APRIL 2012 - ISSUE 03 - Massive Magazine

REVIEWS
THE HUNGER GAMES
Paul Berrington
FILM
2012
Directed by
Gary Ross
Produced by
Nina Jacobson, John Kilik
Staring
Jennifer Lawrence, Josh
Hutcherson, Woody Harrelson,
Stanley Tucci, and Lenny Kravitz
Despite the occasionally illogical
plotting and overly detailed
back story, this film adaptation
of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger
Games is a surprisingly accomplished
affair, with the lead performance
of Jennifer Lawrence
raising the film above the mediocrity
of the much-compared Twilight
series.
Set in a dystopian world where
an apocalyptic event has left society
in ruins, one powerful state,
the Capitol, controls another
twelve districts through the use
of power and force. The title of
the film relates to a competition
in which two children - one male
and one female - are taken from
each district once a year to fight
to the death until a single winner
is found. The event is the most
popular source of entertainment
in the wealthy Capitol, mirroring
our own fascination with reality
television, yet is seen as way to
control by the ruling class and
feared by those in the districts.
When her sister is chosen, Katniss
Everdean (Lawrence) becomes
the first-ever volunteer from District
12, and is whisked away to a
world of glamour and grotesque.
Soon intense training and grand
ceremony turn Katniss from naïve
teenager into a formidably popular
heroine, and with the help of
mentor, former winner Haymitch
Abernathy (an excellent Woody
Harrelson), she is sent into battle.
The opening scenes in District
12 are brilliantly filmed, creating
a setting that looks a lot like
America during the great depression.
Indeed the first section of
the film is powerful and claustrophobic,
positioning the viewer
very close to Katniss and her
overwhelming experiences. While
another strength is the refusal by
director Gary Ross (Seabiscuit,
Pleasantville) to tone down the
violence of the books for the big
screen, which is often intense and
shocking, without being overly
explicit. The problem is that once
the games start, the film becomes
messy, with too much going on in
terms of detail, and an ignorance
of structural logic. Author Collins
developed the script, and you get
the feeling that a treatment might
have tightened these flawed elements.
Despite these structural
faults The Hunger Games is both
a compelling and ironic film. The
totalitarian world of Panem is
brought to life successfully and
the costume design is particularly
outstanding. The mood throughout
is a suitably grim, if only the
pacing could have matched it.
NME - C86
Tim Cederwall
ALBUM
1986
Label
Rough Trade,
New Musical Express
Compiled by
Neil Taylor, Adrian Thrills, Roy Carr
The year was 1986. The United
Nations proclaimed it to be the
international year of peace, the
Oprah Winfrey show premiered
and Tina Turner received a Star
on the Hollywood walk of fame.
Your humble narrator had only
recently been a twinkle in his father’s
eye and Don Johnston hysteria
was gripping the civilized
world. In spite of this, and in the
far reaches of the United Kingdom,
a musical movement was
choking into life.
British musical history often
reads as if all Sony Walkmans
fell silent between the rise of the
Smiths in the early ‘80s and the
emergence of the Stone Roses in
the early ‘90s. The C86 scene is
increasingly being viewed as the
long forgotten footsteps between
these two landmarks.
Now the concept of jangly guitars
and the New Musical Express
I must admit does raise all
manor of red flags today. But In
1986 a time when Freddy Mercury
was blowing minds by the
thousand across the world, C86
was about as reactionary as possible
and truly served as the birth
of modern Indie music.
The NME had been releasing
mail order compilations for some
time. As a follow up to the popular
C81 cassette C86, was an encapsulation
of a group of musical
forbears that have, for the most
part since, been either marginalised
or forgotten. The compilation
comprises of a few widely remembered
bands although musically
from start to finish you are met
with a strong feeling of familiarity.
This is where an interesting
idea arises; these songs that seem
often so immediately familiar
were uttered over a decade before
their innovations reached the
masses. Popular bands such as
the Artic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand
have a lot to thank these
bands for as well as the birth of
some great record labels such as
rough trade and creation records.
The album as a whole does
not fit a tight categorisation of a
movement greatly sharing limited
influences. It, in fact, resembles
an often shambolic collection of
raw ideas. But what they do share
is an ethos of anti-glam rock and
gritty low-fi punk influenced recordings.
The fact that this record remains
primarily overlooked by
the masses is true to the attitudes
of the bands at the time and their
lack of ambition for ever making
the musical discovery as authentic
now as it ever has been.
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