Hat tip, James!
“Hey, Peeta! How About We Go to the Park to Play with Pods?”
November 9, 2013 by 7 Comments
No joke! Lionsgate is entertaining proposals for a Hunger Games theme park.
Think of all the fun the whole family can enjoy! There will be a ‘Kill or Be Killed’ roller coaster ride from whose cars park patrons can throw one another (the ride won’t stop so long as there are two people remaining). Vendors are lining up already to offer neon colored varieties of Haymitch’s Hooch. And Games Makers around the globe are designing murderous Pods that guests will be able to walk through, though everyone around them on the green screen walls and ceiling will suffer terrible, torturous deaths.
What. A. Blast.
From the beginning of the Hunger Games film franchise, we’ve noted here again and again and again and again that a series of novels depicting and decrying the excesses of violence and voyeuristic pleasure we have in our screened media, if turned into block buster movies, was inevitably going to be self-satirizing.
The hyper marketing of the films via internet publicity, however, the casting of the glamorous and sex symbol Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, and the commercialization of items meant to be despised by book readers, not to mention the hijacking of the anti-Games Maker message of the book in the first film, have overshot our cynical expectations by a District 12 mile.
Please share your idea for Humger Games Land, the theme park, below. I’m afraid your most sarcastic visions will fall short of the real thing should it ever come to pass.
Hat tip to James for this news item!
New Book from Suzanne Collins: Year of the Jungle
September 26, 2013 by Leave a Comment
I’m guessing even very serious Hunger Games fans may have missed the news that Suzanne Collins has written another book — and that it was published this month! The title is Year of the Jungle: Memories from the Home Front and it is a children’s picture book with illustrations by James Proimos.
The name James Proimos is the answer to one of the more difficult Hunger games trivia questions. For more on that — and the importance of Custard the Dragon’s “eating the Pyrate,” read beyond the jump. Spoiler break —
Tolkien Estate and the Movies: Why We Should Care
September 10, 2013 by
Let’s be clear, there is no love lost between the Estate of J. R. R. Tolkien and the movie making empire that created the three LOTR films and, more recently, The Hobbit. For one, they are at legal nail, tooth, and tongs. More to the point of this post, though, the Estate considers the movies to be trash and a great betrayal of the written work, the artistry, epic, and meaning they are supposed to represent in a different medium.
You can read the interview with Christopher Tolkien in which he makes these points — and it is worth a close study, I think. Here is the highlight I think especially important:
Invited to meet Peter Jackson, the Tolkien family preferred not to. Why? “They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25,” Christopher says regretfully. “And it seems that The Hobbit will be the same kind of film.”
This divorce has been systematically driven by the logic of Hollywood. “Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed into the absurdity of our time,” Christopher Tolkien observes sadly. “The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away.”
Three quick notes:
Katniss’s Wedding Dress and Other Fashion Excesses: If you Don’t See What’s Wrong With the Citizens of the Capitol, Maybe You Are One
August 14, 2013 by 11 Comments
Even well before the release of the first Hunger Games movie, I was troubled by the fascination with Capitol trends and fashions. Yes, it was interesting to see how costumers and make-up designers were bringing to life Suzanne Collins’s evocative descriptions, but a nail polish line based on the books? That sort of thing just seemed like a bad joke or a demonstration of the marriage of ignorance and greed in someone’s marketing department. I was surprised that even some people who had read the book bought into the Capitol mindset. Join me after the jump as we look at the shocking pre- Catching Fire film fashion trends that reveal we may already be living in Panem.
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