Nerd in the 'Noke

It won't come out until November 22, but earlier this week we got our first look at The Hunger Games: Catching Fire , the second film in the franchise based on the best selling trilogy of novels by Suzanne Collins. It has been a couple of years since I read the books, but if memory serves correctly, this initial teaser seems to follow the book as closely as the first film did.  This is great news.  That fact along with an excellent cast were the reasons behind The Hunger Games being such a strong adaptation in the first place.  The surviving cast returns along with the addition of a second Oscar winner in Philip Seymour Hoffman.  The folks behind The Hunger Games films must love the fact that they locked Jennifer Lawrence in when they did.  She has since gone on to win an Oscar herself (Best Actress just a couple of months ago).  I'm sure her rate of compensation will change now that she's got a much larger profile, but the fact that their quadrilogy ...

The Hunger Games (2012), PG-13, 142 minutes - A year ago, an old college friend had recommended that I read The Hunger Games. I did, and I couldn't put the book down (or either of its two sequels).  After reading the trilogy by Suzanne Collins, I eagerly waited for the movie that had been announced that would star a very good young actress named Jennifer Lawrence who had received a Best Actress nomination at the Oscars for Winter's Bone  and who had also been in last summer's blockbuster  X-Men: First Class .  This all lead to Gary Ross's big screen adaptation ranking #2 on my most anticipated movies of 2012 list  earlier this year and it didn't disappoint. For those not familiar with the books, The Hunger Games takes place in a dystopian nation known as Panem (basically a post apocalyptic North America) in which the all of the rich and privileged folk live in the Capital which runs the country.  The rest of the country is split into 12 districts,...