I got tricked into seeing The Hunger Games yesterday. I read the book 6 months ago. That wasn't very good, and the movie is pretty much the same. The movie has some of the most annoying camera work I've ever seen though too. Every camera shot is a close up, either on someone's face or hand or in a couple cases their eye or lips. And even when two characters are just standing around talking the camera would jump from close up to close up. Sometimes it would pan from close up to close up, which is even more annoying. And the action scenes became an unwatchable blur due to the camera being set too close. Anyway, thumbs down.

I wouldn't have agreed to even see the movie except Kate Reid couldn't remember the name of it so she made it sound like we were meeting to see that Taylor Lautner movie where he's like the Bourne Identity guy but in high school. (It's called Abducted, but neither of us knew the name. That movie didn't look very good either, but at least I didn't already know the story.) Then I showed up at the theater and the Hunger Games is playing and Kate thought we'd been talking about that movie the whole time.

What's the appeal of Hunger Games? I could kinda see why girls like Twilight. But this doesn't even really have a romance (at least in the first book), nor is the protagonist an unexceptional every-woman that's easy to identify with, and there aren't any vampires. From what I remember, the girls in my high school english class weren't particularly fond of the Lord of the Flies.