The Hunger GamesMovie 2012 [BEST]

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is an upcoming American science fiction action film directed by Francis Lawrence from a screenplay by Michael Arndt and Michael Lesslie, based on the 2020 novel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins. It is the fifth installment in The Hunger Games film series, serving as a prequel to The Hunger Games (2012). The film stars Tom Blyth, Rachel Zegler, Josh Andrés Rivera, Hunter Schafer, Jason Schwartzman, Burn Gorman, Peter Dinklage, and Viola Davis. Set 64 years before the first film, it follows the origins of Coriolanus Snow (Blyth) and his relationship with a young Hunger Games tribute Lucy Gray Baird (Zegler), which lead him on the path to becoming the tyrannical leader of Panem.

The Hunger GamesMovie | 2012

The Hunger Games is a 2012 American dystopian action film directed by Gary Ross, who co-wrote the screenplay with Suzanne Collins and Billy Ray, based on the 2008 novel of the same name by Collins. It is the first installment in The Hunger Games film series. The film stars Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Lenny Kravitz, Stanley Tucci, and Donald Sutherland. The film is set in a dystopian post-apocalyptic future in the nation of Panem, where a boy and a girl from each of the nation's 12 Districts are chosen annually as "tributes" and forced to compete in the Hunger Games, an elaborate televised fight to the death. Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) volunteers to take her younger sister's place when her sister was initially selected as tribute. With her district's male tribute, Peeta Mellark (Hutcherson), Katniss travels to the Capitol to train and compete in the Hunger Games.

The film was released on March 21, 2012 in some European countries, and in the United States and United Kingdom on March 23.[6] When the film was released, it set records for opening day ($67.3 million) and opening weekend for a non-sequel. At the time of its release, the film's opening weekend gross ($152.5 million) was the third-largest of any film in North America. It is the first film since Avatar to remain in first place at the North American box office for four consecutive weekends. The film was a massive box-office success by grossing over $694 million worldwide against its budget of $78 million, making it the third-highest-grossing film in the United States and ninth-highest-grossing film of 2012. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on August 18, 2012.

The soundtrack album for The Hunger Games contains songs inspired by the film; only three of them ("Abraham's Daughter", "Safe & Sound", and "Kingdom Come", respectively) appear in the film itself, during the closing credits.[49] The first single from the film's companion album, "Safe & Sound" by Taylor Swift featuring The Civil Wars, was released on December 23, 2011.[50] Along with separate songs from Swift and The Civil Wars, the soundtrack also features songs by The Decemberists, Arcade Fire, The Secret Sisters, Miranda Lambert featuring The Pistol Annies, Neko Case, Kid Cudi, Academy Award winner Glen Hansard, The Low Anthem, Punch Brothers, Birdy, Maroon 5, Jayme Dee, and Carolina Chocolate Drops.[51] The soundtrack was released on March 20, 2012.[52]

Lionsgate originally announced that Danny Elfman and T-Bone Burnett would score The Hunger Games, with Burnett also acting as the film's executive music producer to produce songs for the soundtrack.[55] Due to scheduling conflicts, Elfman was replaced by James Newton Howard.[56] The score album was released on March 26, 2012.[57]

The film was released in North America and the Netherlands on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on August 18, 2012.[62] Extras include The World is Watching: Making The Hunger Games, numerous featurettes, the propaganda video in its entire form, a talk with the director Gary Ross and also Elvis Mitchell and a marketing archive.[63]

In its first weekend on sale, Lionsgate reported that 3.8 million DVD/Blu-ray Disc copies of the movie were sold, with more than one-third in the Blu-ray Disc format.[64] Three weeks after the release of the movie to home media formats in the US, over 5 million DVD units and 3.7 million Blu-ray Disc units have been sold.[65][66] With 10,336,637 units sold by the end of the year, it became the top-selling video of 2012.[67] The entire Hunger Games series was released on 4K UHD Blu-Ray on November 8, 2016.[68]

In North America, The Hunger Games is the 22nd-highest-grossing film, the highest-grossing film released outside the summer or holiday period,[69] and the highest-grossing film distributed by Lionsgate.[70] Box Office Mojo estimates that the film sold more than 50 million tickets in the US.[71] At the time of its release, the film set a midnight-gross record for a non-sequel ($19.7 million), the tenth-highest midnight gross overall.[72] On its opening day, it topped the box office at $67.3 million (including midnight showings), setting opening-day and single-day records for a non-sequel. The film also achieved the sixteenth-highest opening-day and nineteenth-highest single-day grosses of all time.[73][74][75] For its opening weekend, the film earned the No. 1 spot and grossed $152.5 million, breaking Alice in Wonderland's opening-weekend records for a film released in March, for any spring release, and for a non-sequel at the time of its release.[70][76][77][78] On its second day of release, the film had surpassed Fahrenheit 9/11 to become Lionsgate's highest-grossing film worldwide, a record that would later be surpassed by its sequel The Hunger Games: Catching Fire a year later.[79] Its opening weekend gross was the third highest of 2012 behind The Avengers ($207.4 million) and The Dark Knight Rises ($160.8 million) as well as the largest for any film released outside the summer season and the eighth-largest overall.[80] The film held the March and spring opening weekend records for four years until they were broken by Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.[81] It remained in first place at the North American box office for four consecutive weekends, becoming the first film since Avatar to achieve this.[82][83][84] On June 10, 2012 (its 80th day in theaters), it became the 14th movie to pass the $400-million-mark.[85] On April 20, 2012, Lionsgate and IMAX Corporation announced that due to "overwhelming demand", The Hunger Games would return to North American IMAX cinemas on April 27 for a further one-week engagement.[86]

During the film's opening weekend, controversial statements about various members of the cast arose, sparking open dialogue about issues of racism, sexism and unrealistic body image. Comparisons were also made between The Hunger Games premise of children killing each other, and the child soldiers of the Lord's Resistance Army led by Joseph Kony.[140][141][142] In a Jezebel article published March 26, 2012, Dodai Stewart reported that several users on Twitter posted racist tweets, criticizing the portrayals of Rue, Thresh and Cinna by African American actors.[143][144] In a 2011 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Collins stated that while she did not have any ethnic background in mind for lead characters Katniss and Gale because the book is written in "a time period where hundreds of years have passed" and there would be "a lot of ethnic mixing", she explains "there are some characters in the book who are more specifically described", and states that both Rue and Thresh are African American.[145] Lyneka Little of The Wall Street Journal states that although it is easy to find bigoted or offensive postings online, "the racist 'Hunger Games' tweets, because they are so shockingly ignorant even by the standards of the fringes of the internet, have kicked up a storm".[146]

Screening of The Hunger Games was delayed indefinitely in Vietnam.[162] The film was to be released on March 30, 2012, but, according to a member of the Vietnamese National Film Board, the Board considers the film to be too violent and unanimously voted for the indefinite delay. It was later banned.[163]

On August 8, 2011, while still shooting the film, Lionsgate announced that a film adaptation of the second novel in The Hunger Games trilogy, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, was scheduled to be released on November 22, 2013.[174] In November 2011, Lionsgate entered negotiations with screenwriter Simon Beaufoy to adapt the novel for screen, since the post-production schedule for The Hunger Games was too crowded for Ross and Collins to adapt the next film as originally planned.[175] The Hunger Games: Catching Fire began production in the summer of 2012.[176] Gary Ross did not return for Catching Fire, and instead Francis Lawrence directed the film.[177] On May 6, 2012, it was reported that Michael Arndt was in talks to re-write the script for Catching Fire.[178] Arndt officially signed on as the new script writer on May 24, 2012.[179] The Hunger Games: Catching Fire began filming September 10, 2012, and concluded December 21, 2012;[180] it premiered in London on November 11, 2013,[181] before premiering on November 22, 2013 in the US as was originally scheduled.

No, The Hunger Games is not like Battle Royale, with the exception of both books (and their film versions) depicting kids killing kids in some sort of sick and twisted "game." In the case of The Hunger Games, the film based on the first book in a trilogy from author Suzanne Collins, the story focuses on 16-year old Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), who lives with her mother and sister in the very poor District 12 of the post-apocalyptic country of Panem. Living under the distant rule of the wealthy Capitol and President Snow, the twelve poorer districts work hard to provide the necessary materials to fuel the Capitol's excessive desires. There used to be a District 13, but after a failed rebellion, it was destroyed, and now the twelve remaining districts must pay tribute to the Capitol by sending up a boy and a girl picked by lottery to be part of the annual Hunger Games. The participants must then fight to the death in a controlled outdoor arena, with the lone survivor living in luxury back in their home district. Her family barely surviving, Katniss has been sneaking into the woods with her friend Gale to hunt for game, and selling their catches on the local black market. When the time comes for the lottery, and Katinss' little sister Prim is chosen, Katniss offers to take her sister's place, sparing her sister. Also going to the Games from District 12 is Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), the son of a local baker, who once gave Katniss some bread when she and her family were starving. We follow Katniss and Peeta as they encounter the very decadent lifestyle in the Capitol, and are introduced to their mentor, the alcoholic Haymitch (Woody Harrelson), a previous winner of the Games from their district. It's his job to help train them to try to survive the Games, while Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks) tries to keep their public image as glamorous and exciting as possible. It's during their training that Katniss' inner spirit starts to emerge; a rebellious nature that Games Master Seneca Crane (Wes Bentley) and President Snow (Donald Sutherland) are hesitant to let bloom, but when television personality and Games host Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci)—and therefore the rest of the Capitol—is enamored with her, the powers behind the Games have little choice to squash her nature. As an adaptation, The Hunger Games feels very rushed in some respects. The book is written in the first-person, and so a lot of the internal dialog that Katniss has with herself is lost, and a lot of things that happen in the film are done or shown with a lot of backstory missing. If you've read the books, you'll likely have a better appreciation of what's going on, but for the uninitiated it might seem a bit farfetched. We never truly get a sense of what life is like in the Districts or how close they are to rebellion. The depiction of District 12 is so tiny that it feels like the whole District is just one town square. We also know that the Capitol is garish and weird (as indicated by everyone's decadent costumes and gluttonous behavior), but we're not really given a reason why we are supposed to hate them—weird and quirky is not necessarily "bad." We are also supposed to feel like President Snow is evil, but he doesn't really do anything to make us fear him. I know that there's a lot more to come, given the two other books, but it just feels like there was a lot more backstory to convey. Jennifer Lawrence is good, and has a strong screen presence, but it's not until one moment later on in the forest where she's burying a fellow Games participant that you really get a chance to feel her humanity. Banks is quirky, Harrelson is a good drunk, Tucci is as fun as ever, and Sutherland is cold and ominous—but it just doesn't feel like any of these characters are three dimensional. The film has a pretty good look to it, but it's difficult to show the true violence (especially as described in the books) and maintain a PG-13 rating. Director Gary Ross employs the dreaded "shakey-cam" to maximum effect, which only works so well before becoming as annoying as it was when Paul Greengrass employed it to the extremes in the Bourne films.The music is enjoyable, especially the bluegrass country edge that producer T-Bone Burnett came up with, placing a lot of songs that helped establish District 12's tone, and James Newton Howard wrote an effective and understated musical score.A lot of soul is missing from this film. While fun to watch and never boring, it lacked an emotionality that came through in the novel. As a stand-alone film, The Hunger Games is decent, but hollow.The Hunger Games comes to Blu-ray in a very solid contemporary 1080p presentation that is, for the most part, sharp and clear. Given Ross' penchant for shaking the camera to keep the audience excited, the image can appear a bit blurry, but that's intentional. For the District 12 sequences, colors are expectedly desaturated, indicating a bleak existence, with contrasts that border on blowing-out the white levels. Once we get to the Capitol, saturation returns to the colors, and the chariot sequence is probably the most vivid sequence in the film. During the Arena sequence, there's a predominance of green from the forest, but Ross (and cinematographer Tom Stern) keep things looking bleak by leaning towards the cooler side of the spectrum, and there is very little warmth in the image. A nice level of grain is ever-present in the image, retaining a naturalistic film-look without becoming overbearing.The Blu-ray's audio is presented in English DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1, and it definitely delivers the goods. Dialogue is clear, and every scene has some level of ambient immersion going on, placing you right in the middle of what's going on. Sound effects surround you, and the music is well represented. The score by James Newton Howard is somewhat understated and folk-driven (mainly for the District 12 material), evolving to a more traditional orchestral mode during the Arena sequence. It fits well with the source material culled by T-Bone Burnett, and the "Horn of Plenty" theme used during the chariot sequence is certainly a memorable piece. There is also an English Dolby Digital 2.0 track included "for late night viewing," and a Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 track rounds out the audio options.Given that The Hunger Games is the first film of a trilogy, it is safe to assume a super-ultimate-collector's edition with tons of supplements is forthcoming, but for now, this inaugural release of the film still provides a rather hefty assortment of extras. There is no commentary track (sadly), and in fact, there are no extras at all on the main feature disc. Instead, all the extras are on a second Blu-ray disc. The cream of the crop is the feature-length documentary, "The World is Watching: Making The Hunger Games" (HD, 122-minutes). This is a very solid look at the making of the film, starting with the book, working through casting, pre-production, production, post-production, and release. It features interviews with most of the key cast and crew members and, from a film music perspective, does a nice job talking about the music—even showing us some of the scoring sessions in London. Like the feature-length documentary on The Expendables, these extras showcase Lionsgate's commitment to exceptional and in-depth supplements.In case the documentary wasn't enough for you, there are six more featurettes, each of varying interest. "Game Maker: Suzanne Collins and the Hunger Games Phenomenon" (HD, 14-minutes) looks at the literary origins of the film, and how the book and the film fed off each other's success, building into a crazy-huge thing. "Letters from the Rose Garden" (HD, 9-minutes) is an interview with actor Donald Sutherland talking about how he really immersed himself into the role of President Snow. "Controlling the Games" (HD, 6-minutes) looks at the creation of the "Game Center," which is only implied in the book, and how they came up with a creative design to portray it. "Preparing for the Games: A Director's Process" (HD, 3-minutes) is a quick bit with director Gary Ross talking about how he worked on the script a bit before shooting the film. Finally, "A Conversation with Gary Ross and Elvis Mitchell" (HD, 14.5-minutes) is an interview with Ross conducted by noted film critic Elvis Mitchell. It's slightly dry and academic, but it covers the process of making a book into a film.Also included is a "Propoganda Film" (HD, 1.5-minutes), which appears in the background of the lottery sequence in the feature, and a "Marketing Gallery" containing three trailers, a poster gallery, and a photo gallery.When it all comes down to it, The Hunger Games is a decent film. The book gives us more in the way of character development and emotion, and developing a first-person narrative into a feature film was certainly a challenge for the filmmakers. It's still an enjoyable film, even if it presumes too much on the part of the viewer, and I wish that they had focused a bit more on the characters so that we empathized with them more. It has a solid presentation on Blu-ray, and a pretty impressive first batch of supplements. If you're a die-hard fan who can't wait, by all means go pick it up —but it might be better to rent it for now and hold out for the inevitable trilogy box-set.more reviews by Dan GoldwasserTrailer Music Used From Theatrical Trailer"Horizons" - John PaesanoTheatrical trailer 2"Deep Shadow" (2011) - T.T.L.Track is available for streaming/download here. Teaser Trailer"Horizons" - John PaesanoSuperbowl SpotClick for more trailer musicNews &amp Articles2/11/2013Grammy & BAFTA Soundtrack and Score Awards12/11/201275 Original Songs Eligible for 2012 Academy Award12/10/2012104 Original Scores Eligible for 2012 Academy Award12/6/2011'Hunger Games' composer Danny Elfman replaced by James Newton HowardMovie RatingsSoundtrack.Net UsersClick starsto rate.Average Rating: 3 stars (2 users) 041b061a72