The Importance of Hunger

The Hunger Games is a very dark and satirical book. It takes a serious look at the morality of power, and how that power can quickly turn those who don't have it against you. The underlying premise of the book is that after the Capitol City put down an insurrection sparked by the 13 colonies, they started up a game where the colonies had to send one boy and one girl to the capitol to fight to the death. However after years of this its fairly natural that another rebellion would start. The capitol abused it's power, after seeing the start of one rebellion they failed to make any changes to avoid another and indeed succeeded in inflaming another more determined rebellion. The power to change and learn from the past lies with those in power but the hubris of the Capitol prevented any change.

The books also deal with morality in life or death situation, is it okay to kill if it's kill or be killed? What would you do in that situation, try to hide, fight on the front lines? This all sort of boils down to man as animal, we hold ourselves above other animals, and as demonstrated in the book we revel in the adrenalin and slaughter. Ideals about love and those we are with are sprinkled here and there, as well as other ideas of survival through the hard times.

I thought this image well represents the idea of media's impact on the observer. Things seen and experienced are taken in and processed throughout all parts of the brain, compared to past experiences and used to create new understandings about aspects of life. These are then used in all outputs in our daily life.

Player One

Player one is interesting in that it's produced from a series of talks. The one problem that I found was that being derived from talks creates a sort of overarching player one. The characters don't seem quite fleshed out and seem to be more focused on expressing more ideas and ideals. However the ideas expressed are interesting and seem to follow within a sort of rejection of the perfect sit com life that books and tv were becoming in the later 90's.

Gaming as Literature

There is a heavy divide between people about gaming, some see it as art others refuse to accept that. It seems that more and more gaming is making the transition from casual after school arcade shooters, to more recognized narratives and displays of art. Games like Mirrors Edge offer truly beautiful environments to run around and explore, while Metro 2033 or Bastion offer more interesting narratives woven throughout the game. I think the biggest problem of gaming narratives is how to deal with the player, people play games differently some meander all over looking at everything while others may burn straight to the end. Creating pacing without obstructing or limiting the player can create a lot of challenges. I think that games like Heavy Run run in the direction of being too limiting where the game becomes more like a choose your own adventure book and games like The Elder Scrolls go in the other direction in being too free.

Auteurship

For my selected films I chose the works of Peter Greenaway and watched 'The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover', 'The Draughtsman's Contract', and 'Nightwatching'. The most obvious element of auteurship present in his films is the feeling of the film being a play. Most of the shots are all from the same angle on the room. In The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover the shots are almost singularly from the same angle on a set of three spaces, the restaurant, the kitchen, and the outside. Most of the camera movements are sweeping shots moving through walls and most of them are done without cuts. Another obvious element is the set, most of them are very large spaces with no obvious ceilings, they are mostly oversized sets. Peter Greenaway has a very distinct sense of auteurship that really shows in his works.

Genre Books

TBA

Zombieland

2009
Director: Ruben Fleischer
IMDB

Zombies were seriously in Vogue from 2000ish to 2010, movies such Shaun of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later, and Zombieland. As well as appearing in several video games. Zombieland was most likely the last sort of successful zombie movie that appears to be coming out, the market has been supersaturated and people seem to be moving on to other genres (sparkly vampires unfortunately). Zombie Land was heavily influenced by earlier zombie films like Shaun of the Dead as well as Dawn of the Dead. A lot of these movies (Zombieland included) missed on the 3D craze (although according to some sources the next Zombieland will be in 3D), personally I was glad for the lack of 3D as very few movies have a reason for it.