PERHAPS you've had a chance to sample the new line of artisan chocolate bars inspired by "The Hunger Games" - the District 11 batch contains "harvest cherry."
It's in honor of that district's tradition of agriculture, though obviously not in honor of its tradition of starvation.
On Net-A-Porter, you can check out Trish Summerville's 19-piece fashion collection, also inspired by the movies. Cover Girl has a new line of "Hunger Games" make-up. Charcoal that you can smudge on your face to look more like an oppressed coal miner?
The smash success of the first movie posed interesting problems for this unique and popular franchise - ridge runner Katniss Everdeen (can-do-no-wrong Jennifer Lawrence) hasn't a penny to her name, despises glamour and hates fashion, seeing it as the vulgar privilege of a detached and decadent ruling class (though she has to admit she looks good in Tex Saverio).
What does product-pushing Hollywood do with a girl like that?
So, it made you wonder when Gary Ross - who did a solid job of transferring Suzanne Collins' first book (and important themes) to the screen - left the franchise before the first movie was even released.
In came Francis Lawrence, a music-video maker and special-effects whiz with a background in big-budget fantasy and sci-fi ("I Am Legend").
Well, fret not - his movie is even better. Every bit as astute as the first in bringing Collins' challenging vision to the screen, more skilled at giving the material a visual power to match the story's punch.
A roundhouse is still delivered by Everdeen, rebellious resident of a hellish near-future North America ruled by a tyrant (Donald Sutherland) who forces unlucky citizens from exploited districts to compete in a televised kill-or-be-killed competition.
The games are meant to push down fear, remind viewers that in this hopeless world it's every man for himself. Katniss pushes back, and via self-sacrifice becomes a hero, a movement and a threat.
In "Catching Fire," she's marked for death, forced to compete again, this time in games designed by a diabolical new game master (Philip Seymour Hoffman), whose goal is to publicly strip her of her famous compassion before executing her.
His grand death match includes poison fog, rampaging baboons, and, of course, the baseline threat of homicidal gladiators - a far-fetched spectacle that director Lawrence imbues with its own vivid reality.
Among the gladiators, by the way, are some fine actors. The competition is made tense by the flimsy, shifting alliances of the competitors - they include the canny Jeffrey Wright and Amanda Plummer, and a stand-out Jena Malone as a punk lumberjack.
There are those who still want to call this a romance - Everdeen comes to accept that she's the head of a movement, and that her responsibilities may include an arranged marriage to a fellow leader (Josh Hutcherson) while her true love (Liam Hemsworth) waits at home.
But, again, this is the series' hallmark - Katniss always sees the distinction between what she wants and what's best for the movement she's created.
The trick is to make her righteous without making her dull. It helps that Collins' story (shrewdly intrepreted and embellished by writer Simon Beaufoy) never makes her choice obvious, easy or rewarding - she always seems to be punished for doing the right thing.
She keeps doing it anyway.
How do you not love a girl like that?
"The Hunger Games" has given us the most morally compelling "teen" genre heroine Hollywood has produced in ages. Maybe ever.
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