Went to see "Catching Fire" on Wednesday morning. IMAX, first showing for the day. Love those morning shows. The parking lot was nearly empty, the theater was about half-full. It was a weekday, even better a middle-of-the-week day in spite of being a school holiday. Nobody wants to get up early. (Works for grocery shopping, too.) When we came out of the theater (my mid-teen Grandson and I) the parking lot was jammed full of cars.
"Catching Fire" was a whole lot better than "Hunger Games." This director, maybe helped by having seen the results and opinions of the way the first movie of the series was done, made the filming and the screenplay go smoothly and very clearly. Color on the screen was really good. I had tried to re-read the book but it depresses me so much that I only had a good start. I did recognize that the early film action was following the book very closely and most or all of the dialog was taken straight from the book. I would expect that the rest of the film was also very close to the book. Acting was very good. Everything was believeable. When "Hunger Games" was over, I was happy for it to stop and give us a break. "Catching Fire" upset me because the story and the flow of action was going so smoothly and so well I wanted it to just keep on until the whole story of all the books was completed.