Queen Nutmeg: Off with their heads!



Associated Press photo

Repugnican California gubernatorial candidate Nutmeg Whitman, who more and more reminds me of the Red Queen, is poised to lose to Democrat Jerry Brown on November 2 by anywhere from eight to 13 points. 

An increasingly desperate Nutmeg Whitman, trailing California’s next governor, Jerry Brown, in the polls from the high single digits to low double digits, more and more looks like Tim Burton’s Red Queen.

Queen Nutmeg now promises that she’ll make support of the death penalty a “litmus test” for any judges whom she would appoint as governor.

It’s pretty safe, when you’re a billionaire bitch whose legion of lawyers can get your own filthy rich ass out of anything, to ensure that those of lower socioeconomic status get executed.

And I love how the majority of wingnuts claim to be Christians yet support the death penalty.

Whom would Jesus execute? Especially given the fact that he was a victim of the death penalty himself?

California has plenty of problems, and one of them isn’t that we don’t execute enough individuals who could, instead of being executed, be incarcerated for life so that they can never kill again, if we want to talk about public safety. And if we want to talk about California’s budget crisis, the legal process associated with executing someone costs more than it does to keep him or her incarcerated for life.

Jerry Brown is not, as Team Nutmeg has alleged, “soft on crime.”

Jerry Brown has more reverence for human life than does Team Nutmeg, which is shamelessly exploiting the blood lust of the lowest common denominator of the electorate in a last-ditch effort for votes that more than $140 million of Nutmeg’s own money have failed to buy.

If Megalomaniac Whitman had her way, she’d rule from a castle encircled by a moat filled with severed heads, a la the Red Queen.

Get Queen Nutmeg a nice warm pig for her tired feet — and don’t dare touch her tarts or otherwise piss her off, or she’ll have your head.

P.S. This just might be the Best. California. Political. Ad. Ever.

Burton does Alice justice

Film review

Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, Mia Wasikowska as Alice in armor and Anne Hathaway as the White Queen (above) face the Red Queen, played by Helena Bonham Carter (below), on the battlefield in Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland.”

 The Alice in Wonderland books (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass) never did much for me as a kid, I must admit. The surreal thing to that degree just didn’t appeal to me. (I remember that as a little fag I loved the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, though. Roald Dahl, too, and Madeleine L’Engle, and yes, I admit it, when I was smaller, the Beatrix Potter books…) 

Tim Burton, though, has made some great films — “Edward Scissorhands,” “Batman Returns,” “Mars Attacks!”, “Corpse Bride,” “Sweeney Todd” — so I was there for his rendition of “Alice in Wonderland,” which uses materials from both of Lewis Carroll’s books about Alice in Wonderland.

Again, I haven’t read those two books, so I can’t compare the books to Burton’s film. Which is probably for the better for a film review anyway.

The Alice in Burton’s version is an older Alice who is expected to marry a man she doesn’t want to marry. Be practical, be responsible, be an adult, Alice is told.

But Alice wants to be Alice, and she soon finds herself down the rabbit hole and in Wonderland, where she visited in her childhood in her dreams. Or were they just dreams?

Dream or not, Wonderland is more interesting than is Alice’s waking world of arranged marriages and proprieties.

With all of the talking animals, an evil queen that must be taken down, and an epic battle on the battlefield between good and evil, Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” resembles the “Chronicles of Narnia” movies, but Lewis Carroll invented Wonderland long before C.S. Lewis invented Narnia. (I’m assuming that Burton didn’t make up any major plot elements, such as the climactic battle scene in which Alice must face the dreaded Jabberwocky.)

Stealing the show in Burton’s “Wonderland” is not Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, although Depp is given the top billing, but Helena Bonham Carter as the homicidal, macroencephalic Red Queen, whose favorite pastime, ironically, given her large noggin, is ordering and witnessing the decapitations of anyone who she feels crosses her majesty. You feel kind of guilty liking her character so much, since she’s pure, raw evil, but her character is probably the most fleshed-out, second only to that of Alice.

Depp is good as the Mad Hatter, but the character of the Mad Hatter never did much for me, and Depp’s Mad Hatter doesn’t seem much different from Depp’s other roles in Burton films, especially Willie Wonka but even a bit of Sweeney Todd. And, as much as I’ve always liked Depp, he is overused, even annoyingly ubiquitous, in Burton’s “Wonderland.” 

The ethereal Cheshire Cat, voiced by Stephen Fry, is wonderfully done. (I like the new color scheme for the floating, vanishing and reappearing cat, too; the pink and purple Chesire Cat in Disney’s original version of “Alice” never really worked for me.) I would like to have seen more of the cat and less of the hatter.

I’ve always liked Anne Hathaway, but her White Queen is a bit two-dimensional. Is Carroll’s White Queen this two-dimensional? Does Carroll have his White Queen just posing so much of the time and apparently overcome with ennui? I hope not.

Alan Rickman voices Absolem the Caterpillar, a toking, Yoda-like character who periodically counsels Alice with his wisdom during her visit to Wonderland.

I saw the 3-D version of Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland,” which so many reviewers (including Roger Ebert) have criticized as being too much. At times it was a bit too much sensory overload, but it didn’t ruin the overall experience. (Mostly, again, I just wanted more of the cat and less of the hatter…)

“Alice in Wonderland” delivers what it promises: An entertaining, visually impressive film. It isn’t Tim Burton’s best, but it certainly isn’t his worst.

My grade: B+

‘9’: Been there, done that

Film review

Protagonist “9” faces a “Matrix”-like foe in the watchable-enough but highly derivative animated film “9,” which bears the stamp of approval of Tim Burton, whose films “9” resembles.

Hmmm. You know, maybe I can make this film review short and sweet and just list nine movies that the Tim-Burt0n-produced movie “9” reminds me of:

• “Edward Scissorhands” (scientist/inventor creates his own offspring)
• The “Terminator” films (with the theme of machines taking over the planet; also, in the first “Terminator” film you think that the bad ‘bot is dead when he isn’t)
• “The Matrix” (ditto with the machines-taking-over theme and perhaps especially the squid-like “sentinels” that resemble the bad ’bots in “9”; also, “9’s” namesake hero and “The Matrix’s” hero, Neo, are a lot alike in that they’re both post-apocalyptic saviors)
• “Toy Story” (I think especially of that spider creature with the maimed doll’s head atop of it)
• “Coraline” (the button and the spider themes)
• “WALL-E” (Earth destroyed by mankind, leaving a desolate planet)
• “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (I think especially of the character of the big lug in each film)
• “Beetlejuice” (I seem to remember the character of Beetlejuice morphing into a serpentine creature, and there is a serpentine creature in “9” as well)
• “James and the Giant Peach”
• “Transformers” (OK, so I didn’t see this movie or its sequel, but Roger Ebert makes the comparison in his review of “9”)

OK, so that’s 10 films that I saw scattered within “9,” including one film that I haven’t seen (but I trust Ebert). You get my point.

“9” is watchable end-of-summer fare, to be sure, but be forewarned that you’ve already seen it all somewhere before. Yesterday I sat through much if not most of “9” making mental notes as to where I’d seen certain visual images and themes and ideas before, and that detracted from my movie-going experience.

“9,” like its rag-doll protagonists named “1” through “9” have been, has been cobbled from things borrowed. It’s technically masterful, but because it’s so damned derivative, it isn’t destined to become a classic.

My grade: B-