Molly Tue, October 8, 2013 Elizabeth Banks was honored at Variety's 5th Annual Power of Women event for her work with the American Heart Association. She talked with Access Hollywood's Shaun Robinson about Catching Fire and Effie's couture costumes.
Marina Chekov Mon, October 7, 2013 Teen Vogue's latest issue includes an interview with Willow Shields, Jennifer Lawrence, and a small Q&A with both Jennifer and Sam Claflin.
Willow on learning to identify with Prim:
"My sister, Autumn, and I are twins [...], Shooting a dramatic scene like the reaping, I imagine it happening to Autumn in real life. Having a sister is very helpful for this role."
On Mockingjay:
"What Prim has to do in Mockingjay will be a real challenge. But I love a challenge."
The article is definitely worth checking out for the banter between Jen and Sam:
Sam: I first bumped into you at stunt training. Your archery put me to shame. I was quite intimidated.
Jen: By the sight of my face!
Sam: Yeah, it really put me off. 
Image courtesy of QuarterQuell.org
Image courtesy of QuarterQuell.org
Image courtesy of QuarterQuell.org
Marina Chekov Mon, October 7, 2013 New York Magazine published an article on the recent surge in popularity of the Young Adult genre. In addition to several others, Catching Fire director Francis Lawrence was included in those being interviewed - and of course, there are a couple bits about the upcoming film.
A few popular YA books have struggled recently as film adaptations, like Mortal Instruments and Beautiful Creatures. Why does Hunger Games work?
Author Suzanne Collins was raised in a military family, so she grew up learning about the consequences of war. Even though it’s sort of an alternate world, it’s still relatable.
You have all these pedigree actors coming in, from Philip Seymour Hoffman in Catching Fire to Julianne Moore in Mockingjay. You could have had no-name actors, and the fans would have accepted that.
If you can have Philip Seymour Hoffman, get Philip Seymour Hoffman! And he loved the books, so he signed on. Same with Jeffrey Wright. Same with Julianne. If you can just get those amazing actors, then that’s 80 percent of my job.
The first film skimped a little on showing us the strategy behind the Katniss-Peeta love story.
I felt the same. I felt the love story in general was, um, a bit buried in the first one. I wanted to bring the love story to the surface. And when I say love story, I mean the triangle.
Molly Fri, October 4, 2013 Some brand spankin' new Catching Fire stills showed up today on the facebook page of The Hunger Games Peru! Check them out!
Thanks to Real or Not Real News for the tip!
Molly Fri, October 4, 2013 One of our favorite Catching Fire cast members, Bruno Gunn talked with his hometown paper, The Canton Repository, about his upcoming turn as Brutus in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.
Image by Julie Vennitti/CantonRep
“It should be interesting to say the least, having someone come up and say, ‘Gosh, you’re Brutus!’ when I’m pumping gas,” Gunn said, during a recent interview at Bender’s Tavern.
Clearly, Gunn is hoping The Hunger Games: Catching Fire will take him to the next level. “Faith it till you make it” is his longtime mantra.
While unable to divulge any specifics about his action-heavy scenes in Catching Fire — filmed last year in Atlanta and the Hawaiian jungle — Gunn spoke in reverent tones about his fellow cast members.
“You get to the set and look around and it’s just one great actor after another,” he said. “The first night there I was having dinner with Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Jennifer (Lawrence), Josh (Hutcherson), Stanley Tucci, Jeffrey Wright, Amanda Plummer. Not just great actors but good human beings.
“I’d be in makeup talking art with Woody Harrelson,” Gunn recalled. “Watching Stanley Tucci act was like a master class in acting. That goes for Jennifer and Josh, too. I’d hang back, watch and learn as much as possible.”
After receiving the news that he’d been cast as Brutus, Gunn first made an ecstatic phone call to his fiancée. But as fate would have it, he was flying to Italy that very day to visit with friends and family, and decided to wait until he arrived to tell them.
“Here I am with this life-changing news and I’m stuck on a plane for nine hours,” he said. To his amusement, the majority of his fellow passengers were watching the first “Hunger Games” as the in-flight movie.
To prepare for his Catching Fire role as Brutus, a strong and brutal returning Hunger Games victor, Gunn worked out intensively three to four hours daily with trainer Drew Logan, doing a lot of weights, a lot of cardio and 500 situps every night.” “I was in good shape when I got the role, but I wanted to bring a stronger, bigger, more physical Brutus.”
Apparently, Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins was pleased with Gunn’s casting as Brutus.
“When I met her,” he said, “she dove in and gave me a big bear hug.”
Marina Chekov Thu, October 3, 2013 
Yahoo has published an excerpt of Josh Hutcherson's interview with Glamour magazine, from the November 2013 issue:
He's acted in almost 40 films, but before last year you probably only knew Josh Hutcherson, 20, from his role as the son of a lesbian couple in 2010's The Kids Are All Right. It wasn't until getting cast as Peeta Mellark in The HungerGames--one third of the Katniss-Gale-Peeta love triangle--that he became paparazzi-stalked and face-on-a-T-shirt famous. As he and the rest of the world gear up for November's release of the trilogy's second film, Catching Fire, the Kentucky native (who is, honestly, the nicest) talked to Glamour about costars, chemistry, and dating in Hollywood.
Marina Chekov Thu, October 3, 2013 
When we first meet Johanna Mason, a ferocious, ax-wielding victor from District 7, it's on an elevator with Haymitch, Katniss and Peeta. She stares down the trio and proceeds to strip naked. "It's one of the best introductions to a character ever," says 28-year-old actress Jena Malone (Donnie Darko). "I had to learn how to do a striptease in four seconds."
For Malone, Johanna defies expectations for women in genre films. "She's not just another badass sexy female," she says. "Her sexuality is a weapon. Her humor is a weapon. They're part of her process of coping with the fact that she killed all her friends in her own Hunger Games." Malone can't shake one particular scene in which her entire body is drenched in blood. "I felt like this gladiator," she says. "The cameras would cut and I would still have this crazy energy surging through me. Johanna took over."
From EW's October 11 "Catching Fire" special issue.
PanemPropaganda Wed, October 2, 2013 EW posted three new stills from their October 11 Catching Fire issue this morning. We've also got a preview of the story, with part of Jennifer Lawrence's interview below. Check out the 4 gorgeous different versions of the cover HERE.
On her way to the podium to accept the award for Silver Linings Playbook, Jennifer Lawrence famously fell up the stairs—a moment which most Oscar bloggers regarded as the highlight of the evening.
"I'm not that upset by it," Lawrence reveals in the new issue of Entertainment Weekly. "I didn't expect to make it up the steps in a dress like that. It's just that the fall frazzled me so much that I forgot to thank the director [David O. Russell] and Harvey Weinstein. It'll get funny to me eventually. I'll get there."
As Lawrence tells it, there was just as much falling down on the set of Catching Fire as there was at the Oscars. "Let me tell you, Sam [Claflin, the actor who plays Finnick Odair] is the clumsiest, most accident-prone person in the world. He broke his hand within the first week. He walked into a twig, and his eye was bleeding. He fell every single scene."
Lawrence's co-star, Josh Hutcherson, was almost as bad. "The funniest thing that happened was when Josh got down on one knee to propose to me—and his pants ripped," Lawrence says.
As it happens, Lawrence's favourite memory from the Catching Fire shoot also involves falling down.nning until we fell, but we were all scared because we didn't know where the reef was because it was dar "In Hawaii one night, we were having a party at Josh's house and we all held hands and ran into the ocean," she says. "We would run as fast as we could into the water and we'd keep running until we fell, but we were all scared because we didn't know where the reef was because it was dark."
Elsewhere in the interview, Lawrence talks about her least favourite scene in the first Hunger Games movie (hint: it involves giant dogs), her most difficult scene in Catching Fire, working with Philip Seymour Hoffman, and the difficulty of saying goodbye.
