We’re all familiar with Disney’s 1940 adaptation of Pinocchio, and Pinocchio’s conscience Jiminy Cricket, complete with formal clothing and umbrella. In a new retelling of the Pinocchio tale by Guillermo del Toro, the cricket is just as verbal but far more insectile, telling his audience that he “lived in the heart of the wooden boy.” Vaguely chilling, right? He’s even got a revised name…Sebastian J. Cricket! Plus this bug looks almost alien.- – I Iike him already!
Set in Italy in the 1930’s with Mussolini’s fascist power rising, this Pinocchio is depicted as a lost soul in a world he cannot understand. Disney sanitized the original Carlo Collodi tale, which included the cricket being killed early on and his ghost serving as Pinocchio’s conscience! Guillermo del Toro promises to return some of the original Frankenstein or nightmarish elements to the story, which included boys being turned into donkeys on Pleasure Island.
So for a darker, scarier version of Pinocchio that’s “about as far removed from Disney as you can get,” you may want to check out this Pinocchio coming to Netflix in December 2022…and tell them that Sebastian J. Cricket sent you,buwahahaha!
– – A new Terminix campaign visually supersizes termites and other household pests, making them visually repellent and a disgusting joy to watch. Rather than the small and largely unseen insects that termites actually are, these are giant, horrific hell-beasts that look fully capable of eating your house and probably anyone inside it as well. They are delivered to viewers complete with eerie horror-movie sounds and sinister voiceovers; Syfy original movie monsters should be half this good! One almost expects to see Ellen Ripley and a squadron of space marines appear to dispatch these loathsome and dangerous beasties, getting slaughtered in the process…the termites even have circular buzz-saw type jaws within jaws!
– – Don’t the bugs seem to get bigger each year? And there’s something marvelously surreal about going along in a big RV with a human-sized blue bug riding shotgun up front! I could get into this scene…well, this is an ESPN RV marketing campaign commercial that features New Orleans rookie Anthony Davis traveling in the RV together with ESPN commentator Mike Breen and Hugo, the team mascot. They are all very comfortable in one another’s company, a cozy group…thank heavens for cultural diversity!
FOXSYLVANIA 
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