Things That Keep Me Up All Night: Catching Fire Edition

This is super trivial but I guess that's just how my brain works.

As you know, I saw Catching Fire a couple weeks ago. But seeing it reminded me of something I had wondered after reading the book. Namely, what were the remaining sections of the clock arena??

According to the Hunger Games wiki, the known sections were: lightning storm, blood rain, poisonous fog, monkey mutts, jabberjays, beast, giant wave, insects. That leaves 4 mystery sections.

More were mentioned in the book than in the movie but we still don't know the full 12 and will most likely never know. And it is completely unimportant to everything but some little part of me really wants to know what the gamemaker would have put.

What do you guys think? What things would have been horrendous enough to be included in the clock arena?

While we're on this topic, I need to get something else off my chest. I never fully understood how the arena could be controlled so well from so far away. How in the world do you control a poisonous gas so that it doesn't infiltrate another sector? And how do you make it dissipate so quickly. I get that it's a futuristic society but some sort of logic would be helpful. For example, the blood rain could come from sprinklers set into the trees. The monkeys have been mutated and could have hardware programming when to go bananas if you'll pardon my pun.

The Fire Has Caught

My thoughts are incoherent now.

I just spent two and a half hours in the theatre absolutely glued to that massive screen literally watching the contents of the second Hunger Games book play out. Yes, I have just finished watching Catching Fire.

There was so little deviation from the actual thing, I couldn't believe it. I must admit, I haven't read the book in a couple years and went into that cinema not really remembering the actual plot line at all. BUT I remembered as the movie progressed and man was it accurate. There may have been some things that were missed or changed and someone somewhere on the internet has probably pointed them out but they were not stupifyingly obvious so I'd cut the movie some slack.

So since it was exactly the book in movie picture format, we don't have to worry about the plot. Plot was amazing, and it still ended with a crazy cliffhanger so all the people who hadn't read the book in the theatre were all in shock about that. Guess what book's sales are going to suddenly skyrocket??

Finally, I really fell in love with the characters, all over again with the repeats and for the first time with the newcomers. Peeta and Gale man, both so selfless. And the character development that happened with Effie was phenomenal! She's beginning to realize how screwed up the system actually is. And I felt so much for all the victors that were reaped for the second time. They did not deserve that to happen to them. Johanna and Beetee were my favourites. They were just so cool to get to know, y'know?

I really needed to get all this out of my head and into words so that I could go back to enjoying regular life. It almost seems unfair that the world is still going and there isn't a mandatory recuperation time where there are no responsibilities to worry about after watching Catching Fire. That should definitely be a thing. 

Hey! A song from the Hunger Games soundtrack just started playing on my laptop! That's fitting.

Let me know if you already have or are planning on seeing Catching Fire and say what you think in the comments!

My Plea From The Dark

I watched a movie today.

(irrelevant but it was City of Bones. Let me know if you want a review cause that it a thing I can do!)

Besides making comments about the casting, singing songs that would have been super relevant to the scene and giggling at the puns made, my friend and I noticed a thing. And that thing was that it was really hard to see what was going in.

I kid you not, 1/3 of the screen was, in general, quite dark at any given moment. Yes, I understand that they're in a pre-electricity era mansion and that every single fight scene must be done in the dark and/or while it's raining but do you really have to make it so realistic that it is hardly possibly to tell that the protagonist's hair colour is red, let alone what she's up to?

At first we thought it could be the angle that we were viewing it from thus came the moving around the room and standing on the couch to try and get a better perspective. Which, in retrospect, would have been funny to walk into. It was kind of like Sherlock in The Blind Banker. And in that moment, we were Sherlock. (Can you tell that it is past midnight and I just ate a handful of those mini m&m's?)

well that was quite the tangent

Our efforts were futile and we were subjected to finishing the movie squinting at the screen and having to ask each other what just happened every 46 seconds.

To end this, I know that all the famous movie lighting directors follow my blog religiously so I'm talking to you guys. PLEASE make movies have better lighting. You can make it blue light to make everything seem all dark and depressing but please just give the viewers something to work with and let everything in the shot be visible. We came for a story, not to be awed by the realism of "it's pretty much exactly what it would look like if I was in a cave!"

Thanks.

HP Fandom Emerges

The Harry Potter fandom. They are basically just like Fawkes the phoenix. The last book came out July 2007. The last movie came out July 2011. Everyone thought the Potterheads were done for since no new material was being made. Sure, there were musicals and puppets and references to turning 11 and not getting their acceptance letter still floating around but it wasn't the same. It was the same as being dead. But no, thanks to some wonderful news, the Harry Potter world lives on. They have risen from the ashes and are at full power once again.

What could this wonderful news be? JK Rowling is taking a stab at screenwriting and making Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them into a movie. It follows the life of Newt Scamander and his quest to gain more knowledge about all the magical creatures in the wizarding world. It is set in the 1920s New York so the setting and cast will be brain new (With the exception of perhaps the oldest such as Dumbledore!) but the magic and world will be familiar still.

Another beautiful thing that many people pounced on was the fact that JK mentioned that it would be the first in a series. We're not sure if it's all about this particular book mentioned in the Harry Potter series or if maybe all the other books, such as Quidditch Through the Ages and Hogwarts: A History, are going to get their share of the screen as well.

This is amazing news that no one saw coming but that everyone is ecstatic for because, let's face it, who isn't a fan of Harry Potter?