The Hunger Games movie

Jeremy and I went to see The Hunger Games on Saturday. I really liked it, but something is keeping me from saying I LOVED it. I can't figure out what. I think part of it might be that it was pretty much exactly like the book, and even exactly like I had imagined the book in my mind. It didn't add anything appreciably new or inventive to the presentation of the story on the big screen, even as it was extraordinarily faithful to the book.

So yeah, I liked it. I thought the main actors all did a good job, especially Cinna. The movie definitely sucked me into its world (just like the book), so that when it was over and we emerged into the light of the real world, I was disoriented for a while.

Speaking of emerging from the movie theater, for a couple of hours, wow did I ever feel like we were living in The Capitol. Dubai has a lot of similarities with that place. Thankfully, hosting a death tournament for teenagers is not one of them.

Also, I think the inspiration for Seneca Crane's facial hair sculpting could easily have come from the impeccably trimmed stubble-beards a lot of Emirati and Saudi men have here.

If I have to have a definitive complaint about the movie, it would be about the overuse of shaky-cam, especially in the beginning. I get that they felt a need to obscure some of the violence, but it came close to giving me a headache.

Have you seen The Hunger Games? What did you think?