Video
When the Tea Party Patriots premiered this Hunger Games-style video at CPAC over the weekend, the only question in the room was probably “Does this make too much sense?” Sure, “Tea Party Patriots – A Movement On Fire!” doesn’t actually resemble The Hunger Games so much as, um, Gattaca, maybe? But still there are some great similarities that just illustrate how non-crazy these people are. Read More
There’s nothing dystopian or post-apocalyptic about the three-bedroom, three-bath condo that Hunger Games director Gary Ross just bought in the West Village, but we expect that Mr. Ross must have engaged in at least a little hand-to-hand combat to get the place for $2.7 million.
While not much of a discount from the $2.85 million ask, this was a broker-owner sale, and we guess that Prudential Douglas Elliman broker Debra Kameros probably wanted to fight to the death to get a good sales price for herself and co-owner Stuart Schimmel. Read More
“It’s the network that’s the only fit for Charlie,” said Michael Brochstein, Senior Vice President of Ad Sales at FX, to a group of journalists at Lucky Strike Lanes. He was referring to the once-troubled sitcom star Charlie Sheen, who’s coming to FX in a comedy, Anger Management, that will run for 100 episodes Read More
As the adult world continues stoking the senseless battle royale of the presidential primary season, the youth-entertainment complex has briefly overtaken the news cycle. Everyone not living in their own life-or-death competitive isolation dome knows by now that this past weekend ushered in the blockbuster movie adaptation of the first installment of The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins’ dystopian teen scifi trilogy about children compelled to destroy each other for the amusement of the jaded, power-mad political leaders of the future. The basic plot of the Collins franchise is by now well-known: In the authoritarian North America of the third millennium—rechristened Panem—this ritual sacrifice of the young serves to tamp down any impulses of mass rebellion, and the games’ sole surviving winner is bought off with a life of ease, fame, and prestige.
But no sooner had the great Hunger Games colossus alighted at the multiplex—with a box-office take of $155 million over its first weekend—than a sober retinue of adults began clambering to impose their own agendas on the strange new teen spectacle unspooling in their midst. Read More
Unlike Brake, in which the thrills are generated by people, the sci-fi adventure The Hunger Games relies heavily on CGI effects in a variety of visual formats—2D and Imax. Thank goodness it wasn’t in 3D. As a wearer of distance glasses, I loathe the revival of 3D, a silly gimmick for kids from the 1950s that blighted everything from Bwana Devil to Kiss Me Kate and mercifully died out with House of Wax. So I was grateful to watch The Hunger Games without the discomfort of two pairs of glasses, and don’t feel like I missed a thing. I can live without another flying spear.
This futuristic tale of teenage violence is so not my kind of movie that I approached it grudgingly, so imagine my surprise when I ended up being totally exhilarated and enjoying it immensely. Based on the teenage cult novel by Suzanne Collins that I admit, in my ignorance, I had never heard of, The Hunger Games takes place in some distant world called Panem that was once America before the Capitol was defeated in some unexplained, apocalyptic war. Read More
We love this time of year. Spring is in the air, we get an extra hour of daylight, and people are placing bets in offices across the country on who they think will win in their favorite division brackets.
No, we’re not talking about March Madness. We’re talking about The Hunger Games, the latest YA book-to-screen sensation that had its premiere in New York and L.A. this week. (For the over-18 crowd, we’re still waiting on Harvey Weinstein to buy the rights to E L James’ Fifty Shades of Grey.)
If you don’t want to pay $20 for an IMAX ticket (including the price of the KitKat bar and the Nalgene of merlot that you slipped into the theater), you can watch your own version of The Hunger Games play out down at Zuccotti Park. That’s right: Occupy Wall Street has come out of its winter hibernation to clash with the police once more. Read More
The Hunger Games is a series of sci-fi young adult novels written by Suzanne Collins and published by Scholastic that we know from reading the internet all day that people are really excited about. Presumably they’ll be even more excited to learn that Steven Soderbergh is directing the second unit of the movie Read More
