Perhaps this would have been a more critic-proof option for maligned literary novelist J.K. Rowling: Suzanne Collins, the author of the Hunger Games trilogy, is to follow up her widely read young adult books with an “autobiographical picture book.” 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
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
