the groundhog day project

Allow me to get the obvious out of the way after last week's Hunger Games marathon : in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 , Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence, in case you're living under a rock) actually does stuff throughout most of the film. Almost all of it is even her idea. The interesting thing, though, is that the story still manages to let Katniss kill almost no one. She kills some Mutts--and not the dog-type like in the first film, but some naked albino 28 Days Later -style zombies instead... In fact, that sequence does a great job of building some real tension and giving weight to an otherwise obvious set of deaths to winnow down the main group in the film--oh, SPOILERS will happen in this entry. If you want to see the film and have not read the book, you probably should not be reading this. My complaint regarding that sequence is that the score suggests action film when the sequence plays more like something out of a horror film. Actually, that sequence is one of severa...

Mockingjay Part 2 doesn't come out for a week, but today was a Hunger Games day. While grading papers, I've had the original The Hunger Games and then The Hunger Games: Catching Fire playing. Seen those two before, but haven't seen the third one-- The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 --before now. As this one gets going, I must voice my primary complaint with the first two because really, I wish Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) had more to do. The problem--the problem with my problem, that is--is that it would be hard to market a story to young readers (and maybe more so the film based on it) in which the main character kills a bunch of other young people, even if she is forced... In America, at least. I know there are those who call The Hunger Games series a ripoff of Battle Royale , a Japanese manga series (and I believe there's a movie, but I haven't seen it) that is very much about teenagers killing each other. In Japan, you can have that plot more readily wit...