The things that I have put into my head lately

I'm not reading a whole lot of novels as most of that reading is focused on Kurt Vonnegut. So it's mostly just movies (two of them) and comic books for me of late.

Hunger Games - The Girl has read the full Hunger Games trilogy - the first novel with her book club. When she offered that her book club was heading to see the movie adaptation, I was in.

Of course, I'm in for seeing just about anything (not this) on the big screen.

I promise I'll get around to reading the books (The Girl's kinda been pushing them for a while), but I went into the movie knowing just about nothing at all.

The plot was surprisingly science fictionish, set in a future world in which a revolution (little detail is provided about that in the movie) exists in a past, and the republic is held together on the backs of a rich capital city and surrounding districts in abject poverty. Each year the various districts are required to sacrifice two of their young people to compete in a reality television death match (a la Running Man). Twenty four enter, one leaves alive. The rest die of exposure, starvation, infection, or combat.

Our POV comes in the form of Katniss Everdeen as played by Jennifer Lawrence (outstanding in Winter's Bone), a strong heroine who steps forward when her younger sister's name is drawn as their district's tribute/contestant for the Games. Throughout the course of the Games, we come to see that Katniss's strength lies not just in her skill with a bow but also with her compassion for her fellow contestants. This combination makes for an eminently likeable character - strong, compassionate, striking. She is one of the few contestants who doesn't seem to play more for the ever-present cameras than for herself, being visibly repulsed when other contestants play to the crowds - before and during the Games.

The movie's sets - particularly the opulence of the capital as contrasted with the poverty of Katniss's home district - are well done and present a drastically divided society that I was initially skeptical could survive until I started thinking about our society which isn't that different in many ways. The openly opiative nature of the broadcast Hunger Games makes for a rather dramatic commentary on reality television as an opiate for the masses in our world. The movie is affecting and dramatic, striking all the right notes and even leaving us with a overly-dramatic 'it's not over yet' moment at the very end. Good flick...great first flick in a trilogy.

WARNING: spoliers coming...

The weirdness of the people controlling the Hunger Games arena was a little freaky. The 'creation' of the dogs, in particular, made me wonder about what the heck they were doing. I don't mean what they were doing in terms of producing a more dramatic television product. I get that. I just don't understand whether they were creating some sort of hologram that could interact with people, genetically engineering creatures on a moment's notice, holding the dogs in pens underneath and just releasing them at the right moment, or casting spells. The Girl mentioned that in the book the dogs have the eyes of the dead contestants, so they must have been somehow 'created' on the fly, but I just don't get how that could have happened.

Along the same lines I clearly misunderstood the direction that the Games were going to go. When the forest fires first appeared, I thought we were going to find out that they were an illusion - as the fire on Katniss's dress had been, some sort of foreshadowing,  I though. Nope...instead we find that the Game's producers can conjure fire out of nothing and that the efforts of turning a forest fire on and suddenly off inside some sort of contained dome of incredible size isn't a big deal in terms of energy output. Really?


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I also didn't get why the effort to get sponsors/patrons was such a big deal. The Girl says that it makes more sense in the book, but in the movie it seemed like the Woody Harrelson character just got a few people to throw a few bucks his way so he could buy salve and chicken soup. We didn't see the any of the other characters were getting help from their sponsors, even though many of them were clearly far better at playing to the camera. If the sponsors were such a big deal, why didn't they turn out to be such a big deal?


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The use of hand-held cameras was frickin' annoying in the first twenty or so minutes of the movie. I wanted to just slap the filmmaker. I don't care whether that was intentional by the filmmaker or not. I hated it...and I hated the quick cut fight scenes. I can't tell what's happening or who has the advantage in those stupid scenes.


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I kinda dug the Taylor Swift song in the credits.

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Attack the Block - Fairly low-budget horror flick starring a bunch of great teenage actors defending their public housing unit (the titular Block) from alien invaders.

The Girl thought the film was awful with poor pacing and poor effects and chase scenes. I'm a bit more charitable as I actually enjoyed the film. Yes, the pacing drags in a number of cases - particularly when the protagonists have to repeatedly convince other residents of The Block that aliens really are invading. For an all-out alien invasion, it seemed like it took a lot of people a long, long time to recognize what was happening.

I was impressed with the teenage leads' performances as the adult characters are barely in the film. The various teen actors did a brilliant job making for a believable band of friends forced to defend their turf against invaders. They each did a great job creating a rich, interesting character.

The low-budget special effects were also interesting, particularly the blacker than black, gorilla-esque invaders with their glowing teeth and eyeless heads. The first alien (the female, as we find out) is far less impressive, looking like a Halloween-story reject thrown on a stick once captured, but the massive (male) aliens are appropriately scary and aggressive. Good stuff there.

This isn't a classic on the level of Aliens, but it's a fun way to pass a couple of hours.

The ending, however, is poor and left a bad taste in my mouth.

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Comic books...

• The Walking Dead vol 15 - Finally we get a collection without a whole lot of zombies or some sort of desperate run to safety. Instead, Rick and his  band of merry men (and women) try to build a small-scale society in the DC neighborhood where they've found themselves. They are safe enough and are beginning to have a little bit of leisure time, leading to notes of paranoia and unrest among the residents - especially those who were there before Rick came along. After the building terror of the past few volumes, this was a welcome slow down.
• Ultimate Comics Spider-Man: Death of Spider-Man Prelude - See, right there in the title it says that Spider-Man's about to die. That's sad because this volume is an enjoyable acknowledgement of Spider-Man's success as a hero. Admittedly, I have no clue what the heck happened leading up to this edition and the first few issues do make a lot of references to what happened before (stupidly PLCH has only volume three of this series, so I may not be able to find out what happened for free), but as long as I ignored all that stuff, I had a blast, especially as Peter Parker saw Iron Man show up at his house, nearly blowing his secret identity. This is fun stuff and a great difference from the Earth-616 Spider-Man. Wish they weren't killing this guy off, especially with the entertaining stuff about Black Cat and Mysterio.
• Superman: Nightwing and Flamebird (vol 2) - I hate the whole New Krypton storyline. It made the threat that something would change, but it didn't...and, more importantly, the stories sucked.
• Superman: Codename: Patriot - ...just like this one which sucked, too.
• Spider-Man: The Fantastic Spider-Man - Apparently Johnny Storm (the Human Torch) is dead or gone or something (for now, anyway, unless he goes the way of Jason Todd Bucky Uncle Ben) and Peter is taking Johnny's place because they were so close to each other. We also get more of Peter's relationship with Carlie Cooper - I'm a fan. And the teaming up with the former Fantastic Four works well, too. In fact, the entire volume works well without any unifying story arc. It's a nice change to get a number of stand-alone issues that are well told. Refreshing...
• GI Joe: Cobra: Civil War - The next step after Cobra Commander was killed (nuked, really) is to choose the next Commander, and that's just what Cobra is doing. Of course, every possible candidate is all busy stabbing each other in the back and killing GI Joe's in the process. This is just the first step, but I'm willing to come back for the next steps.
• X-Men: Age of X - Good lord...no one...NO ONE needs another apocalyptic future X-Men storyline. It's been done to death and doesn't ever, ever need to be done again. EVER. Oddly, though, this was actually pretty enjoyable. It's entirely superfluous, but it was a fun read. The fact that it was entirely a dream was a little cliche, but it kinda worked.
• Hulk: World War Hulks vol 3 - The whole World War Hulks storyline is wrapping up here with Hulk finally taking on his son Skaar in an all-out battle. Good times, and I enjoy the whole play of Banner saying that he knew this was the next step and had known it all along...the second half of the volume, however, follows Hulk's other son, Hiro-Kala, in some sort of space adventure. I hate the space adventures and wish they would entirely drop the storyline forever. Earth stuff? Good. Non-Earth stuff? Boring, bad.