CIT students have an advantage when it comes to Yuletide: while most people take Christmas to be the twenty-fifth of December and consequently hold parties around that time, CIT gets a second Christmas day around the end of November. So it was that on this year, Thursday the twenty eight of November, I joined in on the festive fun. Christmas jumper: check; moolah: check; Age ID: check. ​CIT Christmas saw quite a wild day: night clubs, drinks, drunken girls, and a whole lot of craic. Yet from a literary, Cloud of Think point of view one event sticks out above the rest, that of seeing Catching Fire, the second film in the Hunger Games trilogy. ​The Hunger Games, for those who might not know, started as a series of dystopian novels for young adults. Penned by Suzanne Collins and told from the first person view of Katniss Everdeen, the books revolve around a corrupt world with an Aryan-esque capital which takes pleasure in watching the Hunger Games. The Hunger Games are a competition where the elite members of society, those who prosper in the Capital, watch as the lesser individuals (two from each “District”) go head to head. They must kill each other to survive this brutal, monstrous regime. ​Catching Fire takes off where the previous film ended. As a result this review will contain spoilers related to the first movie. Katniss and on-screen boyfriend Peeta, both froom District 12, return home and lead separate lives. Katness does not love Peeta and only pretended to while being filmed. This cold distance naturally infuriates Peeta, and perhaps pleases Gail (who might have been Katniss’s boyfriend if they weren’t plagued by the Games). However in the run up to the 75th annual Hunger Games, Katniss and...

JULY 5th, 2031 – 12:51 PM The space shuttle Washington glided slowly through the space, a vast dark void peppered with distant stars, an amazing sight for any new astronaut. But Bob and Mike had seen it all before – they had been on the shuttle for a week and half – and now took more pleasure in their lunch than in the mind-blowing infinity of blackness all around them. They had been sent on the trip with the intention of discovering the source and meaning of some very vague signals being relayed to Earth from a little beyond the Moon. However, there had been no further signals for the last eight days. Space, despite its immensity and all the stunning things within it, can get a little boring, and Bob and Mike wanted to go home. But NASA had insisted that they stay on course and conduct their investigation as planned, so Bob and Mike were due to spend another two days going forward before they could start the return journey to Earth. They’d  had not found any evidence of anything out there beyond the Moon, and had almost completely stopped checking. For example, on July 5th 2031, lunch had dragged on for an extra quarter of an hour as each tried to amuse the other with the small number of jokes they knew. They had been telling the same jokes for a while now: ‘And the barman said, “Keep the change!” ’ murmured Bob. Mike chuckled very briefly and very quietly. ‘Bob, could you pass me that packet of M&Ms?’ he asked. ‘Sure thing.’ Bob reached down and picked up the packet. Then there was an almost deafening noise, an almost blinding flash, and the space shuttle Washington entered the wormhole. The...