Ah, then he has no excuse. (I didn't read the article since I still have to edit my blog post and am not reading HG stuff until that's up tonight.)

SO GOOD. It was brutal and horrific and disturbing, even moreso from a third-person POV because we see it all for what it is, not through Katniss's filter of acceptance. I loved what they did with Snow and Crane, ESPECIALLY Crane's final scene. I hope Collins herself wrote that scene, because as far as I'm concerned, that's fucking canon. It felt completely immersive, uncomfortable and tense to watch with a few moments of humor scattered about. Sure, I have some quibbles here and there, but, mostly, I can't believe it was that good.

The big complaint from my group was the shaky-cam, especially in the scenes where it was like, "really? Here, you feel the need to do that?" I'll be interested to see it again when I'm not looking up at a pretty steep angle at an imax screen.

OMG, the production design. I mean, really.

P-C, that sounds exactly like our comments driving home after the movie this morning. It just grabs you from the beginning and doesn't let go. There were things that were omitted/changed but the additions made up for them.

Our audience, who had been kind of rowdy during the pre-show wait, was quiet with appropriate responses through the movie, so no one was bored.

What were the demographic like at your viewings? We were in Ann Arbor, so it was a lot of (white, female) undergrads.

Oh, the noises they made during the Titanic preview. The four of us, who saw it the first time round, were exceedingly eye-rolly.

The film made exceptionally good use of the change in POV to omniscient, which allowed for a lot more set-up of the political stuff that's coming. I am going to come down on the side of disliking the change in the origin of the pin. My fix for it would be for it to have been something that Katniss's mother pawned back in the day.

My viewing was mostly high school kids. For a long time I was one of only two adults in the theater, that changed as it got closer to the start of the movie, but it was still mostly teenagers.

The Titanic preview got basically no response until Celine started singing. These kids weren't around when the movie was first released, but man, that song.

Debet, I agree with you about the pin .

Debet, I also agree! That's, what, three of us, so clearly we are CORRECT.

The casting worked really well, better than I'd anticipated, especially Peeta, because the actor really sold the basic sweetness and decency of the kid, as well as the fact that he's a romantic yet also kind of a pragmatic fatalist. And man, thinking of the future now KILLS ME.

I get with all the world building and character introductions, somethings had to be sacrificed, and I'm ok with most of the tradeoffs, but the pin being so random instead of a specific gift . The view of District 12 didn't include much of the have's to compare against the have nots. I'll be interested to see how that is handled along with the victors village in the next movie. I'm assuming that is already greenlighted, right?

All the whitefont! It is keeeeeling me!!! I don't see it until Sunday. ::staples hand to forehead::

I agree about the pin! It was so random. It was a symbol because it was a symbol. But I did like the bit with Snow at the end. I don't remember if that was from the book, but it went a long way toward giving the pin its significance.

Plei, I also agree about Peeta. Especially during the pre-Games interview! So charming!