Well, tastes here in the PPC differ wildly. There used to be someone here who I got into an argument about taste with when it turned out that she didn't like World War Z (another book I quite like a lot), so taste in the PPC is pretty relative with that.
Yeah. And honestly, for me the more interesting part of Catching Fire was watching the ways President Snow went around screwing with Katniss' life. I think that made him an extremely effective, villain, particularly when the quarter quell conditions were announced. So yeah...
The casting actually worked out pretty well in the end, particularly as far as Jennifer Lawrence is concerned. (I actually thought J-Law's casting was perfect for Katniss Everdeen, mostly because she kind of already played a very similar character in Winter's Bone. Difference between them, of course, is that J-Law had to gut a squirrel on-camera in Winter's Bone.) I don't think I can find any casting choice in that movie that didn't work for me, as all the acting was really good. The things that weren't so great about the movie were the pacing (again, it felt just a bit rushed), and the fact that Gary Marshall cannot direct an action scene to save his life (seriously, Gary, lay off on the damn shaky-cam!). Otherwise, though, it was a pretty good movie.
Yeah, they did have to cut material, but fortunately they didn't cut too much. The avox subplot was not the only thing they cut, though: they cut Madge out of the movie entirely, and came up with a completely different version of how Katniss got her mockingjay pin (she got it from the Hob). There are merits to both approaches, I think, particularly as far as some things in Catching Fire are concerned. That said, there was actually a small amount of material that was added, and that one thing that was added was something that I actually thought was for the better. The really big thing I'm thinking about is that the movie didn't stay with Katniss the whole time once she was in the Games. Seneca Crane and Haymitch both actually have expanded roles in the movie, on virtue of the fact that the movie cuts to the Capitol at some points (particularly to the game-makers, so Seneca Crane's role is greatly expanded). I actually thought this was really interesting, because then we got to see more of the machinations behind how things work in the Games. The movie showed how the game-makers might think to make things more interesting, the movie showed all the talking that Haymitch had to do to start dropping items down to the arena... that was actually an addition that I liked a lot.
Hm... we'll need to fix that, LOL. I think I have a new music guinea pig!
