I don’t get to see that many movies in the theater, although I do serve as our Hogwarts Film-Fancier in Chief. Now that we’re done with new Harry Potters and Twilight films (at least until the inevitable re-boots), I’m patiently waiting for Catching Fire this fall, but I did recently get to catch Star Trek into Darkness. I am an unabashed Star Trek fancier as well, having really enjoyed writing “Shakespeare (and the Rest of the Great Books) in the Original Klingon” for the newly released Star Trek and History. Though I enjoyed the film very much, I noticed that it was loaded with plenty of wonderful allusions to other pieces of the Star Trek universe, but somewhere along the way, had lost one of the most important features of that universe: its deft use of literary allusions. So join me in the transporter room as we beam around the beautiful and complex world of literary allusions and think about why it’s so troubling that we see them less and less these days, in both books and films, or that people don’t recognize them when they see them. Energize!
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Only an Allusion?: Star Trek Into Darkness and the Death of Literary Literacy
Help one of your Hogpro Faculty on a research project.
Hunger Games readers and movie fans are needed for a study being conducted at Mary Baldwin College on empathy for fictional characters. If you are age 13 or older and a native speaker of English, you are eligible to participate. It will involve taking an anonymous online survey (Click here for the link) and should require no more than 30 minutes to complete. This study is approved by the Mary Baldwin College Institutional Review Board.
PS. If you run into any problems with the survey, please alert me at lfreeman@mbc.edu Thank you, friends!
‘Catching Fire’ Film Posters: Roses, Chairs, and Costumes that Show at least One of the Gamesmakers Does Still Read
Even though the release of the film adaptation of the next Hunger Games installment is over six months away (9 November, 22, to be precise), the Hollywood stylists are already pulling out all the stops on the teaser posters and other publicity tools in their arsenal to ensure that the 75th Hunger Games will be, shall we say? smoking hot. What is particularly fascinating about these images is how they tie into the text, history, the trilogy’s metanarrative and, yes, the sick, sad, real Hunger Games we call Hollywood. So let’s take a peek at the shiny film posters and those fascinating (and still coming) “official” Capitol portraits, at least one of which was foreshadowed on the Oscar red carpet.
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Life Imitates Art: Hunger Games Pods to Pleasant Parks
If you remember your Hunger Games Trivia well, the arena sites are converted into tourist attractions afterwards. That is apparently also happening in the state park where the Games scenes were filmed.
Elizabeth, have you considered a part time job as a tour guide?
The Hunger Games–Some Folks still just don’t get it
I generally don’t expect too much of the fashion industry. After all, these are the jackals who parade underfed, oddly made-up creatures wearing impractical, ridiculously expensive garments, while trying to convince the rest of us to buy this nonsense. While I sometimes enjoy the theatricality of fashion shows, I always hear in my ear the incomparable superhero costumer “E” from The Incredibles. “Bah! Supermodels! Nothing super about them! Whiny, selfish stick people with poofy lips! I used to design for gods!” So when I saw this monstrosity from the recent Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, I was struck not only by the idiotic design, but also by what it says about the complete lack of comprehension of what the story of The Hunger Games is really all about. Follow me after the jump for more. [Read more…]
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