Happy Boxing Day

I had to work on Christmas, but had time afterward to watch the Italian live-action Pinocchio; it was dubbed in English with no subtitles, but the speakers had Italian accents. To be clear, this is the movie with Roberto Benigni as Geppetto; I didn't realize that Disney also has a new Pinocchio with Tom Hanks, and apparently Netflix is planning a Pinocchio too. Suddenly the puppet is in fashion.

Anyway, the Italian movie was weird, quirky, and dark, including a long-ish scene of the puppet being hanged with a noose--apparently that's in the original book, but may shock people wanting a Disneyfied children's movie. The film is quite fantastical and frequently funny in a loopy way. Human actors play various animal characters such as the cat and fox, the Talking Cricket, and the snail; it's mostly makeup and costume rather than CGI, but can still be disturbing like with the tuna fish. The Blue Fairy starts out as a mysterious girl who claims that she is dead, and she rescues Pinocchio from being hanged (though if she'd only let him in the house earlier, the whole hanging could have been avoided). However, later in the film when Pinocchio meets her again, the Blue Fairy has grown up to become an adult and she seems to keep aging, though she retains her magic. I kind of liked this Pinocchio but would not recommend it to a family without warning them about the hanging scene. Concerned parents should wait for whatever Disney remake is coming out on Disney Plus streaming.

I'm planning to watch Tom Hanks in News of the World this weekend too. I wasn't going to see the Wonder Woman sequel due to my bad feelings about Gal Gadot's opinions about Israel, and a bad review I read saying that the the film itself seems to be infected with anti-Arab sentiments too. However, my family already has the HBO Max service, so I'll probably watch it to see Steve's resurrection and confirm for myself if Patty Jenkins really is that tone-deaf. I just won't see it in a theater where I can't fast forward through the bad parts.

As I said, I'm supporting my local movie theaters by watching other movies that can't be found on streaming. I don't want them to die off from this pandemic.