping the channel between Iraq War news reporting and a reality game show like Survivor... So I think it's meant more of a comment on poor kids killing poor kids, TV entertainment, and the rich and powerful using the reality of the poor's struggles as political theatre which they sell back to the poor as heroics... maybe a bit more a mix of ideas than a direct analogue to either Iraq or now.
― Brio2, Monday, 16 June 2014 23:38 (nine years ago) link
― Aimless, Monday, June 16, 2014 7:35 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
nah that's the correct usage
― linda cardellini (zachlyon), Tuesday, 17 June 2014 01:24 (nine years ago) link
I just watched this. I kind of liked the set up and all the TV stuff, Truman-show-esque as it was. Ending is basically 'oh the people in charge changed their minds' and not really because she did anything mind-blowing or outwitted them particularly? just 'they probably won't like this because TV' - so a massive anti-climax. And yeah, she never really has to make a morally challenging decision. But I'm also glad there was no 'wake up sheeple!'.
much bigger problem during the action scenes is that when peetah and that vicious psychopath kid were fighting at the end they looked so much alike i couldn't tell who was who (blonde buff young caucasians all look the same to me i guess)i could tell them apart but this was the only time the shakeycam got annoying for me too, because it was so jerky that you couldn't tell what katniss actually shot such that she'd hit cato without him taking peeta with him.(i looked it up afterwards, she shoots cato's hand so he's forced to release peeta as he falls backwards.)― lex pretend, Thursday, 29 March 2012 09:34 (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― lex pretend, Thursday, 29 March 2012 09:34 (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
See this is one of the very few bits of obvious 'strategy' or something: Peter spends ages pointing to that spot on his hand and gesturing!
― kinder, Sunday, 29 June 2014 21:15 (nine years ago) link
Just watched Mockingjay Pt 1 last night, and holy hell, how in the world did this film get made? 2 hours long and virtually no action and very little happening at all. I liked the first two quite a bit and am amazed that they messed this one up so badly. Katniss, who was a great character in the other films, comes off in this one as basically useless. Why in the world do they stretch books into two long movies when the first one is nothing but set up for the second?
― Free Me's Electric Trumpet (Moodles), Sunday, 26 April 2015 15:27 (eight years ago) link
just standard operating procedure for these things - spin the last book into two films, the first one of which will always be fucked because it makes no structural sense. watched Part 1 when it came out and it's exactly as you describe, but exactly what i expected.
― Pat Condell tha funkee homosapien (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 26 April 2015 16:01 (eight years ago) link
sorry, shd've just said "it's the money"
― Pat Condell tha funkee homosapien (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 26 April 2015 16:02 (eight years ago) link
also tbh the second two books probably could have been one book and chopped out three or four story arcs and ten characters that didn't really add anything.
― Doctor Casino, Sunday, 26 April 2015 16:14 (eight years ago) link
i never read the books, it was my daughter that persuaded me to watch the movies but i liked the first two. even tho she won't believe me that all the handsome young men look the same to me and i can't tell who the hell is who.
― Pat Condell tha funkee homosapien (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 26 April 2015 16:35 (eight years ago) link
i have napped through all of these movies so far
― difficult-difficult lemon-difficult (VegemiteGrrl), Sunday, 26 April 2015 16:45 (eight years ago) link
reading this for the first timedo they have to list every time katniss goes to sleep
― he sounds like a parrot eating a carrot (Crabbits), Sunday, 17 May 2015 20:52 (eight years ago) link
it's pretty good on the whole thoi decided kids probably like it so much because, developmentally, they feel like their actions & their crazy new feelings are the focus of worldwide scrutiny, so it's a good parable for adolescent feelings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_audience)
― he sounds like a parrot eating a carrot (Crabbits), Sunday, 17 May 2015 21:02 (eight years ago) link
there are a lot of 'refrigerator moments' in these books for me, like, why does everyone go along with the games in the first place? what kind of government does this society have? why are there cars & hovercrafts & omniscient sky cams but no guns or lazers, only oldschool weapons (except the night vision sunglasses)?
i do like that it all take place in the woods -- i am imagining really scrappy crummy woods like burnt down yellowstone circa the late '80s, or new mexico's white mountains, or flagstaff. ariz. i want more descriptions of the climate & biome but i think all my criticisms just mean i'm a nerd
also a plus, i think it is cool that katniss's feelings for her sister (& affection xfer to rue as a result) are way more fleshed out than the boycrush feelings.
― he sounds like a parrot eating a carrot (Crabbits), Sunday, 17 May 2015 21:15 (eight years ago) link
Tried to see Spectre tonight but the theater was a madhouse and everything was sold out so we did the opening weekend plunge on this one instead. I can see this ultimately resonating like a nu-school Star Wars for a younger generation. Except that they get a Star Wars that doesn't just peter out with a long wet fart full of teddy bears. I went very begrudgingly into the first movie but I've liked it and every installment since quite a bit. The ending was ultimately a little pat but satisfying nonetheless. The acting carries an awful lot of water, but it's a well-made package overall. Remains to be seen how it'll all hold up on a repeat viewing (although I'm looking forward to doing just that since I've spent too much time during every sequel trying to remember what had happened previously).
― The Squirrel Who Punched His Dad In The Neck (Old Lunch), Sunday, 29 November 2015 06:05 (eight years ago) link
i've never realised how hateable the name 'peeta' is before
― thwomp (thomp), Sunday, 29 November 2015 06:32 (eight years ago) link
The character/actor himself is kind of a limp noodle and easily the weakest part of the film series. Perhaps the books provide more clarity as to why he wasn't mercifully chucked into a canyon as early as possible.
― The Squirrel Who Punched His Dad In The Neck (Old Lunch), Sunday, 29 November 2015 07:19 (eight years ago) link
I've never read the books, but I have seen the movies multiple times, because of one of my teens, and they've grown on me, particularly the sequels. They're pretty well conceived and executed, especially the last one, which was iirc sort of dismissed at the time as being more conventionally action-y than the others but is actually full of long stretches of quiet or introspective bits. I assume it's from the source material, but some of the turns of the final installment are particularly dark and heavy, and ultimately subvert a lot of tropes in these sorts of dystopian films. I like that the surviving heroes all clearly end up damaged, and that there is no real sunrise over a new day conclusion.
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 29 December 2021 15:39 (two years ago) link
This is all in the source material iirc! You might enjoy the books. I'll admit by the end I was getting a little weary of just how endless the conveyor belt of trauma and recovery seemed, but maybe I'd think about those themes differently today. And maybe I just read them in too quick a succession.
― I Am Fribbulus (Xax) (Doctor Casino), Wednesday, 29 December 2021 15:54 (two years ago) link
Aren't the books told in first person or something? I can imagine that being less effective. Or maybe just effective differently.
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 29 December 2021 18:23 (two years ago) link