Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio - A puppet comes to life during Mussolini's reign

Before this trailer I didn’t give much thought to this, but now I’m a believer. Man, what a gorgeous looking film.

Even if I’m not thrilled by the trailer, it’s on Netlfix so I’m gonna watch it anyway. The only thing I’d be losing is a couple of hours.

I meant to mention that but yeah, it being on Netflix is actually super helpful in that regard.

See, this is the attitude that Netflix fosters.

By contrast, us HBO Max subscribers actually value our time.

(ducks). (J/K).

Oh HBO definitely has “well since I’m already subscribed” content!

It does, but I never get to it. If you know what I mean? They have so much quality content that I haven’t gotten through yet, so that other stuff is even further down the priority list. When I get Netflix, I end up watching one show that I subscribed for, and then go to the “since I’m already subscribed” content. It has as much to do with their interface as anything, honestly. They really push that stuff on you harder and hide their gems.

I kind of feel that way about HBO - there are some shows I’m happy to have sub’d for, but I’ve seen them quickly and nothing else is really grabbing me. I only keep subscribed because when I went to cancel out for a few months before Harley Quinn dropped it’s new season, they offered me 50% off for three months.

Netflix I have a backlog of shows I need to watch to catch up, and new stuff I find suggested to me all the time that’s a lot of fun!

Different strokes, I suppose.

Anyone see this thing yet?

I found it to be very…death positive, and almost cried at the end. Almost. The songs were okay but nothing I cared for. My wife prefers the Disney version solely due to Wish Upon a Star. That’s it.

I really enjoyed this, though I agree the songs were the weakest part. It was dark, as a Pinocchio story should be - the fascism elements reminded me a bit of Pan’s Labyrinth, though it’s a very different tone. Netflix seems to be killing it with stop motion this year. Wendell & Wild looked fantastic too.

I think adapting it to the backdrop of Fascist Italy might have been a mistake. The non-war stuff was always better for me, but I don’t have a strong opinion about this. Only the ending was the best.

This is good, if not quite outstanding. It captures the essence of Pinocchio as an amoral kid trying to figure out what being good means. Some of the character designs are great. The songs are … not terrible, but not good, either. It has a stronger overall story than the 40s Disney version, even though it’s missing the iconic donkey stuff and has a bunch of new material (like, well, Mussolini.)

The VO has both Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton doing VO as powerful supernatural entities. This seems like much of a muchness, but you can’t go wrong with either.

Like every other adaptation, this differs greatly from the book. Which is probably fine, as the book is weird and disturbing (e.g. the cricket gets killed by Pinnochio early on, and then hangs around as a ghost.) Though this version does keep one part of the book that haunted my childhood dreams, namely the scene where Pinocchio burns his feet off.

Wonderful art direction and atmosphere, and the stop-motion was beautifully executed. The songs didn’t do a lot for me, but being someone who typically doesn’t care for singing parts in movies to begin with, I can note that none of them felt like a drag either. No duds in the voice acting department; I particularly liked David Bradley and Ewan McGregor.

Was the monkey a powerfil supernatural entity? Because that’s whom Blanchett gave her voice. ^^