Film Fest - The Hunger Games

I really enjoyed the books - terrific page turners!  - so I was hoping for a good movie version of The Hunger Games too, but that's always a bit of a coin-toss, whether a good book makes a good movie.  You just can't predict.

So I'm pleased to say that I think the movie IS a fair rendering of the story into film and very enjoyable.  As you'd expect, there's been  pruning to fit the story into two hours, with several characters fading out, but on the other hand, I liked the added characterization of the Game Maker and his fate.  The biggest change was the expected one: downplaying the carnage, gore, and suffering.  This had to be a PG-13 rated film so that it's core audience could watch.  So... violence was more suggested than shown.  (Fine by me.)

I liked all the characters and acting, especially Stanley Tucci's Master of Ceremonies. (I'm a big fan of Tucci in any film.) 

Cover illustrations from Wired.com GeekDad's article about books for/about Geek Girls

When I saw the movie Saturday, there was a large audience of teen girls who had obviously seen the film several times already and memorized it well enough to answer back to dialogue here and there.  This is the first film I've seen that happen to in a long time.  Shows a certain enthusiasm I think.

HERE's my earlier post on the Hunger Game books.

Books - The Hunger Games

I've been hearing about this Hunger Games book trilogy by Suzanne Collins for a while now, the recommendation generally boiling down to: "Exciting! Page-turning!  Can't put it down!"

I've been in exactly the mood for exciting, page-turning, can't-put-it-down.  So I read 'em.

Cover of The Hunger Games, borrowed from Wikipedia

Good.  VERY e, p-t, c-p-i-d... also engrossing, surprisingly violent and, indeed, cruel.  Surprising for what seems to be meant as young adult novels.  (Adults have been reading it.)  The setup is a future where the ruins of the United States have become Panem, a civilization with a tyrannical central region/government and a series of enslaved provinces.  They have this annual game - more or less "Survivor" crossed with gladiatorial combat - played by sacrificial teenagers.  The books' main character is a young girl.  That female protagonist and the need for this game to look pretty (or horrific) for the cameras takes the story from beauty pageant one minute to carnage the next: instantaneously from Barbie to G.I. Spartacus.

I'm still digesting the implications.  But as a page-turning distraction I have to rate these books high: the first book, The Hunger Games, is the most gripping, the succeeding books, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay get, as trilogies tend to, less compelling but since it's cliff-hangers all the way, you'll gobble them all.  Fast!