Yes, I am cool (a review of The Hunger Games, which I saw on opening day. Because I'm cool.)

Hello again, readers! I have been truly slacking off lately, but I'm here now, with my semiannual post (ha ha!). This time around, The Hunger Games! I have written about The Hunger Games before but this time, I am writing about the movie! Because I've seen it! And yes, I saw it on opening day (but not at midnight, because I'm old and tired and how is that fun???).

So, without further ado, and with no more gilding the lily my completely incoherent thoughts on The Hunger Games: The Movie!

Let's just get this out of the way first-none of the people cast in the movie look like they did in my imagination. And thank goodness for that. Otherwise, I would know that the casting director had BEEN INSIDE MY HEAD, which would completely and totally freak me out!!! So, we shall (mostly) forgo mentioning looks in favor of mentioning acting ability.

For instance: Caesar Flickerman, as played by Stanley Tucci, was not at all how I pictured. But he was fantastic. Easily my favorite part of the movie. Also, Elizabeth Banks as Effie Trinket. Historically I find her (Elizabeth Banks) annoying, but I enjoyed the heck out of her parts of the film. So grood job, Elizabeth Banks.

Also amazing: Seneca Crane's Beard. I hope that it inspires facial hair fashion for years to come. Not amazing: Gale's non-beard. I've never pictured Gale with a beard, mind you. It's just that Liam Hemsworth (aka, the Lesser Hemsworth, aka Mr. Miley Cyrus) is so much cuter with a beard! Without one, his face looks unfinished. I hope Gale grows a beard for Catching Fire. Let's get this love triangle off the ground, people!

Another amazing thing: Prim. I knew that I'd be affected in the tear-duct region by Rue (and I was), but I've never felt too attached to Prim. But that little girl was tugging on the heart strings something fierce! I also really liked Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss. Since the entire book is in Katniss's head, she had to convey a lot of stuff without the use of us being omniscient or the use of voiceover (which, thank goodness! Voiceovers would have been terrible!). And she did a great job letting us get to know Katniss without a lot of dialogue.

I know what you're all wondering now. How short is Josh Hutcherson really? I have no idea. But I didn't spend the entire movie thinking that Peeta is totally shrimpy compared to Katniss. Actually, Peeta is probably my biggest disappointment from the movie. Not that he did a bad job. Au contraire! I was impressed! But! They really cut out a lot of his character development and his relationship to Katniss, which was a bummer. I'm hoping we'll get more of that in the next movie.

Okay, the next thing you're all wondering about is the violence. Am I right? And frankly, it is a violent movie. After all, it's a "24 kids fight to the death" type of thing. But considering that, it's not very violent at all! In my mind it was much more gruesome. I was super impressed by the way they killed off so many characters with such a minimum of onscreen violence.

So there you go! My overall thoughts-the book was better (of course), but the movie is still pretty good. It's a faithful vision of the book, and it will hopefully get more people excited about reading. Also, it will hopefully get someone really hot cast as Finnick. Fingers crossed!