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​Last night, after much anticipation, we finally saw The Hunger Games. We're assuming that you are aware of this dystopic young-adult novel turned blockbuster film about a noble and bad-ass girl fighting in a government-mandated death match with other teens and children. If not, you have likely not been on the Internet or walked by a movie theater as of late. The film is doing insanely well box office-wise. Those of you that are familiar with the story know that it's actually quite emotional. The obvious and spoiler-free fact is that this is a story about death. Some of those deaths -- the deaths of the "good guys" -- are the type of scenes that are hard to render in such a way that fails to produce tears from even those that are less prone than others to wet eyes. (Full disclaimer: we are known to cry easily and frequently. Basically, we cried through this entire movie.) Even the deaths of the cruel characters, the ones that buy into the horrific violence encouraged by the totalitarian Capitol, are sad in their own way because the children have no agency in the face of an oppressive regime. But! And there is a but! The movie and its source material is not without lack of humor. That said, in the screening we saw, deeply serious moments were peppered with nervous laughing from the audience. So, here's our -- very subjective, mind you -- guide to wrangling your Hunger Games emotions. We've tried to keep it relatively spoiler free, but that's hard.

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Love in the Buff, directed by Pang Ho-cheung, opens in the US on March 30

​Back in the 80s and early 90s, when Hong Kong cinema,--running on the kinetic energy of action and slapstick comedy films by the likes of John Woo, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Stephen Chow--was the second largest film industry in the world (behind Hollywood, obviously), fans of these quirky alternative films in the US--whether they be Asian immigrants or aspiring filmmakers like Quentin Taratino--had two options for getting their fix: They could go to Chinatown in various parts of the country and catch the films--undubbed in its original format and released months after Hong Kong--in Chinese cinemas, or they could rent bad VHS copies at certain video stores--at an even later date.

With the decline of Hong Kong's film industry (film output has dropped from 300 plus per year in the 90s to less than 50 in recent years) by the late 90s and the emergence of internet piracy, these Chinese theaters were forced out of business one by one.

And when The Music Palace , the last remaining Chinese theater in New York, shut down in 2000, that left New York fans of the genre no big screen to enjoy Hong Kong films.

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​Tonight, we'll be covering the 84th Annual Academy Awards, live from a computer. Stay here on Runnin' Scared for exclusive insight and commentary from a Hollywood insider who has seen THREE movies this year (not including a two-part episode of The Mentalist that looked pretty big-budget). Who's going to win? Who's going to get snubbed? Who's going to die in the middle of the ceremony and get frantically edited into the 'In Memoriam' segment? Stay tuned to find out!

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​Unless you've been living in a box, you're aware that the Oscars are tonight. While we won't be live-blogging the event like we did last year [Update: If you were reading Runnin' Scared this evening, you were probably aware that we were mistaken and we did have live coverage], we do have some hopes and anticipations for tonight's ceremony. So get in your gown (you do have one, don't you?), sit down in front of your laptop and read on as we prepare you for your viewing experience, or the experience you will have tomorrow when you try to catch up via blogs and YouTube.

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​Often, Hollywood gets political. Stars speak out on issues; movies have messages. But here we bring you a case of politics going Hollywood. In honor of Oscars The Chris Matthews Show re-envisioned tonight's front-runner for Best Picture -- the silent, black-and-white ode to nostalgia The Artist -- as a film starring Mitt Romney titled "Mitt: Better Off Mute." So how does Mitt do when he's (mostly) non-verbal. Check it out for after the jump. Watch for wonder-dog Uggie and dashing Frenchman star Jean Dujardin.

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Esther Zuckerman

​I'm going to be honest. I have a certain affinity for the Oscars, despite all of the oft-mentioned problems with the event (too long, too off-base with the films it honors). My frequent go-to procrastination technique involves searching for clips from old ceremonies on YouTube. (Billy Crystal as Gollum! Anna Paquin as child in a hat!). So in order to fulfill a giddy pre-Oscar fix I headed to Grand Central's Vanderbilt Hall Friday to visit the "Meet The Oscars" exhibit running through this weekend. There I would encounter some real-life Oscar statuettes rather than the pixelated kind to which I was becoming accustomed.

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DSK dopplegänger?

​Dominique Strauss-Kahn's scandal has already inspired a Law & Order: SVU episode, but now it's going to become a film starring Gérard Depardieu as the former International Monetary Fund head. According to the AFP, director Abel Ferrara told Le Monde about plans for the film, which he said would shoot in New York, Paris and Washington.

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​Did Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs biography leave you hungry for more access to the Apple founder? Would you mind if that access came in the form of a 16-year-old interview transferred from a VHS tape onto a 70-foot movie screen? No? Good news! The Los Angeles Times reports that in mid-November, Landmark Theaters will be showing a "lost" interview with Jobs from 1995.

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​Steven Seagal has no patience for lawbreakers. He's made this clear countless times in his movies and he demonstrated this repeatedly during his A&E reality show, Steven Seagal: Lawman. Despite his outspoken stance against breaking the law, people keep doing it; namely, illegal immigrants. You may say these people just want a better life for their families or you may accuse them of stealing jobs--it doesn't matter anymore: Seagal has vowed to put an end to it. The San Antonio Express-News reports Steven Seagal was sworn in this week as a deputy at the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Office in Texas. He will be working full time with the department, helping them secure the US-Mexico border.

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​Two interns are suing Fox Searchlight because as interns, they had to perform intern-like duties on the set of Black Swan. The poor dears had to do things like "preparing coffee for the production office, ensuring that the coffee pot was full, taking and distributing lunch orders for the production staff, taking out the trash and cleaning the office" -- otherwise known as "things that interns do" (except at the Voice, where our interns do real things, for what it's worth). Alex Footman, a 2009 Wesleyan graduate, and a bizarrely old (42) accounting intern named Eric Glatt are co-plaintiffs in a suit claiming that Fox Searchlight violated minimum wage and overtime laws. This certainly won't help their burgeoning film industry careers.

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