Category Books

Nov 16 2013

The Hunger Games & The Movie On Fire

HungerGamesPoster “Up, up, up. It’s going to be a big, big, BIG day!” This was how I started the morning of March 22, 2012; almost expecting to wake up to a knock on the door by the manically upbeat Effie Trinket herself. Instead it was by my fellow fans getting ready for the midnight premiere of The Hunger Games. For months we had been eagerly awaiting the movie release based on the popular and controversial young adult novel of the same name by Suzanne Collins. We couldn’t wait to finally see District 12, the gritty Hob, the dreaded arena, the wickedly fashionable Capitol, and just how much violence would make it into a PG-13 rating. As a Panemaniac myself, I was excited to see if the book-to-screen adaptation would burn like an inferno, or fizzle out into ashes.

I was drawn into the futuristic dystopian world that Collins had created in her book, where reality television has taken a twisted new edge to entertain its audience with a blood sport. In The Hunger Games, Panem is a nation in what used to be known as North America. It consists of twelve districts and ruled over by a totalitarian government from the Capitol, located in the Rocky Mountains. As a punishment for a long-past, failed uprising, once a year each district must hold a lottery to chose one boy and girl between the ages of 12 to 18 years old. These “tributes” are forced to compete in a nationally televised event called “The Hunger Games.” Like gladiator games enjoyed in ancient Rome, the tributes not only have to battle one another, but any lethal obstacle thrown at them by the Gamemakers. Twenty-four contestants enter the arena, but only one can survive to be the winner.

We follow the journey of Katniss Everdeen, a sixteen-year-old girl from District 12, a coal-mining town in the poorest part of Panem. Due to the tragic death of her father she is forced to break the Capitol’s law and hunt for game in order to save her family from starvation. In this world, the Capitol keeps such strong food regulation on the districts that many people are literally starving to death.hunger games book Katniss uses her wits and her hunting skills with her father’s bow and arrows to provide food for her mother and younger sister, Primrose. When her sister’s name is drawn for the 74th Hunger Games, Katniss volunteers as the female tribute, saving her sister, but condemning herself to death. Along with fellow tribute, Peeta Mellark, and their unstable mentor Haymitch Abornathy, they try to find a way to survive against all odds, but at a terrible cost.

I was intrigued by the author’s view of how easily a society could break down. Panem is a society that has become so desensitized by excess and ignorance that they celebrate the slaughter of innocent children as if it were the Super Bowl. Meanwhile, the districts’ citizens live without the comfort of having so much as a steady meal. I was also disturbed by the haunting idea of teenagers being taken from their families and forced to kill other children, or be killed themselves. Collins drew me into this world with her complex characters, descriptions of food and fashion, and her ultimate tale of love and just how far one is willing to sacrifice for freedom.

?????????????In anticipation for the movie, many of us showed up to the theater dressed as our favorite characters. It was the complex range of characters that really made me fall in love with this story. Right away, I was thrilled with the casting choices. Jennifer Lawrence was perfect as the tough and clever Katniss. Josh Hutcherson made us pine for the puppy dog-eyed Peeta Mellark. Amandla Stenberg as Rue, made us ache at the mere sight of her angelic face. And Lenny Kravitz stole the show as fashion genius Cinna simply by being himself. Sadly, there were a few characters that had been toned-down to keep things more suitable for the audience. Although Woody Harrelson was a convincing Haymitch, he was much more subdued than his tormented, alcoholic book version. Elizabeth Banks as Effie Trinket was not nearly as over the top as her wardrobe. Even worse, their most memorable quotes had been altered or dropped completely, leaving out major developments in their characters.

???????????????

Certain adaptations by director Gary Ross were actually better than the print version. Instead of telling the story through Katniss’ inner monologue, we got to see events from multiple points of view. The charming Stanley Tucci made the Hunger Game’s emcee, Caesar Flickerman, a very minor part in the book, unforgettable. And while Seneca Crane had been little more than a name to us, Wes Bentley and his dapper Capitol-stylized beard could not have enough screen time.

The downside was the too-fast-paced speed of the film. Scenes rushed past before we could emotionally deal with them. I had hoped to see more details of certain things fans would recognize in the novel. The blood bath in the arena was not nearly as violent as what we had imagined. The deaths, while agonizing to watch were not as painful as the shaky camera work. Mostly it just ended up causing headaches. I was disappointed that Ross did not express how the people of the districts were truly desperate for food. It is difficult to get an American audience to think of what it’s like to be really hungry. And finally, the romance, or lack thereof, between Peeta and Katniss was never developed. We left the film not knowing if it just was all for the Games or not.

I was pleased with this film. It was not perfect and there were things that could have been improved, but it was an exciting ride. I’m looking forward to the story continuing in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

Jennifer Drucker

Aug 1 2013

Under The Dome Is Underwhelming

under the dome

After sampling the first few episodes of the CBS summer series Under The Dome, it’s very clear that the series strayed detrimentally from its source book. Based on the mammoth novel by Stephen King, Under The Dome tells the story about a small town, Chester’s Mill, that is suddenly and inexplicably sealed off from the outside world by a huge, transparent dome. The novel focused on the townspeople trapped in the Dome and was about how they coped with this bizarre situation. Under The Dome raised obvious issues like what would be the environmental impact? How will people behave when the food supply dwindles? How long before chaos and anarchy take hold of normal law-biding citizens? The strange circumstance brought out the best and worst in the book’s characters.

deputy cut off

While the book was captivating and really explored the ramifications of the event, this TV adaptation feels formulaic. It does have some nice visuals, explicitly the shots of the Dome cutting off Chester’s Mill from the outside world. In a recent episode, the U.S. military launched a missile at the Dome to destroy it and it looked great, as was the aftermath outside the Dome.

crewYet, the TV show is a bit bland and bogged down with melodramatic developments. Some of those were covered in the book and were written expertly, but in TV feel mediocre. There is this storyline about a sociopathic creep called “Junior” Rennie (Alexander Koch), who is obviously insane and has a dangerous obsession over this waitress Angie McAlister (Britt Anderson). In the book, this obsession turned truly macabre, but in the show, it’s toned down and the subplot is now a tedious cat-and-mouse game. Junior catches her and imprisons her in a bomb shelter. Angie tries to escape and is eventually freed. Junior chases her and so on. Then there is the matter of character judgment. In the book, Junior was made a special deputy and started a reign of terror with his gang. It was believable because his father, “Big Jim” Rennie, a local politician, pulls strings for his son to be made a special deputy. This doesn’t happen in the show. Instead, the sheriff’s deputy, Linda Esquivel (Natalie Martinez), who is in charge after the sheriff dies early on, makes Junior a special deputy. Esquivel can’t see what a slimeball his Junior is and deputizes him with little thought. Talk about lack of judgment! Then he is hardly ever shown performing his duties, he’s too busy chasing Angie. Meanwhile, Esquivel complains every now and then about how he’s missing when he’s needed. Continue reading →

Jun 18 2013

The Must-Read Book For The Summer: Max Brook’s World War Z

 

world war z coverTrends come in cycles. Recently the popular culture has seen the return of an old and familiar staple, the zombie. The Hollywood ghouls started out in the spooky black and white classics of the 30s and 40s, but they were branded into the baby boomer consciousness via George Romero’s 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead. To be fair, they’ve never been away much since, thanks to Living Dead‘s various sequels, semi-sequels, and remakes. But in 2002 British film wunderkind Danny Boyle gave the genre a shot of adrenalin with 28 Days Later, about a deadly virus ravaging London and turning survivors into hyperkinetic, psychotic killers. For zombie fans, the die was cast.

In 2003 writer Max Brooks – son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft – wrote The Zombie Survival Guide (TZSG), a tongue-in-cheek “how-to” on surviving a zombie onslaught as society breaks down. TZSG was a New York Times best –seller thanks to its dark humor and occasional light tone. The book’s characteristics, however, did not mask the fact that underneath the surface it contained some very useful survival information, and it’s easy to see that Brooks did his research. His work must have fuelled a thirst somewhere, because a month later Image Comics began publishing Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead (now a hit TV series on the AMC cable network), describing the adventures of survivors of a zombie apocalypse.  The undead were officially back in style.

Not to be outdone, Brooks took zombies one step further and in 2006 came out with World War Z (WWZ), describing the entire history of a massive, deadly zombie onslaught – a war, basically between humans and the undead (“Z” for zombie, if you haven’t yet figured that out). The zombies are the same as those in TZSG, making the book a follow-up of sorts.  According to Brooks, zombies are humans re-animated by an incurable disease, spread by a zombie bite or having open pores exposed to zombie tissue. Taking a page from Romero’s model, they are slow, brainless creatures completely devoid of intelligence, whose sole instinct is to eat live flesh. They are incapable of tiring, cannot drown, and can only be killed by a blow to the head.

Other than that, WWZ is very different in style and tone than its slim predecessor. Patterned in structure after Studs Terkel’s classic oral history of WW2, The Good War, WWZ is not one story per se like Kirkman’s comic but rather a series of individual accounts telling the story from the initial sudden outbreak to mankind’s victory and the sad, weary aftermath.  The book’s narrator (in whose voice Brooks writes), a member of the (fictional) United Nations Post War Committee, is commissioned to interview survivors from mankind’s war against zombies.  Like a twisted travelogue, Brooks shuttles around the world, as survivors running the gamut from military, clergy, health services, government officials, security, and ultimately the average citizen describe their experience and the ghastly horrors they witnessed.

In a chilling opener, the story begins quickly but methodically. In a remote, rural province in China, a young boy goes diving for sunken booty with his father. His father is pulled down by something unknown and the boy escapes but is nipped on the heel.  The poor infected lad becomes “patient zero”, infecting others and kickstarting the zombie pandemic. Once the infection goes beyond the village, it acts as an out-of-whack Rube Goldberg contraption, setting in motion a chain of events that will change the world.  Infected Chinese refugees begin streaming across the border into Central Asia. Others fly out to Europe, bringing the infection to the continent. The Chinese government feverishly tries to halt the spread and invents a military crisis involving Taiwan to mask their armed build up and activities.  Only after hitting the poor South African ghetto townships does the world begin to take notice, calling it the “African Rabies”.  Israel is one of the first to respond, imposing a national quarantine, granting entry only to uninfected Jews and Palestinians, and calling out the Israel Defense Forces for border security.

Through the illegal organ trade, the infection reaches Brazil and once in Mundus Novus it begins to wreak havoc.  Zombies rip through an unprepared United States, as corruption, government incompetence, and overconfidence result in some heavy bungling and widespread deaths. Millions all over the world begin fleeing their homes for safety, as the “Great Panic” begins. At a major, decisive battle in Yonkers, New York, American soldiers fight a massive and frightening wave of undead as if they were fighting living soldiers. Using inappropriate techniques against an undead army – such as attempting to “demoralize them” – they fail miserably and the American forces are brutally defeated on live TV. Other countries encounter similar disastrous results and world civilization as we know it begins to crumble. Continue reading →

Apr 13 2013

Some Future & Alternate North American Maps

emberverse 2 2 georges

Studying fictional maps of real locations is an intriguing hobby for many sci-fi/fantasy fans. Some recent maps appearing in books, movies and TV shows have caught the imagination of many. They feature North America in our future and alternate worlds.

With S.M. Stirling’s Emberverse books (starting with Dies The Fire) it can be seen that North America looks balkanized with a myriad of separate nations. One of author Harry Turtledove’s best books The Two Georges (co-written with Richard Dreyfuss) has a map of the so-called North American Union that looks supersized as the country encompasses Canada. His epic Southern Victory series of books had maps of North America where the Confederacy still existed into the 20th century. Starting with How Few Remain through The Great War trilogy and the Settling Accounts tetralogy the maps changed radically over time.

Great War Turtledove map

jericho map

The maps featured in the TV shows Jericho and Fringe have different versions of the  U.S. In Jericho, the nation has split into three nations, the U.S., Texas and the Allied States. In Fringe, the characters often visited a parallel world where the United States’ configuration is slightly different. Among the differences, Texas is split into two states, while North and South Carolina is one state.

fringe map rev map

As anyone can see, the United States no longer exists in these two maps featured from The Hunger Games and the TV show Revolution. In the map from Revolution the U.S. has broken up into several nations with names like the Monroe Republic (where the show takes place in and spans from the Great Lakes region to the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast) and the California Commonwealth.

But the map of the fictional nation Panem from The Hunger Games truly catches the eyes with the changed geography. Notice that the Florida Peninsula is underwater along with most of the modern coastline. Apparently The Hunger Games takes place in the far future where the greenhouse effect has radically altered the landscape.

Panem

These are just a tiny sampling of fascinating maps of places that don’t exist, at least here and now.

Waldermann Rivera

Apr 3 2013

Idiotic Twist Ruins The Governor In The Book The Walking Dead: Rise Of The Governor

Warning: The review/rant below contains major spoilers about the Governor in The Walking Dead: Rise Of The Governor novel.

bookI just finished reading or rather wasted my time with the horror book The Walking Dead: Rise Of The Governor written by the creator of The Walking Dead comic book Robert Kirkman and Jay Bonansinga.

It was worse than Michael Crichton’s Sphere!

The thing that gets me about the book is that I was really enjoying this; I’m a recent convert to The Walking Dead phenomenon thanks to the excellent TV show on AMC. I think that the character of the Governor (played on the show by David Morrisey) is one of the best villains I’ve ever seen. As soon as I could I went to the local comic book shop and picked up the graphic novels. I saw the book The Walking Dead: Rise Of The Governor and decided to buy the book too.

The book focuses on Philip Blake, his daughter Penny, his brother Brian, and Philip’s friend Nick. As you probably know Philip Blake becomes the Governor and his daughter becomes a zombie or as they say on the show and comic book a walker or biter.

It starts off showing the group when the walker outbreak began and their struggles to find safe shelter. There are a few times where you think Penny will get bitten by a walker but it never happens. Instead, Kirkman wrote a nice twist, she gets killed by crazy living people then turns into a walker.

The Walking Dead: Rise Of The Governor had the characters facing many hardships, building up to Penny’s death that makes Philip become angry and crazy and logically becoming the Governor. You really see that as he captures two of the attackers that killed Penny, locks them up and tortures them every day. His brother Brian was a wimp throughout the book and Nick was often the voice of reason.

Spoiler time: Philip gets really crazy and kills a woman to feed to walker Penny. Nick tells Brian he can’t stand it anymore and a fight between Philip and Nick happens. Around this time, they wind up staying in the town of Woodbury, the same place that the Governor rules as seen in the comics and show. When they first arrive at the town, the place is controlled by Major Gene Gavin, a lunatic National Guardsman who calls himself the Major and abuses the residents. Continue reading →