Saturday, March 31, 2012

Catching Fire Casting Call

Now that we know Catching Fire will actually get made, due to The Hunger Games making a squillion dollars and Gary Ross signing on to direct, we need to start asking the important questions: who should play the repeat tributes?

*SPOILERS FOR CATCHING FIRE AHEAD*

The casting in The Hunger Games was so good that I'm willing to trust in Gary Ross' decisions; that doesn't mean we can't speculate, though.  Especially since I'm a pretty prolific tumblr user and right now that's all people seem to be able to talk about.  The two biggies are Finnick and Joanna, since they are so integral to the plot of not only Catching Fire but also Mockingjay.  My choices?


Someone mentioned Jesse Williams yesterday and now not only can I not unsee it, but I think it's absolute perfection.  His most striking feature, aside from sheer physical perfection, are his "sea green eyes" - what you may not be able to see in this less than HD pic is Williams' clear blue-green stare.  Finnick is also by turns cocky, smarmy, charming, a touch sleazy, supremely talented, and has a huge dose of swagger - all things I've watched Williams pull off with aplomb in his role as Dr. Avery on Gray's Anatomy.  GARY ROSS.  WORK ON THIS.




I've actually got two picks for Joanna...

Naya Rivera and Kristen Bell have more in common for this role than you might think.  They're both petite women with innocent looking brown eyes (Joanna's only explicitly described features are her small stature, which helped her win, and those big brown eyes) and they have both shown they can handle rolls with kick serious amounts of ass.  Bell may be the stronger choice - she's a little bit older, and is the better actress.  But Rivera's no-holds-barred role as Santana on Glee shows she's pretty fearless on camera.  It may come down to who's willing to shave their heads for the roll.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

HUNGER GAMES

Flawless Tribute Casting

Let's do this.

DISCLAIMER: I really liked the movie.  I liked it more than I liked the book.  If someone asks me which form they should imbibe, I will recommend the movie over the book.

WHAT THIS MOVIE DID REALLY WELL, AND WHY I THINK IT'S SUPERIOR TO SUZANNE COLLINS' ORIGINAL TEXT:
- Getting out of Katniss' first person, present tense perspective.  Not only does this mean we're not treated to the oddities of Collins' pacing, but it opened up a lot of opportunities for Director Gary Ross.  And he definitely took advantage of those opportunities - not being bound inside Katniss' head, we get to see the Gamemakers at work, and we get to see Haymitch at work, and we get to see the audience react to the events in the Arena (although I personally thought they could have gone way further with this; I would have loved to see some people watching from their homes and seeing how different people reacted to the Games on a more personal level).

- CASTING.  Oh my goodness, the casting and the acting in this film are flawless perfection.  Jennifer Lawrence is likable, charming, and fierce in ways that Collins' Katniss is supposed to be (I never got this from the character.  I did not like Book!Katniss.  I did not find her engaging, or interesting, or particularly intelligent; she's so reactionary that I didn't get why readers loved her so much.  If they were all reading her the way that Lawrence portrays her, I get it now.).  Lawrence hits her pitches at every turn, from the heartbreaking and desperate wail when she volunteers to save her sister, to sticking it in the eye (figuratively) of the Gamemakers when they refuse to pay attention to her.

I don't think I could ever say enough about the strength of the supporting cast, who Ross has wisely given more to do here than in the novel.  Stanley Tucci especially blows up in his expanded roll as the tv host Caesar Flickerman; he gives the impression of being on the side of these doomed children, while still being utterly a product of the Capitol.  Woody Harrelson as the alcoholic mentor Haymitch and Elizabeth Banks as the overly colorful and chipper District 12 wrangler Effie Trinket shine, particularly when they're fighting with each other.  Lenny Kravitz is superb as the grounded, deceptively laid-back Cinna, Katniss' stylist and number one supporter.  Donald Sutherland manages to make simply standing around and cutting roses look menacing.  The strength of these actors more than makes up for the occasionally stiff or silly sounding dialogue (a mainstay of book-to-movie adaptations, I'm afraid - not everything that's written down sounds good coming out of actual human mouths).

The biggest criticism I have is that Ross seems to have pulled the teeth out of the most vicious and problematic scenes; necessary to keep his PG-13 rating, I'm afraid, but in losing the hard edges of the novel we lose some of the urgency and the horror that Collins is trying to convey.  The cinematography seriously suffers from an overdose of close-ups and shaky-cam, which particularly weakened the opening scenes.  A few of the special effects were cheap looking.  There wasn't enough of an effort to explain the history of Panem and why, exactly, the Games are held in the first place (I'm hoping more of this comes out in Catching Fire).

The movie has other flaws, but they don't originate here - moments that were silly or stilted or poorly planned in the book are similar here.  But Ross has certainly done an admirable job of translating this gladiatorial event into a consumable film, and I'll be one of the first in line when he turns out the sequel Catching Fire.  Even if the dialogue is weak, you know it'll at least be exciting.