The Hunger Games: What's Not to Love

Since I just did a knock-down-drag-out about Watchmen and adaptation, I'm going to take a more emotional turn in this exploration of The Hunger Games.  Yes, it's adapted from a book, but I came away from this action flick aimed at teenaged girls feeling so damn sad that I figured there was more gold in them thar hills than in the dry flats of critical analysis.

Is the Past Tense of "Snit" Snoot or Snot?

I caught the preview for The Hunger Games when it was in the second-run theater I frequent and was most intrigued. Then I missed it because I "frequent" the movies only in comparison to the dentist. I got in a snit about how I'd heard it was a rip-off of Battle Royale, which it isn't. Then I got in a bigger snit about Shirley Jackson's The Lottery. Then I had a lot of laundry to fold, so I checked it out on Netflix. Along the lines of Watchmen, the trailer had looked so good that I was dreading the disappointment, (in this case) of seeing the concept bloated to feature length. That is to say, despite the bunch I'd gotten my snooty panties in for no real reason, I was still invested enough to be concerned as to whether it would be good. So, props to that trailer editing; it truly is an art form in itself.

At the time I saw the film, I hadn't read the book, though I have since. I haven't read the other two, wanting to enjoy the forthcoming sequel in a situation as close to my viewing of the first as possible. To restate: I don't know what's going to happen in the rest of the series. Possibly, this will result in a number of my points being rendered irrelevant predictive, in which case, I win at stories. And by I, I mean we, since mega-kudos will be due to Suzanne Collins for being equally as perceptive about the potential of her own work. On the other hand, I may actually be exploring the material on another level, in which case there's a little more content in the world to spark conversation and I am again duly fulfilled. Also, snoot-snoot-I'm-smarter-than-the-author/no-you're-not-she-intended-to-do-something-else.

And for those of you to whom this will matter, though I think it should be obvious... Team Peeta.

What You Don't Know Won't Hurt You

10% hardline facts 

20% wiki-research

>5% references

<5% personal experience 

60% imagination

This is how I roll, especially when doing established-setting-based writing (you say fanfic, I say to-mah-to). You want to know enough to not come off as a n00b, but not so much that you get beholden to others' ideas. If I'm inspired to write a piece directly based on something existing, it's because I'm interested in an idea of my own, set in a particular context. Get inspired and don't let outsidership stop you. Embrace it. Originality comes from innovation.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

This film's title gets two (pesky) songs stuck in my head, Dandelion by The Rolling Stones and the old barbershop standard My Coney Island Baby. My mother used to sing the whole rhyme to me and my sibs while counting the buttons on our dress shirts, stopping (based on some rule I now forget) and determining which of the roles we "were". To top it all off, my sister actually watched the original miniseries one summer while we were growing up, flagging this version as a possible point of commonality between us (a bit of a rarity, these days). So TTSS has been nagging at me since I saw it a few weeks ago.

Beyond the stellar ensemble casting, intimate performances and exquisitely claustrophobic mise-en-scene that brought the Circus to life, TTSS offers a valuable opportunity: A reminder that British cinema is foreign cinema. It's harder to see here than in other foreign films. We've been fed most of the cast for decades, many in non-accented roles. And this being a period piece further muddies the water (though Gilliam's epic Brazil put a hyper-Brit, hyper-bureaucracy into the cult consciousness forever ago, and the source material, as it were, is well displayed in TTSS). Toss in the fact that there are swaths of Canada that require subtitles, and you've got about as subtle a genre piece as you can find (subtlety being an indicator of the film's foreign status, of course. Sorry Hollywood).

There are Others all over this film, and it is they who give the nod to the outsider in every Yank moviegoer. Gay men, spies, Scotsmen, women in the government--there's a social maze ancient and twisted for the characters to navigate, one so intricate that the audience might not even notice as we stride right over the top of it, from our modern, American perspectives.

But those of us who can sit in the theater and say, "Wow, England's really different," are actually invited in. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is an outsider's film, for them, by them. And the moral of the story is that being an outsider hurts, really costs, but, hey, you aren't as alone as you think. Not a bad feeling to walk away with for the price of popcorn and a pint.

Winner, Loser

I came back to a comic I wandered away from today (was reading it at work, no other reason), and I'll never stray again, things keep on like they are. Look Straight Ahead is actually doing something. There's a real understanding of how things feel and how to translate that into how things look. You can sense the theory, if you know it, but the experience--an experiential webcomic, now there's a rare bird--is rich enough that the thought process is never obtrusive. A seamless blend of execution and idea. Boom, yummy. Kudos, Elaine. I really like the simple truth with which you're writing Jeremy. Teens are hard; nicely done.

And I'm wandering away from a comic I've been reading for almost a year now. The Concrete World has great story, world and dialogue (minus a few nit-picky errors that crop up now and then). The art is riddled with a problem my illustrator and I call "squishy head"(go see what I mean). I read it diligently despite its miserly update schedule and occasional iffy drawing: Good story is a lot harder to find than pleasing art. And now they're going on hiatus, and I am disappointed and unsurprised. Momentum can be key in an undertaking as demanding as regularly updating your comic. Six pages a month is a dribble, and when you're dribbling it's so easy to just drop it.

The comic I work on updates around fifteen pages a month. It's grueling to produce like that, and it takes a big investment of creative energy and time. But in a medium where dropping off the face of the earth (hiatus is often code for this) is practically expected, it's invest or go home.