The Hunger Games 2

The Hunger Games 2

Catching Fire. The winners' tournament. Games within games. Donald Sutherland had the monopoly on playing those kooky, oddball good guys. Then came Jeff Goldblum. Now Sutherland has the monopoly on evil dictators in dystopian future scenarios. Woody Harrelson was last seen (in these parts, at least) being pretty good in Seven Psychopaths, and is good again.

There's more background to the Districts, there's a longer, slower build-up to the tournament, and there's a whole lot more outside interference to the last man standing concept.

DLL is jumpy about monkeys. We found out that DDL's monkey-jumpy. Two rows in front of us was the Boy with the World's Weakest Bladder, who had had several of those dustbin size pre-movie cokes, but even his frequent comfort breaks didn't spoil the spell the film had cast.

I am a movie mug, and I very seldom walk out grumbling, and lets face it, you only walk into the cinema if you want to. Or if you're handcuffed or joined at the hip, perhaps. But that's unlikely. Mug or not, they've done a good job with these, they tell the story, keep it moving on, tell it clearly and well. Looking forward to the third instalment (and the inevitable overthrow of Donald Sutherland's evil empire).

I don't suppose it'll be long before (unless they're out there already) people start wearing hologram fabrics that appear to burst into flame or go from lace to feathers or whatever. William Gibson wrote about a deep and near interpenetrable fashion industry in Zero History, where exclusive retro-wear, military and hi-tec clothes are available by invitation only, if you have sufficient funds. The invisible-to-CCTV t-shirt can't be far away from reality.

In terms of science fiction trilogies, Gibson must be ripe for filming. There's nine waiting to be scripted and made into state-of-the-art movies: the Neuromancer, the Bridge, and the Pattern Recognition trilogies, all of them would be great films.

Film snacks

Popcorn is massively overrated. You could inject it into cavity walls as insulation, perhaps. It has that polystyrene quality, and the rats and mice wouldn't eat it, no sensible creature would.

Hot dogs are unnecessary and smelly. They're for sporting events, not the pictures. If you need proper food, have some before or after, not during. You're not at home in front of the telly with your microwave chemicals on a tray here, you know.

Sainsbury fruit pastilles are good. More like those hard gums. Long lasting, not too much rustling.

Chocolate. The cinema tradition is the more messed about with the better. To the point of Revels, a sort of Russian roulette of confectionary, where you may get the orange delight or the coffee gag-reflex. The best option is a bar of chocolate.

Maltesers. They do rattle in the box a bit, but if you let the chocolate melt then gently crunch the honeycomb stuff with your tongue, then they're good, and will see you through just about the longest epic.

Huge buckets of fizzy pop. No need. See above about small-bladder-boy. You've paid good money to see the film, not stare at the tiles surrounding the urinal.