Folk Songs for the Revolution

Spent the morning working on my WENN fanfiction. Pruitt and Cosgrave are preparing to leave town, thinking their ruse has worked. Cosgrave, alone in the house, hears strange noises. She thinks it's her imagination...until she sees what appears to be ghosts....

Work was the same as it has been for the past months - on and off steady, but mostly quiet. There were some cranky beginning of the month people. (One older woman sniffed that she wouldn't come into my line because I didn't help her bag. I did - she wouldn't help me out. Things move quicker when everyone does what then can.) It did start to pick up a bit at rush hour. I ended up with no relief and a long line. I just got out under the wire.

When I got home, I watched The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part I while having leftovers for dinner and using the last of the blackberries for Blackberry-Peach Muffins. Having survived her second go-round with the Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen is now a part of a rebel faction fighting against the excesses of the Capitol. All Katniss wants is to rescue Peeta (Josh Hutchinson) and the other Hunger Games victors who remain in the Capitol. Katniss is horrified when Peeta appears on television subdued and under mind control, spouting propaganda about not fighting the Capitol. The rebel president (Julianne Moore) wants her to be a figurehead for the revolution. Katniss' agent Effie (Elizabeth Banks) figures out that the young woman archer does better when she's herself. When Katniss sees the destruction wrought on her home, she knows she has to take a stand. Even when she and Peeta are reunited, it's hardly the happy reunion she'd hoped for.

Though this was a hit last fall, it didn't do quite as well as previous installments, with audiences or critics. I think we'll understand this one a bit more once the second half comes out this November. I'm beginning to see why a lot of people are becoming very annoyed with all the movies about dreary futures that have turned up in this series' wake. This movie is very dark and rather depressing. My favorite sequence was Katniss in District 13, where she starts singing a folk song...and thanks to the director and camera men following her, almost the entire land ends up singing along.

Same deal as the other installments. Teens on up will have plenty to discuss, especially if they do like their action dark and dreary.