The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

You're gonna put your eye out with that arrow.

by Preston Sinclair

 

"Remember who the real enemy is." 
            Haymitch 

 As a fan of post-apocalyptic dystopian fiction I must say that this young adult version rates right up there with Ayn Rand's Anthem, and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. There's an earnestness and brutality about Jennifer Lawrence's portrayal of Katniss to which we can all relate. The fight or flight syndrome that kicks in with all of us at some time or another. 
     The art of good story telling allows the reader to insert one's self into the story; i.e. to ask, 'What would I do in that situation?'  The most disturbing thing about the original Hunger Games was that it was about children killing children. Catching Fire skirts around that issue by pitting veteran Hunger Games winners against each other as adults.  Was this just a clever plot twist, or a bow to the reality of the world in which we live where children really do kill children?
     I remember growing up with my cousins and friends. We used to play this game called War. We'd go into the woods and find sticks that resembled rifles. Then we'd all go out into the field and pretend to be snipers and pick each other off one by one, a pre-hunger games right of passage one might say.  It was all in good adolescent fun and no one ever got hurt. Yet I remember my aunt standing on the doorsteps yelling after us as we marched off to war, "You boys are gonna put an eye out with those sticks."

   I cannot in good conscience post my thoughts about this movie without paying my respects to the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman. This is one of those moments when I remember exactly where I was when I heard that he had passed away. I was standing in line at my local convenience store when I glanced over at the news stand and saw his picture on the cover of the New York Post.  At first I thought, "Oh cool, an interview." And then my heart dropped when I read the headline.  Rest in peace my friend.
     Phillip Seymour Hoffman played Plutarch Heavensbee with exactly the right amount of duplicity.  He was a good guy pretending to be a bad guy. He had to make President Snow (Donald Sutherland), believe his every word. No easy task, yet he pulled it off with panache.

Spoiler Alert:

     I realize that some people may not have seen the movie or read the book yet, therefore I have created a special page about the ending which is my favorite part. Here's the link to The Catching Fire Spoiler Page.

     Here's my review of the book on Goodreads.com.

 Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins


By the time I was about a third of the way through this book the story had me hooked, yet the only problem I have was that the weak vocabulary sometimes took me out of the story. I stopped and thought to myself, 'there may have been a better word for that.' I quickly told myself that this is a Young Adult book. Also the narrator Katniss is a sixteen year old with a limited education. The story really works best when there is movement. Katniss is either running away from something, or running to something. After I read the pivotal chapter which described how the Third Quarter Quell would be played (I won't spoil it), I had an A-ha moment when realized that I'd had a feeling that this would happen, but I didn't know how it would happen. Suzanne Collins deals with themes that adults can relate to without the language, and without the sex, which is very refreshing.
      Well, I finished reading it last night. I was beginning to worry because the games had not started, and I was almost two thirds of the way through the book. Soon after I started reading Part III The Enemy, I realized that this was not going to be about how people died, but how they survived. After that it became a whole new story to me. I could stop and take a breath and enjoy the book. It must have become tiring to think up new ways for people to die, because Collins abruptly stopped doing it. We still don't know how several of the segments of the clock worked, or how many of the Victors even met their end. This is because Collins was gearing up for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay.
View all my reviews


 

How To Marry A Millionaire

What I Really Need To Do Is...Marry A Millionaire

By Preston Sinclair

"That's the beautiful thing about a bear trap, you don't have to catch a whole heard of them. Just one nice big fat one." Schatze  

    Truer words have never been spoken. Therein lies the rub. What constitutes a bear, and how exactly does one build a better  trap? Comedy ensues as these three bombshells show us how, step by step. 

    Schatze Page (Lauren Bacall)starts out as the brains of the organization, yet she becomes more delusional and confused than the rest of them as the movie progresses. She's mean to her ardent suitor, Tom Brookman (Cameron Mitchell). While she's ambivalent toward her potential sugar daddy, JD Hanley (William Powell).

     Here's what Lauren Bacall had to say about her co-stars.

    "Betty Grable was a funny, outgoing woman, totally professional and easy.  Marilyn was frightened, insecure-trusted only her coach and was late"

Lauren Bacall

 from By Myself 

 

    Loco (Betty Grable) lives up to her name, and almost gets it right with Eben (Rory Calhoun). Except that Eben isn't really a bear, he's more of a svelte otter type. Yet, with those dreamy eyes who can blame the girl for falling for a guy who isn't holding...anything but trees.  

    J. Stewart Merril (Alexander D'Arcy)and Pola (Marilyn Monroe) set up one of best scenes in the movie. They're on a date, and Pola walks into the wall because she's too vain to wear her glasses. There's an audible thump as she hits the wall. There wasn't another actress in Hollywood who could have pulled off this gag better than Marilyn.

"He sounds wonderful, but I was naturally curious to know what he looked like."                        Pola

    Another highlight of the movie was Pola's scene with Freddie Denmark (David Wayne) on the airplane. Their comedic timing was perfect. The whole conversation about glasses was priceless, and well edited.  We were watching Pola fall in love with a man who wasn't holding. She couldn't help it.

    I went to a screening of the documentary Miss Representation, directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, at a local Community College.  This insightful doc explored the media's role in spreading propaganda that marginalizes the role of women in society. While watching, I couldn't help but wonder how Bacall, Grable and Monroe felt about the characters they were portraying. Did Schatze, Loco, and Pola have some sense of empowerment over the men in their lives?   Or were they victims of society?

    Today, in our Housewives Of Wherever reality TV world, we have become immune to the portrayal of women as gold diggers. Yet, in the post World War Two era, women were expected to leave the factories where they had been building planes and enter the kitchens as their men came marching home from war. This didn't leave women many choices. What kind of kitchen would any woman prefer, a pump jockey's or a millionaire's?  Don't judge them.  Not everyone could live the June Cleaver "Father Knows Best" lifestyle.  Women had to make hard choices and use the assets that they had in order to be happy.

  This begs the question, what makes us happy? Try turning the table and watching this movie from the guy's point of view. In the end, the men were working with what they as hard as the women were. Each guy was playing the hand he was dealt the best he could.

   For example, J.D. loved Schatze, yet he had enough class to know that he couldn't really make her happy.  While at the same time, Schatze knew that she was happiest when she was with Brookman. However, Brookman wanted her to fall in love with him for himself, not his money. 

   Happiness comes from inside. No one can "make" you happy. The final scene says it all as they are sitting around the diner counter fixing burgers.  Which reminds me that I'm hungry. Who knows? Maybe I'll meet somebody at the deli.

Reference links:

Classic Cinema Gold  

Internet Movie Data Base 

Bad Donald: A movie review

Bad Donald: The Movie

                                                 
Warning:may contain spoilers.

     In the cult classic made-for-tv movie Bad Donald, the shy three legged orange tabby accidentally kills his Dad. Dad trips over Donald in the dark and hits his head on the sink. Donald, afraid and full of remorse, buries his beloved Dad in the litter box. Donald then decides to avoid the police by hiding behind the storage containers under the bed. His plan works until new tenants move into the apartment.  Donald terrorizes their poor golden retriever puppy named Babs.  Poor Babs tries to warn her master that something is very wrong in this apartment, but no one pays any attention to her.  Chaos ensues when the nosy neighbor, Mrs Shoemaker, looks in the window and sees Donald eating Babs' kibble.  Mrs Shoemaker has a stroke and dies from the shock of seeing Donald alive. Donald panics and has no choice but to bury her under the porch.  The family's suspicions deepen until the stunning climax that will send you screaming when Donald suddenly claws his way through the mattress. 

People who liked this movie also liked Bad Ronald:

"Don't do it...don't look through the whole in the wall"

Bad Ronald at IMDB 

     What constitutes a cult classic? Does one have to be a member of the cult to watch it? Or does watching the movie make you a de facto member of the cult. Is it really a classic movie?  For example, I could get a group of people together and we could shave our heads, wear orange sherbet robes, and chant nam yoho renga kyo, while we watch Gone With The Wind.  But that doesn't make it a cult classic.

     No, its something bigger than that. It's a community of like minded people who think enough about a film to invite their friends over and say 'You need to see this movie'. After the movie, you're like whoa, what the hell just happened. You start talking about it and thinking about it and boom, you're in the cult.

     Screaming is a great way to relieve tension. So if you like to scream and laugh at the same time (Without all the blood of a Quentin Tarantino movie) go out and rent Bad Ronald and watch it with some friends tonight.

Sorry, Bad Donald isn't out on DVD.

Preston Sinclair 

Skyfall

     Did something I haven't done in a long time last night. Went to the movies with a group of friends and felt like a kid again. One of them smuggled in food, and we were all shocked, shocked I tell you. We were all laughing and whispering, checking e-mails, texting during the previews. One day these memories will add to the nostalgic feeling the Bond 007 franchise evokes.
     One of my favorite parts of the movie was the opening credits that began rolling a short way into the movie as the theme song was cued up. Adele's voice pours over you as she begins to tell the story.  Images, graphics and shadows cross the screen. The moody retro song perfectly sets the tone.
     Daniel Craig has taken ownership of this Bond. Craig's 007 is hurt, and mad, and this makes him probably the most dangerous Bond ever. He's not pretty, or even classically handsome in the sense that previous Bonds were. However, his charm and cockiness allow him to deliver his lines without seeming cheesy, or worse tongue in cheek about it. Probably the most interesting thing about this Bond is his vulnerability. He knows he's getting ...gasp...older. Women are still his weakness. Booze is becoming a problem. Some of his coping mechanisms are no longer working. And yet at the end of the movie he still has a job to do.
    Some buzz has been created by Javier Bardem's villain, Silva. Silva is a psychopath who is out to destroy M at any cost to property or life. Some people wonder if the interrogation scene between Bond and Silva has homoerotic overtones. It's more like a mind game, or a test. James Bond's comeback line is destined to become a classic and made everyone in the theatre crack up in laughter, thus relieving the tension, sexual or otherwise. By the end of the film we all understand that Silva is a damaged person, and he may have been trying to reach out quite literally and bond with Bond.
     In the beginning we think Skyfall must be a code name for a mission, perhaps a past one that went bad. As the movie progresses we learn that it is a physical place, one that has much significance to Bond. By the end we realize that Skyfall is a state of mind.

                                                                            by Preston Sinclair

Internet Movie Database
Official Movie Site