VIDEO: Willow Shields Talks 'Catching Fire' With KTLA

Willow Shields stopped by KTLA this morning to talk about her role as Primrose Everdeen in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and her appearance at the Walmart in Orange County, CA for the release of the DVD and Blu-Ray.

All the details on the Walmart Catching Fire midnight release events HERE.

VIDEO: Stephanie Leigh Schlund and Lynn Cohen Talk 'Catching Fire'

Stephanie Leigh Schlund and Lynn Cohen stopped by CBS New York's The Couch this morning to talk about The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Lynn and Stephanie will both be at the Walmart in Secaucus, NJ tonight for a meet and greet with fans in celebration of the film's DVD and Blu-Ray release.

See all the details on the Walmart midnight release events HERE.

'Catching Fire' Is Nominated for 7 MTV Movie Awards

The MTV Movie Awards nominations were announced this morning and Catching Fire is nominated in 7 categories. Jennifer Lawrence is also nominated in 2 categories for American Hustle.

I do have to say WTF about a couple of things. NO BEST KISS for the Everlark beach scene?! And no Katniss for Best Hero? Duh.

You can vote HERE.

MOVIE OF THE YEAR
• "12 Years a Slave"
• "American Hustle"
• "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug"
• "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"
• "The Wolf of Wall Street"

BEST FEMALE PERFORMANCE
• Amy Adams — "American Hustle"
• Jennifer Aniston — "We're the Millers"
• Sandra Bullock — "Gravity"
• Jennifer Lawrence — "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"
• Lupita Nyong'o — "12 Years a Slave"

BEST MALE PERFORMANCE
• Bradley Cooper — "American Hustle"
• Leonardo DiCaprio — "The Wolf of Wall Street"
• Chiwetel Ejiofor — "12 Years a Slave"
• Josh Hutcherson — "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"
• Matthew McConaughey — "Dallas Buyers Club"

BEST FIGHT
• "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues" — Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner and Steve Carell vs. James Marsden vs. Sacha Baron Cohen vs. Kanye West vs. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler vs. Jim Carrey and Marion Cotillard vs. Will Smith vs. Liam Neeson and John C. Reilly vs. Greg Kinnear
• "Identity Thief" — Jason Bateman vs. Melissa McCarthy
• "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" — Orlando Bloom and Evangeline Lilly vs. Orcs
• "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" — Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson and Sam Claflin vs. Mutant Monkeys
• "This is the End" — Jonah Hill vs. James Franco and Seth Rogen

BEST SHIRTLESS PERFORMANCE
• Jennifer Aniston — "We're the Millers"
• Sam Claflin — "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"
• Leonardo DiCaprio — "The Wolf of Wall Street"
• Zac Efron — "That Awkward Moment"
• Chris Hemsworth — "Thor: The Dark World"

BEST VILLAIN
• Barkhad Abdi — "Captain Phillips"
• Benedict Cumberbatch — "Star Trek into Darkness"
• Michael Fassbender — "12 Years a Slave"
• Mila Kunis — "Oz The Great and Powerful"
• Donald Sutherland — "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"

BEST ON-SCREEN TRANSFORMATION
• Christian Bale — "American Hustle"
• Elizabeth Banks — "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"
• Orlando Bloom — "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug"
• Jared Leto — "Dallas Buyers Club"
• Matthew McConaughey — "Dallas Buyers Club"

The MTV Movie Awards hosted by Conan O'Brien will air Live on Sunday, April 13th. 

New 'Catching Fire' Deleted Scene "Train Station" Features Katniss

L.A. Times Hero Complex debuted a deleted scene from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire DVD, out tomorrow. The scene is called "Train Station" and features Katniss coming off the train from the Victory Tour telling her sister and mother to pack their things and get ready to leave District 12.

Check out the video at Hero Complex or click the image above. See our review of all the available Catching Fire versions and where to buy them HERE.

New Clips From the 'Catching Fire' Blu-Ray Exclusive Making-Of Doc

Entertainment Weekly has released two new short clips from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Blu-Ray exclusive making-of documentary "Surviving The Game." Those little stinkers didn't make the video embeddable so you'll have to watch it over at EW.com or click the image above.

Jena Malone Fangirls Over 'Catching Fire' As Much As We Do!

Concept sketch of Johanna Mason's chariot costume in Catching Fire

Jena Malone recently spoke with Jarett Wiesleman of BuzzFeed about the release of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire on Blu-Ray and DVD on March 7th. “Can I just fangirl out for a second?”she asked before talking about the Blu-ray as though she were one of its many admirers as opposed to one of its stars. “There is so much behind-the-scenes footage. We had so much fun on Catching Fire that I’m just excited to sit down and watch.”

Buzzfeed also has an exclusive behind the scenes Catching Fire clip all about Johanna's look. You can watch the video HERE.

“I learned so much about myself through playing Johanna. I knew I had strength as an actor, but Johanna taught me how incredibly strong I could be emotionally, that I could intimidate an entire room with just the energy I walked in with. You can really do some damage through how you carry yourself in life.”

And thanks to her 16-year-old sister, Malone is also aware of the powerful role movies play in shaping the next generation. “My sister really looks to cinema for a lot. Whether it’s purposely or subconsciously, it’s partly how she learns to be good at this or bad at that, how she learns about body issues, and how she learns to deal with friends,” she explained.

That’s why Malone wants every character she plays to have purpose, whether it’s within the film world or the real world. “At the end of the day, film has such an eternal shelf life — my movies will last longer than I’m going to last, so I might as well be making things I think are important, playing women I find inspiring, and playing characters that I would want my children to look up to.”

As a longtime fan of The Hunger Games book series, Malone chased the role of Johanna, recognizing that with its underlying themes of social equality, Catching Fire had much more on its agenda than pure, popcorn pleasures. And LGBT equality is a cause close to Malone’s heart since she grew up with two moms.

“The message of the film is amazing,” she continued. “As a society, we’re much further than where we were when I was younger and I love that people are so much more accepting and loving. Families can focus on just giving love now. That’s the most important thing. I think that’s an incredible time to be a part of.”

Now, after nearly two decades in this business, Malone is preparing her next big endeavor: releasing an album with her band The Shoe on June 3. “I think every young woman should constantly be wanting to surprise herself and constantly be pushing herself until the day she dies,” she said. “I will always be a storyteller, and I’m just excited there are now so many different ways I will get to tell my stories.”

Catching Fire is available March 7th!

Josh Hutcherson and Jennifer Lawrence On How Lucky They Are to Have Each Other

ET just posted a cute little video snippet of Josh Hutcherson and Jennifer Lawrence talking about how lucky they are to have each other and how well they get along with the rest of the Catching Fire cast.

'Catching Fire' Visual Effects Team on Bringing The World of Panem To Life

Plus Check Out Some New Stills From The Film!

I think we can all agree that The Hunger Games: Catching Fire was visually stunning. Francis Lawrence delivered the follow up to The Hunger Games with grander scope and scale than the first installment, showing us a whole lot more of Panem. But you probably didn't realize just how much of Catching Fire's Panem was actually created by the visual effects department.

Flickering Myth just posted an amazing interview with The Hunger Games: Catching Fire visual effects team where they discuss all the technical aspects of creating the film's digital world. Trevor Hogg chatted with production visual effects supervisor Janek Sirrs, visual effects producer Mitchell Ferm, and visual effects supervisors Adrian de Wet, Stéphane Nazé, Paul Butterworth, and Guy Williams about bringing to the big screen a spinning island, raging monkeys and a futuristic society that stages lethal survival games.

What We Learned:
Effects in movies are a bit like magic tricks that rely on deception and misdirection; having visual effects, special effects, and stunts keep the audience guessing as to what exactly they are looking at, or how the shots are achieved.

The Arena is not really the Arena:
The jungle arena could never exist in reality or be built as a practical set, so a good amount of VFX work went into creating a virtual environment for a hyper-reality that we’re hoping people would swear was shot on location.

We couldn't have created a full-on practical spinning Cornucopia island for the scene where Plutarch rotates it, so that action sequence had to be fabricated from a full-size static set, a smaller SPFX-spinning partial set piece, and a completely digital island, all working in conjunction with one another.

We constructed a 360° blue screen around a rotating Cornucopia partial set piece [dubbed the ‘spinning biscuit’]. All that churning water is CG.

All the water-based action scenes at the centre of the Arena were shot almost entirely at a waterpark outside Atlanta, where we constructed a full-size island, two spoke-like rocky paths leading from it, and a couple of the pedestals that the Tributes emerge up into the Arena on. In the final shots, the entire surrounding ocean water, beaches, and jungle blowing in the breeze have all been added digitally. It takes a bit of will power to continually overlook Katniss running past childrens’ water slides, and ornamental fountains, for many weeks [during shooting], until the real jungle environments finally start to show up in shots, and the sequence becomes what was originally intended.

Ironically, the real Hawaiian shorelines didn’t feel tropical enough to match the hot/humid environment we were trying to convey, and their look was based more upon jungles you might find in places like Costa Rica, right down to the condensation on the wet leaves, and hanging mist rolling down from the hillsides. The challenge with creating the digital jungle was really just the sheer complexity of the foliage. Trees had to be modelled and rigged down to the individual leaf and frond detail level so that we could get them to realistically flutter, and sway in a simulated breeze [without which the jungle would have simply looked dead].”

The Avenue of The Tributes is almost all digital

The chariots in the Avenue scene were all shot in a big empty parking lot at the Atlanta Speedway, and the only pieces of physical set construction were a partial archway [and immediately adjacent bleachers] that the chariots emerge from, and the Presidential seating area.  Everything else – the other archways, bleachers, crowds, and surrounding buildings were all added digitally. We only had six practical chariots so you’re often looking at digital Tribute doubles and horses/chariots in the wider shots. Only the actors, chariots, and a few small sections of bleachers for that sequence were real, shot against green containers stacked a few stories high.

All the Capitol buildings, details, road surface, skies, and mountains are digital. The cheering, waving crowd in the bleachers are a mixture of crowd elements shot over a couple of days of second unit photography, and motion captured digital extras.

And of course we created the fire effect on Katniss and Peeta’s costumes. We took our inspiration from the ornate patterns on the costumes themselves that we imagined as radiant hot metal elements. We added licks of gas-like orange flames, flying embers, and a hint of dirty smoke to complete the look.

Katniss' Arrow Count Continuity Was A Huge Task (and they sort of failed - we counted!)

An interesting continuity task involved keeping track of the arrows in Katniss’ quiver.  Whilst Jennifer sometimes had a number of real arrows in her quiver on set, she could never actually fire a real arrow for safety reasons, so all of the arrow firing was mimed and CG arrows added. We always needed to make sure she had the right number of arrows in her quiver at any point in time, always accounting for ones that she had fired along the way. You’d be surprised at how long it took to lock the arrow counts down!

There is SO much information in the article, so please head over to Flickering Myth.com to read the entire thing - it's a massive article. They talk about everything from the practical aspects of making Katniss' mockingjay dress transformation believable to the holograms in the training center and the slight redesign of the hovercrafts.