Amandla Stenberg in Ebony Young Hollywood Photo Shoot

The adorable Amandla Stenberg, who plays Rue in The Hunger Games, is in this video for a Young Hollywood feature coming in the March issue of Ebony Magazine.

Amandla appears around the 2:45 mark in the video.

[Ebony]

First Look at Taylor Swift’s “Safe & Sound” Video

Here’s your first look at the music video for Taylor Swift’s “Safe & Sound” from the Hunger Games companion album.

The video premieres Monday! YouTube after the break.

More…

Breaking Dawn 2 Trailer to Premiere with Hunger Games

The first trailer for Breaking Dawn Part 2 will show with The Hunger Games, expanding on the Summit & Lionsgate synergy post-merger. The teaser trailer for The Hunger Games was seen by millions with the release of Breaking Dawn Part 1 in November.

Lionsgate executives on Friday did much to talk up the synergies between the two studios now that the brain trust behind theTwilight franchise is at work on the launch of the next possible vampire flicks franchise once The Hunger Games debuts next month.

For example, the Breaking Dawn Part 2 trailer will debut on every Hunger Games print on its theatrical opening on March 23 – Lionsgate’s largest ever theatrical release.

Recipe for The Capitol’s Pasta with Green Sauce

This week Rachael from Schemestresses give us recipe adaptation of The Capitol’s pasta with green sauce from The Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook. It doesn’t come out super green, but I bet The Capitol has a pasta dish like it amongst its thousand of recipes. Check it out below:

[Souce: Schemestresses YouTube Channel]

Gary Ross Speaks of the Tracker Jacker Scene!

Director Gary Ross speaks to MTV’s Hollywood Crush to give us a few insights into the filming of the crucial tracker jacker scene. For those who can’t view the video, here is an extract:

That’s a vertical sequence, literally staged over 100 vertical feet. You have the careers on the ground. You have Katniss on one level in a tree, and you have Rue in another tree up here. You have the tracker jacker nest up here, and the crew is going up and down this tree the entire time, and you have all these axis to cut together into one taut, suspenseful sequence. And you have CG insects. This is not for the faint of heart. I think my shot list was like 110 set-ups or something like that. We’re building scaffolding. This was shot practically in trees—none of this was shot on the computer. That was a daunting and challenging sequence that required a lot of attention.

[MTV]

Video of Josh Hutcherson on Jimmy Kimmel Live

Josh Hutcherson was on Jimmy Kimmel last night and he talked about his new bachelor lifestyle, though his mom still does his laundry when she’s in town from Kentucky.

He also has a neighbor that yells at people and walks her cat on a leash. Hunger Games gets HUGE applause!

Katniss Will Not Narrate ‘The Hunger Games’

“I’m not using voice-over for her. This thing is all from Katniss’ perspective,” he said of the story. “It is a first-person point of view. How do we put the viewer immediately and urgently in that experience they had when they read the book and they’re in Katniss Everdeen’s shoes? A lot of that is done cinematically. I spent a lot of time wondering and thinking about at the beginning of this process, ‘What does it really mean to be in the character’s point of view cinematically?’ I looked at a lot of really interesting references for that, but it comes down to: You don’t know more than the character knows.”

“You wonder about what she’s wondering about, you worry about what she’s worrying about,” he explained. “You don’t know things she doesn’t know, and as such, you wander and experience things through her eyes, so that’s the first job: How do we make people feel they’re walking in Katniss’ shoes and encountering the same obstacles and challenges she is?” he said. “A lot is done cinematically and a lot is having someone as good as Jen Lawrence.”

It says a lot about the director, writers, and actors when they can portray the story the way it should be without telling the audience every little detail with words. Do you think it should have a voice-over narrative or are you happy with it being told cinematically instead?

Read more of the interview at MTV.