I kid you not. You can buy a piece of cinematic history! Think you can move into Tara or Forest Gump’s plantation mansion for only a million dollars and change? I think not. Read Buy District 12 from Hunger Games for $1.4 million:

83-year-old owner, Wade Shepherd, lives across the empty village, and originally purchased it to “protect his interests” after the last resident moved out in 1987. While Shepherd never mentioned the exact reason why he’s putting the town up for sale, there’s probably no better time than now: “I’m getting too many visitors. Day and night, they’re driving through, taking pictures, getting out and walking. I’m just bombarded with people,” he told the Associated Press. Your $1.4 million will get you several District 12 locations you’ve seen in the movie, including the Everdeens’ house and the Mellarks’ bakery.

For photographs of the Henry River Mill Town property, assuming you have US$1 or 2 million burning a hole in your pocket, see Prof. Baird-Hardy’s recent shots here and Dr. Amy H. Sturgis’ pictures taken well before the town was considered for the film shoot here. Note the sign in this photo advertising the property for sale a few years back (2008), I assume at a bargain price compared to the current going rate. At a little under $20,000 an acre today, I’m thinking Lionsgate elected to pass on the deal and build a new ‘old’ District 12 in another abandoned mill town somewhere else in Appalachia.

Your thoughts? Hat tip to RevGeorge!

I’m a newcomer to ‘Brant’s Blog’ but if his Katniss and Her Friends: Why ‘The Hunger Games’ Resonates is any sign of the quality of the thinking there, I’ll be back. The heart of it goes something like this:

Katniss finds a boy/man who is flawed, but self-sacrificing, protective, warm, and committed to not being changed by the culture. He will not, he says, become a self-seeking “monster.” The Capitol, the culture, is patronizingly charmed by that… as it is fully committed to changing him into a self-seeking monster.

Katniss knows truth matters. She’s no philosopher, but she knows loyalty matters. She knows sacrificing for the vulnerable matters. She knows there is such a thing as Good, even if she can’t articulate it. The Capitol, the culture, tries to convince her otherwise. [Read more…]

Here they all are! The 35 HogwartsProfessor Hunger Games Month (March, 2012) posts have been rounded up at one link for you to review in case you missed any or for when you want to revisit some of the ideas and conversations down the line. They’re hiding beneath the jump.

Enjoy — and thank you all again for this great ride of discussion and exploration of Suzanne Collins’ Everdeen Saga and the LionsGate movie adaptation of the first book, Hunger Games. I’m just back from talks at Augustana’s Stronghold Castle and at the Indiana limestone fortress of the school called Chicagwarts (complete with Great Hall…) but will share tomorrow the talk on Hunger Games and literary alchemy I gave in the University of Chicago’s Bond Chapel Monday night. Stay tuned! [Read more…]