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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"Hunger Games "(The Movie) was filmed in Dead Milltown and Dupont National Forest of North Carolina!
"Hunger Games " The Movie) was filmed in Dead Milltown and Dupont National Forest of North Carolina!"Hunger Games " The Movie) was filmed in Dead Milltown and Dupont National Forest of North Carolina!(North Carolina provided a good setting because it had the contrast of the dead Mill Town vs. Charlotte Banking Center to show the Future between Off-Shored Mill Industry jobs contrasted with what became the new Banking Center of NC and the Southeast in Charlotte which is struggling as Bank of America faces civil lawsuits and more scrutiny for it's predatory practices and squandering of it's capitol, which needed a Bail Out from US Taxpayers to survive. Yet, there was NO Bailout for the Mill Towns of NC and their workers...(Tough Luck!) they were asked to "re-train for the future." when no future has come that will employ them.)
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'Hunger Games' film's impact immediate across NC
By Josh Shaffer - jshaffer@newsobserver.com
HILDEBRAN, NC With their rusty tin roofs and boarded-up windows, the rickety mill houses of Hildebran look like they might fall over in a stiff wind.
They sat empty for decades, relics from a village that turned cotton into yarn, where workers who toiled 16-hour shifts for dimes a day and families that survived on goods from the company store purchased with company-minted money.
Few would imagine this Burke County outpost, just west of Hickory, as the setting for a movie let alone the biggest movie of the year. But starting Friday, millions of eyes will see this corner of Hildebran transformed into District 12, the hardscrabble, coal-mining home to Katniss Everdeen, heroine of The Hunger Games.
North Carolina hosts many movies: Blue Velvet in Wilmington, Dirty Dancing at Luke Lure, Bull Durham all over. But this films impact is already being compared to Harry Potter, playing on the cover of national magazines weeks before the first showing. And more than the others, The Hunger Games builds its scenery out of North Carolinas past telling its story through the skeletons of its forgotten places. A mill in nearby Rhodhiss, after all, made fabric for the American flag Neil Armstrong planted on the moon.
But the greater good can be seen through the cameo appearance of long-dead trades and long-abandoned mills glimpsed again through the cameras lens. In a state reinventing itself after the decline of textiles and tobacco, The Hunger Games set provides a look back.
Weeks before the movie opened, curious travelers were stopping in Hildebran to see the ramshackle outhouses and the huge brick company store that serves as Peeta Mellarks bakery in District 12 even though the land is privately owned and marked with No Trespassing signs.
My little niece was up here and her Daddy told her they filmed a movie, said Hildebran Mayor Karen Robinson. So I took her out there, and her Daddy mentions it was The Hunger Games. She got that camera phone out and she went crazy. Its going to be big, judging by her reaction. All the kids. Its going to be big.
Nothing big has happened here in a long time.
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More of a Very Good Read re history of the towns and different locates in NC where the filming took place. (which brings back memories of John Edwards "TWO AMERICAS" Campaign)...at:
http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/03/18/1936882/hunger-games-films-impact-immediate.html
tledford
(917 posts)Charlotte IS the largest city, with about 750,000, while Raleigh has 400,000.
KoKo
(84,711 posts)Sorry about that. I do indeed know that Raleigh is the Capitol.
nolabear
(41,987 posts)I'm interested as someone who married a North Carolinian and lived there for many years myself.
KoKo
(84,711 posts)tammywammy
(26,582 posts)KoKo
(84,711 posts)Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)The film should be a huge hit. I'm stoked. Sue me. May it bring many tourist dollars to the area!
tammywammy
(26,582 posts)I give them a shrug. The movie looks cool. The books were okay. I don't know that I'd actually recommend them to someone else to read.
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)Great characters, no time wasted, good stuff. So happy to see this instead of Twilight out there hitting the youth market hard. Going to be the hit of the year, and this pleases me.
tammywammy
(26,582 posts)I've never had any interest in reading or seeing the Twilight series.
I think Hunger Games will be a spectacular movie, no doubt.
KoKo
(84,711 posts)in why the film might have been made there. Contrast between the Banking Industry and the Mill Towns..and the connections.
tammywammy
(26,582 posts)Very interesting.
Johnny Rico
(1,438 posts)From a worldbuilding perspective, the world of The Hunger Games is more than a bit silly. The economics are absurd, and the mixture of technology doesn't hold up. They have force fields, solar-powered laser rifles, and genetic engineering a century ahead of ours...but they can't put up a satellite or make a high altitude aircraft.
The writing is decent, though, and the movie is going to make a mint.
knitter4democracy
(14,350 posts)Read the third book again--that stuff is there, just not a huge part of the story. How else do the games get broadcast all over Panem all at the same time on huge screens without satellites involved?
Johnny Rico
(1,438 posts)That was mentioned specifically, and it gives us a reason to see the main character shoot down combat aircraft with a bow and arrow.
As for satellites, it was also mentioned specifically that they no longer had them. Live transcontinental broadcasts were routine in the 1950s, long before communications satellites.