This past July, while I was in Orlando for Leaky-Con and visiting family, my mother-in-law and I partook of one of our favorite activities: thrift store shopping. She knows all the best spots, and we always find great bargains and have a blast. While I was browsing the books, I spotted one I have only ever seen on the virtual shelf on J.K. Rowling’s pre-Pottermore website: Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle. It’s a fairly well-handled edition, but it was practically free, and I decided I wanted to see why Rowling has always declared the novel’s narrator to be one of the “most charismatic” of any in any novel. I recently finally got around to reading it, so I thought I’d share a few of my insights, and see if those of you who have also read the book will post your thoughts as well!
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Capturing Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle
Citizens of Panem being “Processed” Now
So, a few weeks ago, we posted here about the new Capitol website being launched in conjunction with the forthcoming film of Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games (the fact that it is specifically a film tie-in website is indicated by the fact that the countdown to the next Games is not for next summer, but for the film’s March release date). Those of us who registered on the site using our social media (i.e. Twitter or facebook) were assigned a District and then told we then had to wait for our “District Identification Passes” or DIPs (snort) to be processed. Starting this past weekend, “citizens” began getting emails directing them to proceed with registering (interspersed with visits to the website which, for some odd reason, was briefly switched to a Latin text, but more on that later). For more on the experience, and on the fascinating ironies of this little marketing ploy, follow me after the jump. [Read more…]
CNN Tries to Catch On with Hunger Games–and Fails Miserably
Today, CNN posted an article that predicts, wow! That this Hunger Games thing just might be a big deal. The tone of the article is ridiculously glib, apparently in an effort to deflect from the fact that such an article makes the folks at CNN look further behind the times than the crowd that keeps popping up with “Hey, this Harry Potter stuff is actually Christian! Who knew?” The reporter, who is listed as being “special” is evidently either not familiar enough with the book to get the basics correct (like the relationship between Katniss and Peeta prior to the Reaping) or is trying too hard to be cute. Once again, the mainstream media is missing the real power of this story, thinking that it will be a big hit because of the sex and violence factors, and completely failing to notice (again) the power of this story or its razor-sharp critique of that very gore and smut industry. After all, The Hunger Games uses a story of real, sacrificial love to reveal the tragedies produced by a culture obsessed with violence as entertainment. As the movie’s release date draws near (posters are already up at the local cineplex) we can expect more of this nonsense. But then again, how likely is CNN to get what this story really does? After all, the mainstream media and its news-as-entertainment focus is part of the beautifully woven (and very sticky) web Suzanne Collins has woven. It really isn’t that shocking that they can’t see the message our crafty spider has posted with her riveting tale.
Welcome to the Capitol! New Hunger Games Website with Pottermore echoes
You may have noticed, in the recently released micro-clip trailer for next year’s film of The Hunger Games, a little blip about registering as a citizen of the Capitol. Well now, you can do just that. This new site, which looks to be mostly teaser at this point, gives you the opportunity to register via either twitter or facebook (I went with the latter, myself). Then you will be registered according to your district (which is chosen for you;). Evidently, more bells and whistles will be forthcoming. For some more thoughts on the new site, particularly what it gives us that we didn’t already know, follow me after the jump. [Read more…]
First Look at the Hunger Games Film
At last night’s video music awards, Jennifer Lawrence (via video, as she’s still here in NC filming), introduced the first teaser trailer for the new Hunger Games film due out in March. The clip is the very epitome of brief, just a few shots of Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss walking through the woods, some footage which is obviously the fire scene from chapter 13, spliced in with a neat shot of Lawrence shooting the silver bow (taken from later in the film, as she does not acquire the bow until chapter 14 (the center chapter in the novel, incidentally) and the arrow landing in the mockingjay symbol, which then catches on fire. There is a little bit of voice over from Liam Hemsworth as Gale with some of the post-Reaping pep talk, and the music is the same as that used by Scholastic in their book trailers.
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