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The X-Files’ Dana Scully: Role Model for Girls of All Ages

X-filesAs Summer is winding down, I decided its high time for me to get back into the blogosphere!  I never intended to be away for so long, but the beautiful weather (mostly) and bike trails called my name far too often to spend much time on the computer.  Summer is for reading and Lake Therapy, and I have lived up to that ideal once again this season!  But today marks an anniversary that got me thinking, which in turn got me wanting to share my thoughts with you once again as a pre-Fall (I’m not ready to call the official end of Summer, Labor Day or no) homage to one of my favorite television shows and creative influences of all time.  For today, dear reader, marks the 20th anniversary of the debut of Fox’s The X-Files.  In 1993, I was a senior in high school, and the show aired on Friday nights, so I actually didn’t watch it until years later.  But once I did, it made an instant impact on me for many reasons and in many ways.  One of which I would like to share with you now.

Princess Leia in the Gold Bikini... every boy's dream.  Every girls unattainable standard.

Princess Leia in the Gold Bikini… every boy’s dream. Every girls unattainable standard.

When I was a little girl, I loved things that a typical little boy loves. I loved playing with toy guns and playing army. I loved exploring the woods behind our house. I played with Matchbox cars and sneaked (not very sneakily) into my older brother’s room to play with his Legos. I dreamed of getting new Star Wars action figures for my birthday.  I liked sports, and zombie movies. While I did have Barbie Dolls, and actually played with them frequently, I was drawn more to the role of Ken instead of the girlieness of Barbie.  When I watched Star Wars, it wasn’t Princess Leia I looked up to, but Luke Skywalker and Han Solo.

They seemed to have all the fun. When my friends and I would play Scooby Do, I was never Thelma, or Daphne. I wasn’t even Fred or Shaggy… I was Scooby. But once I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark, I was totally hooked on Indiana Jones. It wasn’t so much that I had a crush on him (I did), but that I wanted to be Indiana Jones.

Indiana_Jones_in_Raiders_of_the_Lost_Ark

Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark. HummunaHummunaHummuna!

I always wanted to play the role usually played by men.  All of my heroes were men.  I would throw on a fedora, and run around my backyard digging up “lost treasures” pretending to be Dr. Jones, not Marion (even though she was a pretty tough cookie herself). I have to admit, there was a brief time I wondered, am I going to grow up to be gay (as if I fully even understood what that meant then)?  I assume many people in my life wondered the same thing about me.  In case you’re still wondering…

Over time I realized that I most certainly was not gay, and that while I wanted to be Indiana Jones, I also wanted to marry him. I just didn’t understand at the time growing up, as a child of mostly the ’80’s, that I could be a cool archaeologist or a Jedi Knight and be a girl.

Looking back, that is sad to me.  But the amazing thing is that in the course of my early adulthood, those perceived limitations have changed dramatically for young girls. There are numerous female role models in all walks of life, professional, sports, politics, and in fiction for them to look up to and strive to become like. I grew up hearing “you can be anything you want.” That is a fantastic way to encourage children to become individuals pursuing their dreams outside of the box of social conventions of gender. But I think you have to know you have the option before you can dream it. You have to believe it to achieve it, as the saying goes.  I didn’t.  I played out fantasies in make believe, but never really believed my life could emulate something like Indiana Jones’ life.

Dana Scully and Fox Mulder

Dana Scully and Fox Mulder

So, by the time I finally became a fan of the X-Files after watching the first feature film, Fight the Future, I had already put myself into a subconscious box of who I could become.   But I was drawn for the first time to the heroine of the story.  Dana Scully.  The FBI agent who ran around chasing bad guys in high heels, but managing to be seductive (but not too seductive), and brilliant, at the same time.  She was vulnerable, but not stereotypically emotional.  She was professional and subdued in her demeanor, but not cold, or heartless.  She played the role of the skeptic, the foil to the intuitive believer chasing aliens and monsters, Agent Fox Mulder.  Mulder and Scully had reversed the roles of men and women, and it worked.

Scully

The X-Files’ FBI Agent Dana Scully

Since Scully, there have been many captivating, tough and sexy heroines in television and film, teaching (I hope) young women that you can be feminine and be a bad ass all at the same time. While you can make an argument that there were other great female characters before her (Clarice Starling, even Princess Leia in Empire and Jedi, to name a few), I think the Gillian Anderson’ Scully was the true pioneer setting the stage for truly heroic women in positions traditionally played by men, but are yet able to retain their womanliness. I think the pop icon of Scully not only shifted the tide in the minds of young women, but also in young men who dreamed of being Mulder, and working with Scully all day long.  She subconsciously helped us all to see that men don’t have to seem weak when standing next to a strong woman. That in fact, strong women are damn sexy as well as capable and smart.  A win-win for all.

I wish I’d learned those lessons when I was younger.  I might have avoided a few unfortunate hair cuts and clothing choices in my attempt to not be too girly.  But at least young women today are swimming in role models, thanks in no small part to the X-Files creative team and Gillian Anderson for creating one of the most important fictional characters in the past century.  I wish you were still around.  Maybe we’ll still get that last mytharc movie afterall.  The Truth is Out There, but remember to Trust No One.

Cheers,

PersphoneK

 

P.S.  I plan on watching the Pilot tonight on DVD, and then watching the rest of the series in order over the next weeks and months.  If you’ve never watched the X Files, or if you’re an old Phile yourself, I’d love to have you virtually join me!  I may have more to say about this show as the blog continues.

i-want-to-believe

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X-Files Turns 20: “Deep Throat”

Deep Throat

Season 1, Episode 1×01

Written By: Chris Carter | Directed By: Daniel Sackheim

Original Air Date: 09/17/1993 | Re-Watch Review Date: 09/10/2013


#1) We have our first informant! Yay! #2) Hope they get cell phones soon! 3) CHArc: Scully needs to ditch the purse. 4) Scully throwing down the cagey fake reporter! Good times! 5) Music slightly better. 6) M&S banter continues to evolve. 7) there were actually some interesting themes about government secrecy and exploration of whether or not M&S are really the bad guys. I didn’t catch that in my earlier viewings. Final Rating: A decent but still slightly dull overall ep. Good conspiracy vibes though.

Cheers,

PersephoneK


What is this post about anyway? XFTurns20: Project Watch Episodes in Sequence

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X-Files Turns 20: “Pilot”

 

Pilot

Season 1, Episode 1×79

Written By: Chris Carter | Directed By: Robert Mandel

Original Air Date: 09/10/1993 | Re-Watch Review Date: 09/10/2013


I haven’t watched Pilot in more than 10 years, so expected to find a lot of things to annoy me. I was pleasantly surprised! #1) The plot is “meh”, especially in light of the mytharc to come. #2) it’s all about the chemistry between Mulder & Scully. It’s always been about the chemistry. Without both David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson in these roles, we would not remember this show because Pilot would have been the end. #3) Very well shot. Even today it has a fantastic cinematic feel, especially by 1993 tv standards. #4) Not Mark Snow’s finest score. #5) Enter the CHArc…I liked Scully’s hair in Pilot compared to the rest of season 1. And I didn’t mind either of their wardrobes (again by 1993 standards). Scully could have used prettier underwear though, LOL. #6) I love when Mulder tells Scully about his sisters abduction. Duchovny makes the craziest stuff believable and he doesn’t get enough credit for making sense of Chris Carter’s words. #7) Section Chief Blevins always makes me nostalgic for the real Bu. Weird, eh?  Did I mention chemistry? On to 1×02! #XFilesTurns20

Cheers,

PersephoneK


What is this post about anyway? XFTurns20: Project Watch Episodes in Sequence

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Slow vs Fast Zombies: A Roman Holiday Tale

BigPosterIn honor of this year’s Easter holiday and (hopefully not coincidental) AMC’s The Walking Dead’s third season finale falling on the same day, I wanted to take this opportunity to explain why slow zombies are better than fast zombies.

This may be my most important blog to date.

Zombies represent many things to many people.  Our rampant consumerism.  Mindlessness of pop culture.  Anxiety about national security and terrorism.  I’ve even heard them compared to Nazi’s and the Holocaust.  All of these may be perfectly reasonable interpretations of the popularity, especially recently, of such a savage monster that devours our brains and bodies without remorse.  Zombies are everywhere from film to TV to comic books to novels.  Even [easyazon-link asin=”B004HW7E6U” locale=”us”]Jane Austin’s classic Pride and Prejudice got a zombie makeover[/easyazon-link].

But for me, zombie stories are not really about zombies at all.  They appeal to me because they are entirely about how humans respond to what I consider the worst case scenario event:  The end of the world as we know it… with zombies.

The answer to the question how do humans living comfortable, modern lives cope with being thrown into a world where most people they’ve ever known are dead, and the structure of civilization has collapsed, is a compelling mystery to ponder.  For this reason, I love most apocalyptic and dystopian stories.  But zombie stories are the ultimate cause of the apocalypse, and the most fearful antagonist because the added element of the dead rising to eat us, and subsequently turning us into the very monsters we fear, makes it nearly impossible for humanity to fully recover.  Or at recovery will be delayed for a very long time, possibly until the world has changed dramatically in the process, and we have lost specialized talent, knowledge and expertise along the way plunging us back into a simpler time, and into a more brutal existence.

Zombies add an extreme element that goes unmatched by other causes of the apocalypse, such as “normal” plagues, asteroids, global warming, nuclear war, or even the Rapture.  As a student of history with a particular interest in ancient Rome and how its fall lead to the Dark Ages, the zombie tale is a modern allegory for what it may have been like to live in those centuries following the immediate aftermath of the sacking of Rome in 410 through the centuries as civilization became fractured, knowledge was lost, literacy declined, and Rome itself crumbled to ruins.  Roman aqueduct in Segovia, SpainI’ve often wondered what it was like for a peasant living in the 9th century–  to pick an arbitrary moment in time — to see ancient Roman monuments, wondrous feats of engineering, and ask what magic must these men have had within their power?  What stories with supernatural explanations that peasant must have told his friends and family to make those mysteries make sense in the context of their vastly different world, where technologies like steam power, and running water would not be rediscovered for another several hundred, even a thousand, more years.  Would he have called the ancient people mystical, or imbued them with godlike powers?  What might a Roman of Julius Caesar’s time, have thought of society’s interpretation if he’d been transported through time a thousand years?  “It’s not magic!  Its math!”

Zombie stories also help us imagine what it might have been like to live through the Black Death, when one third of Europe was felled by plague.  That’s as if more than 2 billion people in the world, or 115 million Americans, were to die.  Now imagine those 115 million rising from the dead to eat you, adding even more victims to the rolls!

Worst. Case. Scenario. Ever.

So, back to my original thesis that slow zombies are better than fast zombies… In movies like the remake of Dawn of the Dead, the upcoming World War Z, and 28 Days Later (though not really about zombies), the zombies become the focus point.  The movies become just another monster tale, action flick, showing how the humans eventually prevail (or are completely destroyed).  That’s fine and all, but you can tell that story with any monster.  You don’t need zombies.

What I have loved about The Walking Dead is that it gets that.  The show’s title itself refers to the living more than the dead who are trying to eat them.  The creator of the comic book the television show is based on, Robert Kirkman, has said he turned down many offers to bring his stories to the small and big screen because nobody understood that the show was about the survivors more than the zombies.  They wanted fast, “exciting” action, for what they perceived was a mindless audience.  I’m so glad he held out, and that finally Frank Darabont came along and understood Kirkman’s vision.  The show’s third season has been especially fun because more than any previous season we see the humans coping with the zombies almost as if they’re the background.  maggie-walker-760_595_slogoThey’re still enough of a threat that the survivors can’t truly rest, and rebuild, forced to always be on the  run, but the real stories have been told about how the new world will be organized.  How do humans interact with each other?  How do our innate inclinations of tribalism and distrust of strangers contradict our more enlightened sensibilities of justice and peace?  That struggle has been highlighted by the different strategies between the two faction’s human leaders, former Sheriff Rick Grimes and his band holed up at a weakened prison, and heavily fortified, Dystopian Woodbury’s sociopathic, meglomaniac The Governor.  You can’t tell those tales with fast zombies, because they always demand to be front and center.  The Walking Dead hasn’t been perfect in its three year run, but my favorite moments have hinged around these ideas of dealing with a changed world.

Thank goodness they kept those zombies nice and slow.  Happy Zombie Day to all!

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The Hobbit in 3D HFR: My Review

 

The Hobbit

The Hobbit

So, after the heaviness of my last couple of blog posts, I thought I’d revert back to a bit of frivolity just to prove how unfocused and random this site will be.  It’s not all godlessness and “give me liberty or death” stuff!  Last weekend, I finally got around to seeing The Hobbit.  It just had gotten away from me what with the holidays and everything else this time of year.  I debated whether or not to see it for my first viewing in standard 2D, or in the 3D High Frame Rate (HFR).  Films to me are sacred, especially the very first viewing. You only get one chance to see a film for the first time.  It’s my favorite art form, and while I don’t claim to have an encyclopedic knowledge of films, they are near and dear to my heart.  Ironically, this is one reason why I end up seeing few films in a year.  If I feel I’m not in the right mindset to see a new movie, I won’t, and so I often find myself re-watching favorite films where I know what I’ll get and can let play in the background while I do things like write a blog post.

Back to The Hobbit and HFR… I finally decided that because of the groundbreaking aspect of 48 frames per second with this film, I needed to see it the way the Director Peter Jackson intended it to be seen (I do the same thing with director’s cuts, etc on the DVD’s). Generally, I’m leery of anything in 3D.  I have found it tiring, dark, and usually not adding much to the overall experience of film. Usually, it’s quite the opposite. I feel like anything gained by 3D is trumped by being taken out of the illusion of the story.  Those damn glasses usually inevitably do so. 

However, The Hobbit was the first 3D experience I had where for the most part, I felt none of the annoyance, and almost all of the intended joys.  The HFR improved the viewing experience of the 3D, causing less strain on my eyes.  By the end of the film, I’d forgotten about those evil glasses altogether, and enjoyed the well-placed moments of images coming towards me.  The clarity of the film was absolutely the best I’ve ever seen in any “D”, and only enhanced the already breathtaking vistas of New Zealand in the numerous panoramic, sweeping wide shots of the landscape.  To quote from Liz Lemon on 30-Rock… “I want to go to there.”  If you’re going to see 3D, make it HFR!

But that amazing clarity has its downsides.  I had heard the arguments against the HFR before I saw the film.  That it made it feel less cinematic, and the special effects, make-up and sets looked like… well, special effects, make-up and sets.  I tried to bring an open mind to the film knowing that my brain had been trained to think of 24 fps as the way a movie is supposed to look, but that in reality it is low grade quality, causes blurring, and degradation.  I wanted so much to be pleasantly surprised by the HFR experience.

Instead, the experience ended up being a mixed bag.  I felt that the computer generated (CG) creatures (used far more in The Hobbit than in the previous Lord of the Rings (LOTR) films), were well placed and blended well.  With a few exceptions, I was never distracted by them appearing obviously CG.  And often they didn’t look CG to me at all.  Perhaps I’m too used to CG characters from playing a lot of xbox games, but only in one scene where all three elements of the film – the panoramic landscape, the made-up human actors, and CGI creatures – came together in an intense action scene (the group of 14 running from the pack of Orc-ridden Wargs on the open fields of Middle Earth) did I notice anything looking distractingly fake from an effects perspective.  I wish the same had been true of the more standard dramatic scenes involving the human actors against a backdrop of a fabricated set.  That is where the HFR truly distracts from the film experience.  It was in those moments, whether it be in Bilbo’s Hobbit Hole, or in the tight shots within Rivendell (which by the way, I still think is my dream destination of all time), or at the Dwarf camp in the mountain foothills, I often had the sensation of watching a stage play, or something on The History Channel.  It was exacerbated anytime the shot involved a bit of action, with quick camera angle changes or movement.  I did feel like I was in front of real people in a way, but it was like being able to see the edges of the theater’s stage.  It felt like I could see the wizard’s feet behind the curtain pressing the buttons. It’s not exactly accurate… I never saw a wayward boom microphone, or part of the camera track in the shot, but the sensation was the same.  Despite telling myself it’s just my brain adjusting, I couldn’t get over the fact that it didn’t feel like the movie experience I had come to love.  It felt like a documentary, not like art.

But then it also annoyed me when ESPN increased the frame rate of its World Series of Poker coverage as well, so perhaps it’s just me.

Of course, some of my criticism is not all the fault of the technology.  I have never read The Hobbit, so I don’t know how much of the story they managed to get in, or changed from the original story.  But from the perspective of someone who has seen and loved LOTR, and knows the general back story of The Hobbit but not the details, the film felt like there was a labored attempt to string it out as long as possible, I suspect so that it could be chopped up into many films.  I hate to be cynical, but it felt purely like a money grabbing ploy to milk the success of LOTR as much as possible. It’s too bad…. The suits at the studio did a disservice to the story in doing so. As I watched I wanted to yell “CUT!” numerous times so that the scene would move on to the next plot point.  I suspect most of the scenes at the start of the film at Bilbo’s house could have been completely eliminated.  It’s nice that Elijah Wood (Frodo) got to make a cameo appearance, and perhaps it made sense to tie the story to LOTR to keep fans of those films engaged in the new characters, but it felt similar to how the end of The Return of the King felt.  Nice from a superfan perspective, but not really adding to the story.  It only left me feeling manipulated in a way I don’t want when going to the movies. I don’t want to be distracted by thinking about the business side of the film industry.  I just want to be immersed for a couple of hours in an amazing new world.  LOTR managed to do that for me throughout most of the films, despite being shot in the old 24 fps, 2D way.  The Hobbit rarely did that for me. 

I’m still hoping my next journey into Middle Earth is improved, but I’m not betting all the gold in the Lonely Mountain on it.

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The Hunger Games Movie Review: Rough Musings from a Crazy Fan

Disclaimer: This is less a review as it is a totally biased compilation of my raw thoughts after seeing the film twice.  I would recommend not reading this unless you’ve at least read the books or seen the film.  I’m not going to explain plot points like a real review would.  I’m assuming you know the story.

Here be spoilers!


I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve been more than a little obsessed with The Hunger Games since I devoured the book a little more than a month ago (yeah, I was living under a rock).  I quickly gobbled up its sequels, “Catching Fire” and “Mockingjay” between then and now, but the wait for the movie was still torturous.  I’m so glad I didn’t even know about the trilogy until a couple of months ago.  I would have died.

I quelled my obsession slightly by watching every trailer released, and scavenging YouTube for cast interviews.   I was more than a little worried I’d be disappointed.  I love books in general, but for me the motion picture is the most perfect art form there is.  I wanted to like this movie.  I felt that based on what I’d seen in the trailers and a few scene snippets that the movie had the potential to outshine the books.  In many respects it did.  In others it didn’t.  All-in-all, my expectations were more than realized.  I absolutely love this film.

Adaptations are always a tricky business, and the more beloved a book is, the more impossible it becomes to succeed.  Back in the day, when I knew less about the strengths of motion pictures, I hated seeing movies based off of beloved books.  But as I have learned more over the years, and have even written a novel and a screenplay myself, I now try to go into a film based on a book I’ve read expecting to see favorite moments and characters eliminated, or condensed.  I remember that by their natures, books and movies have different strengths.  Books take the reader into the characters’ minds in an intimate way through narrative and exposition, especially when told in the first person like The Hunger Games is told from heroine Katniss Everdeen’s perspective.  Movies show a story through action.  They combine other art forms like photography, effects, costume and set design, and music.  The difficulty is in trying to nudge the viewer’s assumptions about a character’s motivations in one direction or another without flat out saying what they are.  And it wasn’t until I wrote a screenplay myself that I truly appreciated how important a creative and imaginative actor is to a great film.  The Hunger Games scores big on that front.  Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Woody Harrelson, Stanley Tucci, Elizabeth Banks, Lenny Kravitz, and newcomer Liam Hemsworth, were all fantastic.  Have I mentioned Jennifer Lawrence?  Wow.  But I digress.

So with those things in mind, I feel Director Gary Ross’s treatment of The Hunger Games was wonderful, though not perfect.  Additions made were almost like bonus moments we didn’t have access to in the books, and most of his cuts made perfect sense to me.  I think of this film as a companion to the books.  Perhaps to some viewers that is a knock.  And I do typically agree that a movie needs to completely stand on its own.  After watching the film a second time and reading some reviews of others who had not read the book, I feel it stands up more than the book virgins believe it does.  But I could be wrong.

The first thing I ever want from a film, before I analyze its pacing, direction, acting, writing, etc, is for it to move me.  I want it to stir some emotion in me, and ideally inspire me.  If a film does that, it’s halfway there.

Check!

Two moments in particular that moved me:  The Reaping and Rue’s demise.

At The Reaping, I really felt what this experience would have been like, not only for Katniss and Peeta, but for all of the citizens of District 12.  You see the worry on the faces of the 12-18 year old kids whose names are in the lottery, and of their families.  This is a community horror, that despite the Capitol’s propaganda machine, every citizen despises and fears.  Then you get a sense of the absurdity and perversity of the spectacle through the character of Effie Trinket, the Capitol’s clueless and self-absorbed Reaping coordinator for District 12.  Whether she has merely trained herself to cope with her job of taking children to their deaths, or whether she just really believes, she has bought into the propaganda the citizens are forced to endure before the worst thing to ever happen to two of them and their families happens.  When Prim is chosen, her sister Katniss, superbly played by Jennifer Lawrence, takes you through a succession of emotions as she processes what has just happened.  She is confused and momentarily in shock, and doesn’t quite believe that her sister has been chosen despite only having her name in the bowl one time in her first year of eligibility.  Once the fog clears, Katniss’ quick, panicked, unthinking action propels her to take her sister’s place, and then you immediately see her go through the realization of what her choice means for her.  Her life is basically over.  A few hours ago, she viewed the Reaping a temporary pain she had to endure before continuing the rest of her day and not-so-terrible life by District 12 standards.  Instead, now she’ll be taken from her home forever, and probably die violently in a few weeks

When the boy from District 12, Peeta, is chosen, we see his obvious horror as well, but what caught my attention were the faces of the boys around him.  They exhale relief that they are safe for another year, but yet they are horrified that one of their own has to face this.  There is no celebration, no happiness in this situation at all.  It is a heartrending moment that continues through Katniss saying goodbye to her family and to her best friend Gale.  When she pleads with him to not let her family starve, in my mind that’s the moment Jennifer Lawrence seals an Oscar nomination.  To quote Effie, “I love that.”

The journey to the Capitol, the spectacle of the pre-Games ceremonies, interviews, and training is all very well done.  Ross nicely changes stylistically a bit from his very raw and rough photography in the District to a more polished look in the Capitol. It’s subtle, but it’s powerful.  The scene between Katniss and Peeta the night before they go to the games is wonderful, but I would have liked to see a little more of this kind of exploration of their predicament.

The second emotional highpoint for me was when Rue dies in the middle of the Games.  The emotional toll the Games has on Katniss is highlighted in this scene.   It is not just about this little girl’s death, which is terrible in and of itself, especially considering the disparity between a 12 year old girl and an 18 year old man forced to fight to the death.  It’s about everything coming to a head for Katniss.  She’s obviously projecting her sister Prim onto this girl since they are the same age.  But she’s also just made her first real, intimate kill (her other kills were Tracker Jacker by Proxy) by shooting the boy who speared Rue.  What she had only done before to animals she hunted, she has just done to a human.  She’s alone, she just lost her only ally, and chances are she is going to die sometime soon.  Her response to cover Rue in flowers is her way of defying the Capitol, and trying to do as Peeta suggested the night before they went into the arena by not being a “piece in their games.”  She’s not trying to start a revolution, yet she knows she’s being provocative.  She’s trying to stay true to herself.  That scene was almost everything I wanted to see as a fan of the novel, with the exception of no bread drop of thanks from District 11.  I think that was a mistake to cut out, and could have elevated the power of the moment to an even higher level.  Perhaps Ross didn’t want people to assume Katniss cared more about receiving a gift than she did about Rue’s death, but I still wanted to see it.  It is an important moment for the entire trilogy.  It’s the spark of the revolution.  The bread is important because it clearly links Katniss’ salute to District 11.  In the book, when the bread drops, she knows District 11 gave it to her, a completely unheard of thing to do for a tribute from another district, and Katniss repays them and Rue with the salute of ultimate respect.  I think that may have been lost in the film, but I could be wrong.  It wasn’t enough of a detractor to take away from the power of the moment.  I still cried

Some reviews I’ve read have complained of the shaky camera, but as one who’s not always a lover of that style myself, I think it was used perfectly for the film.  The grainy quality was there when we needed to understand what living in the Districts was like, but in the reality TV inspired ridiculousness of the Capitol it’s softened or replaced by polish and larger than life color and sparkle.  I give my three fingered salute to Ross and his team for turning what could have been a big budget spectacle from start to finish and still pull in a gazillion dollars, into an intimate movie with an indie quality (when it needed it).  The film did not hide from the violence either, but it didn’t make it gratuitous for the sake of doing so.  I knew who was going to die, and I was still cringing.

Because the film – unlike the books – is not told merely from Katniss’ first person perspective, we get some treats we didn’t in the book.  And because Suzanne Collins herself was part of the writing process for the script, I am satisfied knowing they had her blessing.  The behind-the-scenes scenes of the Games Control/Production Center is a wonderful addition.  In the books we get glimmers of this from what Katniss knows of past games and assumptions she makes, but the movie brings us into the place where all the magic of the arena is created, and where the lives of 24 children are manipulated.  The Truman Show-like power over this world is taken to the darkest level as Head Gamemaker Seneca Crane decides who lives and dies, and what horror the Tributes will face in their demise, with the same joy he’d have if he were producing a weekly sitcom.  The Gamemaker’s are proud of what they’re giving to the masses.  It’s so twisted, yet perfectly weaved into the film.

I also love seeing mentor Haymitch’s sweet-talking as he works to gain sponsors to help Katniss.  He even convinces Seneca not to outright kill her for her defiance, but instead to give the viewers a romance to root for.  We get to see just how truly superficial and rigged the Games are, not only for the Tributes in the arena, but later when Seneca is forced to pay the ultimate price for his choices, a scene only alluded to in the second novel.

I expected the love triangle to be understated based on reviews I’d read, and it was, but in a surprisingly good way.  The note Haymitch sends to Katniss with the medicine (“You call that a kiss”) is a simple way to help the audience understand what we learn in the book by having access to Katniss’ thoughts.  She’s caught between liking, distrusting, and play-acting with Peeta.  She understands she needs to play a social game – something beyond her comfort zone — in order to live, and though she’s not sure what she believes about her own feelings for Peeta, or his feelings for her, she goes for it when she kisses him.  While it’s clear to the audience Peeta’s motivations are genuine, its equally clear that Katniss is completely unsure of pretty much everything.  That was perfect except I would have liked a tiny bit more cave time.  I’m a girl after all.

Other musings:

  • I would have liked a little bit more Cinna/Katniss airtime.  Lenny Kravitz is a wonderful, understated yet cool, choice.  He’s nothing like I pictured Cinna when I read the books, but that just shows my meager imagination.  Now I can’t remember what I thought Cinna looked like.
  • I understand the backstory of the mockingjay pin needed to change in order to eliminate a minor character (I never really liked the version in the books anyway), but I think they missed an opportunity to make it even better.  Instead, they traded a lackluster version for another lackluster version.  I do need to go back and watch for moments when the pin is visible to the arena’s cameras as it becomes the symbol of things to come in the next books.  I’m hoping I’ll not be disappointed.
  • Some fans are bothered by the ending.  In the books, Katniss makes it clear to Peeta that she was pretending where their relationship was concerned, but the film’s version was better in my opinion.  Katniss tells Peeta she just wants to forget; he tells her he doesn’t.  That can mean many things.  Forget the horror of the games, forget their affection for each other.  It is open to interpretation in more ways than it was in the books, yet doesn’t leave an annoying taste in my mouth. I still wanted to see what happens next, but I didn’t feel toyed with like I did in the book.
  • I imagined the “cornucopia” to be bigger for some reason.  It seemed tiny in the film.
  • I wish Katniss had said “thanks for the knife” when Clove threw one at her and it lodged in her backpack in the beginning of the games.
  • The limb holding up the Tracker Jacker hive was a little thicker than was necessary.  They could have shaved about a minute from the run-time.
  • The spectacle of the Capitol exceeded my wildest dreams.  Wonderful art direction, set design, costumes, make-up, etc. Bravo!
  • Stanley Tucci as Master of Ceremonies Ceasar Flickerman was pitch-perfect.  I loved the cheesy 60’s gameshow, The Dating Game-style evoked by the colors, set, lighting, and right down to the sound track.
  • Speaking of sound track, I would have liked a bit more of a robust score.  Not too much, but thought it could have been beefier.  Where it was used, it was effective.

For a movie lasting nearly 2.5 hours, I can honestly say I wish it had been longer.  I don’t think anything in the film was unnecessary (aside from taking too long to cut down the Tracker Jacker nest).  Most of my complaints were that there were a few too many cuts, but in the grand scheme of things, these are minor wishes from a Hunger Game’s fanatic.  I have no idea how I’ll survive the 1.5 years until “Catching Fire” comes out in theaters.

Maybe someday I’ll go into a more intellectual discussion of the film/book’s powerful themes, but for now, and in case you’re confused about my bottom line… The film is wonderful.  Go and see it if you haven’t already.  Though, you may want to give the book a try first.

Cheers,

PersephoneK

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