Battle Royale &The Hunger Games

Oh, hi.

If you haven't been living under a rock (<-- foreshadowing to this post!), I'm sure you've heard all about the book series and movies The Hunger Games. I haven't read the books.. not sure if I will.. maybe eventually, but last night I saw the movie.

But before the Hunger Games...

Last week my boyfriend and I watched Battle Royale which has a similar concept of young kids going into a war against each other with limited weapons and survival equipment and the last person standing "wins". If you haven't seen Battle Royale and you are up for reading subtitles - as this movie is in Japanese, and if you are not squeemish when it comes to blood and gore, I highly recommend it. I thought it was brilliant! I also am pretty proud that I recognized one of the actresses, Chiaki Kuriyama, who also plays Gogo Yubari in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill; another amazing movie. Here's a fun fact. Tarantino loves the movie Battle Royale, and hired Chiaki because he saw her in it. Another fun fact is that over 450 gallons of fake blood were used on the two Kill Bill movies.

Wowza. Now that's a bloody good time!

Anyways, thanks for staying with me during my movie tangent. I've been reading that people are wondering if The Hunger Games are an "American version" of Battle Royale, so I'm glad I watched both of the movies. They have similarities for sure, but have very big differences as well. Completely different movie styles for one. Personally, I liked Battle Royale more, but I definitely enojyed The Hunger Games. 

Here's the thing though... I don't understand why the people in the movie who are watching the Games are dressed up like the Alice in Wonderland colourful corset wearing Victorian clowns? Am I missing something? I mean, I love costumes and I love to play dress-up (clearly) but I was so confused why everyone looked this way. Maybe it describes how it makes sense in the books. I get the whole, we are richer and we control your destiny aspect.. but it was confusing and sort of weird. If you don't know what I'm talking about, this is the actress Elizabeth Banks as her character Effie Trinket:

I mean, great  make-up for sure. The head of the Make-Up Department for Hunger Games is a woman named Ve Neill who is more than creative and talented. 

Some of you may recognize her as a judge on the SFX show Face Off.

(If you are crazy about those eyelashes, you'll be jealous to know that I own those. My boyfriend gave them to me for Christmas. They are made by a company called Paperself,

check them out for some unique lashes & other goodies).

Back to the make-up madness. I just felt like I was watching a huge add for MAC or something. Like everyone was in drag and it didn't make sense why. Elizabeth Banks said it took over 2 hours every day of shooting to achieve her look and she started at 4am. Hey Banks, ever realize that your make-up artists had to start their days earlier than you to apply it, and then end their days later than you to remove it? Just saying... I'm sure you had a comfy chair while you sat there and got all dolled up. 

That was a small rant.

In other news, the butterfly make-up done on Jennifer Lawrence near the end of the film is "ooh" and "ahhh" worthy, and I did love some of the facial hair and the creative ways of shaving beards.

But, Probably the coolest part (for me at least) was the special effects done on Josh Hutcherson who plays Peeta. His family owns a bakery and apparently he learned how to ice some seriously wicked cakes because he camoflauges himself pretty damn well. Obviously it's all special effects. I read that Josh had to lie down on rocks and not move for an hour and a half to have it applied for the one scene where he is completely camoflauged into the nature. Apparently the make-up team created a mixture of clay and glycerine to create the effect, because they had to make it look real enough as if Peeta did it himself.

Anyways, I don't know how to feel about this movie. Go see it for yourself. Maybe a little while down the road I'll need to watch it again. Or maybe just keep watching the whole series.  It really makes me realize that if I were ever in a War situation, or needed to be in "survival mode" I'd be screwed... unless I camoflauged myself like Peeta...

Oh well. As they say,

"May the odds be ever in your favor"

xox Celina