![]() We are talking about you, Elizabeth Banks, in the guise of giddy government-instated cheerleader Effie Trinket, with bedazzled Oompa Loompa wigs and eyelashes that appear to be leaden lace cookies. Here, gawd-awful gaudy too often passes for style. Yes, fashion can be a weapon for good and a vehicle for revolution-at least in this dystopia, with its Fascist regime led by the serenely insidious President Snow ( Donald Sutherland). "Girl on Fire is so cheeky," he declares of Katniss with a half-smile, half-sneer when she performs her dress trick. Call it a Barbie-meets-Joan of Arc moment. And not every man can rock a lavender ponytail and a pompadour at the same time, but darn if Stanley Tucci’s fawning oil-slick of a TV host Caesar Flickerman-part Ryan Seacrest, part Siegfried and Roy-manages to pull it off. One gown represents female entrapment and expectations, the other human freedom and opportunity. The scene in "Catching Fire" that especially fired up my lingering adolescent alter-ego? When Jennifer Lawrence-essential as warrior heroine Katniss Everdeen in Round 2 of this young-adult lit-based enterprise, much in the same way that Vivien Leigh was indispensable in " Gone With the Wind"-suddenly twirls about in her would-be wedding dress during a TV interview meant to distract the downtrodden populace of Panem. What initially looks like a multi-tiered, white-frosted cage is engulfed in flames and transforms into a supple midnight-bluish winged symbol of subversion that emulates the Mockingjay, the mascot of a growing rebellion in the land. Of course, the mere existence of a successful girl-powered franchise that does not revolve around potential suitors with supernatural powers is enough to keep her smiling. ![]()
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