the hunger games

Chris Knight's avatar

If you were to timewarp to some day many decades hence (I hope, gulp!) and find me about to depart this moral realm for the Great Beyond, and of all the questions you could ask me the one thing you would want to know is “What were your favorite websites of all time?”…

Even then, one of the top three would be WWWF Grudge Match: that hilarious page from the earliest days of widespread accessible Internet featuring epic battles between Mister T and Mister Clean, a Rottweiler versus a Rottweiler’s weight in chihuahas, John McClane versus the Death Star, and that immortal bout between English Soccer Hooligans and the French Army.  Grudge Match ran uninterrupted in a few iterations between 1995 and 2005, but its impact on Internet humor will ever live on.

Thing is… since 2005 there’s been so much crazy new stuff come about that’s just ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

This might be one of the extremely rare occasions where for various reasons, the movie is better than the book. And the book is plenty good (read my review here).

I’ve never seen a movie theater as packed with kids during a school day as I saw today at the Grande in Greensboro for the 1:15 showing of The Hunger Games. There were six or seven girls in costume as Capitol citizens (including one as Effie, complete with shocking pink hair). It was nearly a sold-out show and the showings tonight were already sold out when I bought my ticket.

The film adaptation takes a scarce few liberties with Suzanne Collins’ megaselling novel. Those are so minor that you generally won’t miss them (I was a bit let down that the muttations during the climax at the Cornucopia didn’t resemble the deceased tributes). But the film also ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

I began reading Suzanne Collins’ novel The Hunger Games, as it turned out, a few day before Mom passed away. It took me awhile to get back to it but I picked it up again a coupl’a nights ago.

I thought it was a most excellent and enjoyable read. Maybe not as rich in allegory as it could have been but, I’m willing to defer final judgment on this series until I finish the third book.

In case you haven’t had the pleasure of discovering it yet, The Hunger Games takes place in a distant future where what was once North America collapsed into ruin and from the ashes arose a cruel dictatorship called Panem. It’s a place ruled by The Capitol: a megalopolis populated by a decadent people who do nothing but eating, drinking, getting plastic surgery and probably getting laid. They live at the expense of the ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

I know practically nothing about The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, apart from this book being everywhere when I go into any of the local bookstores. In fact, the synopsis for the upcoming film adaptation – which I just read a short while ago – is all that I know about it at all…

Every year in the ruins of what was once North America, the evil Capitol of the nation of Panem forces each of its twelve districts to send a teenage boy and girl to compete in the Hunger Games. A twisted punishment for a past uprising and an ongoing government intimidation tactic, The Hunger Games are a nationally televised event in which “Tributes” must fight with one another until one survivor remains. Pitted against highly-trained Tributes who have prepared for these Games their entire lives, Katniss is forced to rely upon her sharp instincts as well as

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