Yesterday it was announced that Francis Lawrence, director of the middling 2007 post-apocalyptic Will Smith vehicle I Am Legend, has been handed the directorial reins for The Hunger Games' sequel Catching Fire, based on the second book in Suzanne Collins's bestselling young adult fiction series. You are free to do what we tell you! You are free to do what we tell you!' Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Television remains the drug of the nation, the opium of the masses: as the late great Bill Hicks once said: 'Go back to bed, America. The Roman emperors who spent fortunes on colosseum entertainments knew all about such Machiavellian manoeuvres, and mankind doesn't seem to have developed much resistance in the subsequent millennia.

The Hunger Games, even if it wears its satire lightly, examines the potential for governments to control their populations via an age-old mechanism: entertainment. Avengers Assemble is about a team of unlikely superpowered demigods, The Dark Knight Rises will be about an equally outlandish masked vigilante with rather too much money and time on his hands and Prometheus is about a slightly spurious search for extra-terrestrial life. It also stands almost alone in the pantheon of blockbuster 2012 movies as a film which actually has something to say about modern society.

The Hunger Games has turned out to be one of 2012's most welcome surprises: a popcorn movie with enough satirical clout to satisfy those keen on dystopian scenarios. Spoiler alert: Do not read if you have not yet seen The Hunger Games or read the novel and would like to do either without knowing their outcomes.

Hunger games second book