The Hunger Games vs Twilight vs Battle Royale

It is so often the case that when a new book or film comes out, it is compared to a similar predecessor. More often than not, it's essential to give people a clue as to what they are letting themselves in for. The Hunger Games has striking similarities with both Twilight and Battle Royale, but is it the new version of either of them? Well, no.

Firstly, the plot of Twilight is completely different to The Hunger Games. Apart from the obvious lack of werewolves and vampires (you can see there whose team I'm on!), the focus is entirely different. Granted, they are both young adult fiction and they both have a pretty complex love triangle. But the similarities end there. While the love triangle in Twilight is the central focus of the plot and other stuff happens around it, The Hunger Games is a dark look at a dystopian future with an incredibly strong female lead in Katniss Everdeen - it just happens to have a love triangle going on at the same time.

The main comparison though is with Battle Royale - a story which brilliantly looked at a Japan that forced a class of students each year to kill each other until only one survived. In this, The Hunger Games is the same - simply put, it is children forced to kill each other or die.

The most notable difference though is the style of each. Battle Royale is a horror film, plain and simple - it is a blood bath of epic proportions that examines the different reactions people would have if put in that scenario. Would you kill yourself, kill everyone else, form alliances or just sit and hide? In The Hunger Games, there is a whole horrific level of reality TV added. The 24 chosen participants are not only forced to kill each other, but many are trained for the eventuality and all of them are forced to put on a show. There are days between the reaping (when the 24 are chosen) and the actual start of the games and in this time, they learn new skills, perfect those they already have and are interviewed on live TV for all of Panem to see. The children in Battle Royale are drugged and wake up with a bomb round their necks.

So if you want a clever horror film with a blood-bath and fantastic lost-in-translation subtitles, check out the film of Battle Royale. If you want the back-story and a more graphic look at each of the class members, then read the book. If, on the other hand, you want an easy to read piece of fantastic young adult literature which is dark and gripping with a phenomenonally strong and brilliantly flawed heroine, check out The Hunger Games.

Roll on March 23rd for the film...

Book Review: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Katniss Everdeen lives in District 12 of Panem with her mother and little sister Primrose. After the death of her father and her mother's subsequent breakdown, she has had to take charge of her little family, risking the death penalty daily by entering the woods with best friend Gale to hunt for food.

Every year, one boy and one girl from each district aged between 12 and 18 are selected to take part in The Hunger Games - a fight-to-the-death reality show where there can only be one victor. Once you turn 12, your name is entered and is again with every birthday. There are also ways to buy food, which is scarce in many districts, by adding your name even more times.

For 16 year old Katniss, the odds are not in her favour. She has been getting food and supplies for her family by adding her name to the pot and for her age has been entered five times already. 12 year old sister Prim has only been entered once. But when the name for the girl Tribute in District 12 is called out, Katniss is horrified to hear that of her little sister. She immediately steps forward and volunteers as Tribute in her sister's place - becoming one of the 24 young people who will, in a few short days, be dropped into the games.

In Katniss Everdeen, Collins has created a fantastic female lead. She is flawed in her social skills, cold and harsh with her mother and does not really understand the world, romance or love. But at the heart of it all she is a survivor. She loves her sister in a protective maternal way, but other than that she looks at each day as a battle, a hunt for food, for trade, for carrying on whichever way she can.

The reality show style of the games means that she quickly becomes more a pageant show contestant than a fighting machine, trying to win the affection of sponsors who will then drop things into the game to help her along the way. Though she knows she must ultimately kill him, she is advised by her team to befriend Peeta, the boy chosen to represent District 12 alongside her. The two are the only District pair to enter the procession holding hands and they share their training time, while others work alone.

"They want a good show" she is told. And so, because she will do whatever she has to to survive, she goes along with it. She blushes, flirts and plays up the romance to the cameras. Anything to put the odds more in her favour. The relationship that develops between the two, and all its hidden understones, is a fascinating one as Katniss starts to realise that perhaps it is not all just for the cameras.

The book also has an incredibly fast pace, even for the massive stints when Katniss is alone in the games. She is always thinking, always planning, so there is always something to do, some plan to follow. When each chapter ends, you just want to keep reading to see what is around the next corner.

The book has striking parallels to Battle Royale but fans of the book and film of the Japanese hit should not be put off. The Hunger Games is an entirely different approach to the same concept. It is a young adult fiction book and set in a dystopian fantasy style reality instead of the "real world" of the Battle Royale. By doing this, it manages to be different enough that fans will not be constantly comparing the two. Battle Royale is a much darker novel and though the violence still exists in The Hunger Games, it is not nearly as terrifying. A few nasty deaths did make me wince but they are more ugly than scary.

The fantasy element is not just in the customs, clothing and names of Panem's inhabitants but in the creatures. There are genetically modified birds that mimic song, the muttations - creatures that are wolf-like in nature but also walk like humans, and tracker jackers - wasps that have an enhanced sting that can easily kill a person.

A superb, clever and imaginative book that left me dying to read the following two books in the trilogy.

I cannot WAIT for the film in March 2012!

4.5/5 FOBLES

Read my review of Book 2 in the series Catching Fire here

Top 10 film insults

Ever watch a film and wish you had the courage to insult the way they do? It always seems more poetic and witty or just hilariously vulgar. Here are ten to make you wince ... or laugh, depending on your mood:

10. Sex and the City
I curse the day you were born.

Charlotte plots what she would say if she saw Mr Big again after what he did to best friend Carrie. Then, while heavily pregnant and eating alone, she gets her chance. It would have had a lot more clout if she didn't then go into labour and need his help to get to the hospital. Funny.

9. Scary Movie
Shorty: Yo mother!
Brenda: You my brother, that's your mother too, jackass.
Shorty: Oh yeah..well, then your father's stupid! Ha ha ha.
Brenda: So? I don't know him.

Possibly the best comeback to a "yo mother" insult ever uttered.

8. Anchorman
You are a smelly pirate hooker. Why don't you go back to your home on whore island?

Up there with the best of them, Anchorman has some of the greatest one-liners ever uttered in cinema. This is just one of the many insults Ron Burgundy throws at his co-anchor Veronica Corningstone.

7. Saving Private Ryan
I mean, picture a girl who just took a nosedive from the ugly tree and hit every branch coming down.

Matt Damon really knows how to paint a picture when he tells a story.

6. Much Ado About Nothing
Scratching could not make it worse, an 'twere such a face as yours were.

If you want insults that pack a wordy punch, you can't beat a bit of Shakespeare for pure class.

5. Clueless
You're a virgin who can't drive.

Brittany Murphy keeping it to the point.

4. Parenthood
Well, I thought someone in this house ought to be having sex - I mean with something that doesn't require batteries.

Has there ever been a meaner insult to someone's mum on screen? She follows it up saying that she should go before she says anything she'll regret... it gets worse?

3. A Fish Called Wanda
You pompous stuck up snot nosed English giant twirp scum bag f**k face dickhead asshole.

Kevin Kline plays the stereotypical arrogant American perfectly.

2. Battle Royale
You ugly shrimpy nit!

This one may have lost something in translation but it remains one of the funniest insults I've ever heard as our heroine is hiding from the school bullies in the toilet and gets this classic thrown at her.

1. Monty Python's The Holy Grail
I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries.

Has there ever been a funnier, more bizarre insult than this? The french taunting scene is one of the funniest scenes in cinema history and goes on and on and on...

Battle Royale: Book Vs. Film

Unlike most of my favourite book-film conversions, I actually watched Battle Royale the film long before I discovered it was also a book by Koushun Takami. I was already madly in love with the film version when I decided to read it, only to discover that quite a few smaller aspects had been changed.

The film is one of the finest pieces of foreign film making I have ever seen because it does what I personally love in a great horror film and doesn't rely solely on bloodshed and body counts. It has a plot - and a very good one at that.

The basic plot is that a law is passed in Japan that allows the government to kidnap a class of high-school students and force them to kill each other in a 3 day battle with only what they are given in a rucksack - basically because the kids have taken over the schools with their violent and aggressive behaviour. And the genius of the plot is the psychology behind that premise - what would you do? If you were put in that situation would you go on a murderous rampage, kill yourself, or just wander round waiting for somebody else to kill you. Or would you just hope for the best and wait for the 3 days to be up only to learn that you're going to die anyway.

The class are all drugged on a school trip and when they wake they are in a room on an island with a collar strapped round their neck that can blow up at any point. If there is more than one person alive at the end of three days on the abandoned island they now reside on, their collars will all be set off. To add to the drama, there is an extra child who is there "for fun" so watch out for him kids!

The film has a cast of unknown teenagers (yes they actually were teenagers not 20-somethings pretending to be teenagers) and each of them are phenomenal. Some characters choose to kill themselves, some run and hide, some group together to think up a plan of escape and others just wander round killing who they can and accumulating more weapons as they go. As the three days draw on, the children get more and more desperate in their attempts to stay alive (and more gruesome as a result).

The film has bizarre moments of humour, largely thanks to the wacky teacher in charge and such a clever script. It also has my all-time favourite insult - "you ugly shrimpy nit" - though that perhaps is just lost in the translation of it all.

The brilliance of the book vs the film is that it has the chance to explore the childrens' back stories more than the film really was able. It explains why they act the way they act and what caused them to form the alliances they did. It has more character and makes you really invested in their struggles. Each chapter ends with a body count "9 girls, 8 boys remain" etc which really drums in just how much of a bloodbath this is turning out to be. Though the film does that too.

So for this one I would say watch it AND read it and it doesn't matter in which order. They are both amazing.

5 out of 5 FOBLES for both!

Enjoy!

LE x

Films that never made it big - but must be seen!

Top Secret
The jokes are from the Airplane/Naked Gun school of humour and there are so many crammed into each scene you need to watch the film over and over again just to pick up on them. The plot revolves around a very young Val Kilmer, who plays Nick, an American rock 'n' roll star who is sent on a public relations project as he has been enlisted to sing for a concert in Germany - just as they are about to take over the world... Nick is soon mixed up in hostages, jails, the resistance movement and falling for the woman in the middle of it all - all while singing *yes he actually does the singing!* songs lovingly ripped from every Beach Boys classic.


The main humour of the whole film is that it pretends to take itself seriously. I'd say it has some of the greatest one-liners in cinema history - but I've seen Monty Python. It does come close though with lines like "I know a little German, he's sitting over there" and "Nick? What does that mean?" "I don't know my father thought of it while he was shaving."


Absolutely worth buying and watching over and over. Then when you think you can't watch it any more, invite friends over and make them watch it! :)

Point Break
Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze, guns, jumping out of planes, surfing and half naked hotties. Need I say more?


Soapdish
Amazing amazing cast includes Kevin Kline, Robert Downey Junior, Sally Field, Teri Hatcher, Whoopi Goldberg... the list is endless. Takes the piss out of soap operas from behind the scenes of the fictitious soap opera "The Sun Also Sets" as life begins to immitate art.


Saved

Mandy Moore is hilarious alongside other brilliant young actors including the fab and all grown up Macauley Culkin. Set in a modern day "cool" Christian school it chronicles a bunch of teens as their lives take turns they could not have seen coming. Deals with acceptance, forgiveness, homosexuality and even Judaism all within a Christian school in the funniest, coolest way imaginable. Absolute comedy genius mixed with some real drama.


Battle Royale
A class of school children are put on an island and forced to kill each other. Brutal but fascinating and compelling from start to finish. Must see foreign film!

Top 5: Foreign films

Foreign films became a passion of mine for two very different reasons. Firstly, two old school friends used to come over to my house and watch scary Japanese films with me, freaking my poor big sister out, who would sit in her bedroom next door and hear our intermittent squeals and screams (and often giggles!) and wonder what on earth we were doing.

And that was the start of my love for Japanese horror - Battle Royale, the Ring Trilogy and Audition were the favourites but we were also highly amused by the Tartan Extreme trailers that would come at the beginning of the DVD. Hard Boiled had the funniest (unintentionally!) trailer of Chow Yun-Fat cradling a baby and shooting everyone around him. Then came Hard Boiled 2 with its new tagline (which we created!) of more guns, more blood, more death and more eggs!

Then at university, I started to learn Spanish. And I started to take trips down to the local Phoenix cinema to watch the latest Spanish releases. Then I started to buy DVDs. It was at this point that I started to expand my foreign film viewing to other languages besides Japanese and Spanish. And I got to see the joy that is Amelie and the stunningly beautiful Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

Spanish films are still my favourite overall. Only in a Spanish film could Penelope Cruz play an HIV positive, pregnant nun and keep the plot plausible (All About my Mother) or Antonio Banderas play an ex-mental patient who kidnaps a porn star and still be funny (Tie me up, Tie me down).

But my real love of foreign cinema is their ability to be completely un-Hollywood. The American remakes of foreign films always leave something lacking (see review) - case in point: The Ring, Vanilla Sky etc. The characters do not always walk off into the sunset, nobody is shy about sex or violence, the plot is not thinned for the viewing public and the ends do not always tie up in a neat little bow. And for all that, I thank you foreign films, from the bottom of my slightly twisted heart.

Here are 5 you absolutely must see:

• Amelie (French) - beautiful, romantic without being cheesy, heartwarming for the deepest and darkest cynic.
• All About my Mother (Spanish) - to explain it would ruin it. Just watch it!
• Battle Royale (Japanese) - a class of Japanese school children are put on an island and forced to kill each other. Violent but very very clever!

• Ring Trilogy (Japanese) - Still creepy, will stand the test of time as one of the greatest horror films ever made!
• Pans Labyrinth (Spanish) - visually stunning and incredibly acted. Magical and very dark all at the same time.

And if you fancy a giggle - try "Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down" (Spanish). Antonio Banderas is hilarious and if you can get past the graphic sex scenes it's absolute comedy genius.

LE xx