A victim of the pandemic, this once-theatrical blockbuster is now landing on HBO Max today, just in time to terrify children into staying up all night on Halloween. That project fell apart but del Toro’s love of challenging scares remains in the 2020 version of “ The Witches,” as he co-produced and co-wrote (with Kenya Barris and the director) this version, now directed by a very different technical master, Robert Zemeckis.

Years ago, del Toro started working on a stop-motion film of Dahl’s The Witches, already adapted once in 1990 by Nicholas Roeg. The same could be said for Guillermo del Toro, a craftsman who does not believe in holding your hand, no matter how old you are, and understands the sheer power of fantasy. A willingness to learn is seen as a character flaw.Roald Dahl did not believe in babying children, often forming images in their heads that pushed from childish vision to surreal terror. I would, frankly, hate to be an educator in America. Eighteen US states have passed bans on words and thoughts that scare them, but none more enthusiastically than DeSantis – the smarter Trump we were all worried about – whose vendetta against “critical race theory” has seen school libraries gutted. His enemy…ideas.While the Republicans, much like their conservative cousins in Australia, claim to be warriors for free speech, their actions are showing them to be the exact opposite. Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, is on a rampage. A willingness to learn is seen as a character flaw.ĪB - As more books in America are banned by the authoritarian right, Roald Dahl works enter the crosshairs of censorship from the seeming left.

N2 - As more books in America are banned by the authoritarian right, Roald Dahl works enter the crosshairs of censorship from the seeming left. T2 - On censorship, Roald Dahl and the current moment

The grand high witch roald dahl