Jennifer Lawrence stops briefly for outside photographers during The Hunger Games NYC screening.

Like the world over, we too have been anxiously looking forward to the arrival of The Hunger Games – starring Jennifer Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson and Isabelle Fuhrman.  The preview alone for the book-to-screen adaptation wet our appetite for a full experience.  Hell, who are we kidding, Hemsworth had us wet for so long we were damn near drowning in it…  And we were determined to get our fill during one of the last promotional nights by the young casts before the grand opening worldwide!

Interesting evening…  But a grander screen experience.

From the costumes to the CGI effects to the casting – the film is a epic, capturing the conflicts of social class structure accented through color.

Oddly, folks are still on the Twilight comparison phenom and we can’t help but wonder why…  Other than the obvious that is…  the media fueling a public frenzy which originated with the books – much like the Harry Potter novels.  That and the fact that Breaking Dawn II still has one remaining episode on the 2012 horizon.

Sure, on the surface it appears to play to a tween audience.  But once you look past the surface of things – the fact that it stars a generally young-ish crowd being the most obvious – it really is a whole hell of a lot smarter than Twilight and well, no further connections can be discernibly made.

We now must regress to reading the book(s) given how wowed we were left with the film.

And on Sunday afternoon, the estimated tallies being reported are in the tune of around $155 Million – with a pre-sale coming in around $15 million alone.

Not bad start – but hardly a surprise.

We are for certain glad to have made the sacrifice and dutifully covered the NYC special screening, held at Chelsea’s SVA theater, late last week.

Yeah, the film has premiered everywhere else and Tim-buck-too but Lawrence’s green low-cut cleavage revealing cocktail number makes up for the scheduling blunder by the suits.  Although her attitude could in & of itself use some fine tuning.  (Girl it’s early in the game for such disdain… OSCAR nomination or not…)

Other notable attendees:  Alan Cumming, Rob Thomas, Cheyenne Jackson, Stanley Tucci, Irina Shayk, Abigail Breslin, Bridget Moynahan, Jake T. Austin, Dave Annable, Giant’s Victor Cruz and Carlos Leon.

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