An Initial Response

Tonight I went to see the Hunger Games in the cinema, and it has left me feeling quite confused, I'm not sure how I feel about it.

Before I went in I had heard it was a good film, and I thought I would probably love it, although I was curious to see how they handled such a serious subject matter for a teen audience. For those who don't know the film is about a teenage girl who is forced to take part in a state-run TV competition which involves being thrown into the jungle to fight to the death against 23 of her peers. It is based on a novel aimed at teenagers and the target audience is similar to Twlight.

I came out of the film feeling quite confused, and now I have had 2 hours to think about it, I'm not sure I liked it. I certainly didn't like the main character, if you could call her that. The writers didn't seem to think she needed a consistent character. Thanks to that she had no continuous traits I could identify with and so have any empathy or sympathy for her. She was acted well though, I will say that.

On that note you can say all the acting was pretty good, the sound track worked well, it was shot nicely, the contrasting colours and lighting effects between the city & the districts work well to emphasis the different areas etc etc. It was overall a well made film which should have been a generally enjoyable experience.

However, it had one fatal flaw that it could never get over - the subject matter was too dark for the style of film. The subject is about young children being forced to kill each other by their government but the target audience is 14 year old girls. Because of this the whole issue had to be lightened up and skirted round, and it left me not sure what type of film I was supposed to be watching. It just didn't work.

I might be wrong, certainly the critics and the box office figures would tell you I'm wrong. But this film is the first in a trilogy and it left me with no desire to see the next 2 films and that definitely wasn't the film makes intention.

A message of defiance

Lest week was a bad week. I was turned down for a total of 7 jobs in 5 days, and it did not feel good. One of them I was turned down for failing a test, one for not having "the right personality", but mostly because "There was no problem with you at all, there was just a better candidate". Not only is this the most frustrating sentence in the world, it doesn't actually help in the slightest. Why were they a better candidate? What can I do to be that better candidate and how long till I'm the best candidate left on the market?!?

So it turns out unemployment is really hard. Job hunting is totally soul destroying, and last week I fell into a bit of a slump. I basically spent two days on the sofa watching bad american TV, and I ate my body mass in ice cream. Luckily I have Joni and Beth to help me, and I have to admit if Beth and Ruby hadn't come down to visit last Thursday I think Joni would have come home to find me a drunken mess on the sofa.

I have to admit I have a new sympathy for the 'dole dossers' and rioters of last summer (never thought I would be saying that). When you have no hope of getting a job; when you discover that all that time and money you put into education is actually making it much harder for you to get a job; when you find 4 years of higher education later and you can't even get your old job back again; well, you begin to see how a person could take to the streets in anger.

But I will not let it beat me. This week I am up, I am bright eyed and ready for action. I have written my list of things to do this week, some of which are job hunt, but some of which are other things too. I have bought scales so I can focus on me, instead of the rest of the world.

I will get through this, with or without a job.