Mitcz.com : Official blog of Rev. Mitcz, the demented devilish comedian from Hollywood, CA.

(quick note : I wasn’t going to write this rant, but a friend of mine threatened to beat me to it when I made a much shorter version of this rant on Facebook[1])

It seems TEH INTARWEBZ are all a flutter (can’t say all atwitter anymore, thx you guys) about concept art and imagery released to build up the hype machine surround Tim Burton’s “re-imagining” of Alice in Wonderland. While many are excited, I feel an equal mix of worry, anger, disappointment and confusion.

Why confusion? Well, it seems to me that many of you have forgotten how many times Tim Burton has smeared fecal matter on celluloid and you’re ready for him to fuck you in eye sockets yet again. How lovely. Maybe that’s his secret appeal, though. Maybe that’s why studios continue to give him money. Call it artistic amnesia if you will. Sure, he’s always had intense and amazing visuals in his films (this is to his credit), but maybe some of you let that cloud your memory banks and you wake up the next day only remembering his dream-like dark worlds and little else. Not unlike the time your uncle touched your bathing suit area, and you don’t even think about it anymore and would sooner pretend it never happened until… well, some asshole like me brings it up.

Sorry about that. You wanna show me on the doll wher…. nevermind. Let’s just move on.

To cure a small corner of the internet of this artistic amnesia it seems to be suffering, let’s take a quick walk through Tim Burton’s cinematic guano[2].

I’m leaving out Ed Wood and Mars Attacks because, while not exactly “great cinema”, I can appreciate that the dude was having campy fun with shit no one cares enough about to protest. And, hey, they’re not too shabby.

Sleepy Hollow

To me, this is the high-water mark from which you can see his movies slip further into unwatchable crap. At the time he was making this film, he stood atop a grand mountain. High up there, sitting on the success of Edward Scissorhands, BeetleJuice, Nightmare Before Christmas, 2 Batman films, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure .. and, hell, even James and the Giant Peach to some degree, he must’ve sat and thought “From way up here.. I can shit on a lot more people’s heads”.

And so he did. And he did it by taking one of my favorite childhood short stories (and probably many of yours) and turning it into some film student’s half-assed attempt to put way too much fucking thought into something so simple. You’ve got a headless fucking horseman! And Johnny Depp! And millions of dollars budgeted! And a beloved tale! And…. you turned it into an episode of Scooby fucking Doo?

If you don’t remember the plot, here it is :
Johnny Depp is an investigator from New York sent to Sleepy Hollow to look into some beheadings. He doesn’t believe in ghosts and ghouls (how fucking original), so he sets out to solve the case with SCIENCE! Alas, science doesn’t win cause an evil witch stole the skull of the headless horseman (not sure how one manages that feat, but hey… she’s a witch!) and she commands the horseman to, ya know, go forth and do her bidding. Johnny Depp gets the skull back, gives it the horseman and he drags the witch to hell. That’ll show her!

Planet of the Apes

Seriously? Fucking SERIOUSLY? Now, I know you younger kids like your movies action-packed and all that backstory and endless dialogue really chaps your hide (what do you kids wear on your hides these days? girl jeans, right? Pussies.), but there’s a pretty important element in the original POTA. You see, the humans are treated BY APES the way apes are (ostensibly, and for the time the movie was released) treated BY HUMANS. To the apes, humans are morons. They’ve not the capacity to speak, or think grandiose thoughts, or… barely even wipe their asses. They are kept in cages because, as the apes long ago learned, humans do some pretty unruly shit. This is why the scene where Charlton Heston says “get your hands off me, you damned dirty apes” is such a big deal. No, it wasn’t the usage of “damn”, but it’s .. “HOLY SHIT! THE HUMANS CAN TALK!” and suddenly it fucks up their whole society cause they always thought humans were complete fucking morons. That they could talk unravels the very fabric of their reality.

In Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes, the humans are talking the whole time. They’re just, for no discernible reason, being treated like shit by some kind of super-human (well, super-monkey, I guess) apes. No rhyme, no reason. No backstory. No big revelation. Just “hey, we can jump 40 feet in the air! We’re so much better than those humans. We should, like, take over shit”. Ooga booga.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Here’s TIm Burton, reaching far back into the recesses of my mind where everything I hold dear from my childhood hides out, hoping no one will get to them and.. he just smacked it around like a little bitch and tried fucking it in the ear. Probably took photos, too, the sick fuck.

I’m not going to go into great detail on why this remake was not only unnecessary, but also near-insulting to fans of the original. Once again, however, we have quite a lack of backstory on the children. The importance of the golden ticket isn’t played up NEARLY as much as it should’ve been — and the humor behind the world’s search for said tickets in the original is one of the greatest moments in the history of cinema. In Tim Burton’s version? A few minutes here and there, with some fucked up fascination Burton seems to have with proper dental care. His Willy Wonka also has some deep-seated daddy issues that made him basically run the factory just to piss off his daddy. Thanks, Burton. That’s a WAY better story. Oh, and he also left out all my favorite fucked-up shit going on in the original[3]. That shit’s character-building, motherfucker.

Sweeney Todd

I don’t know anything about the original musical. The few people I’ve known that did, however, have said the movie adaptation was mostly a pile of campy shit. The female amongst them added the obligatory “…but Johnny Depp wielding a straight razor made me wet”[4]. I’m not in a position of knowledge on the comparison, but I can say I left the theatre thinking “gosh… I sure wish I’d have used that 2 hours watching my dick wiggle instead”.

A hope, and a Plea

Admittedly, I have enjoyed quite a lot of Tim Burton’s work. I’m still on the fence about Batman Returns, but I own it and I’ve watched it.. maybe twice in my life. It’s decent. Though, compared to Nolan’s rebooted versions, neither of Burton’s originals are worth a shit. But then, I also have a soft spot for Michael Keaton cause he was Mister fucking Mom!

My hope in writing this is to remind everyone that Tim Burton has done a LOT wrong, and if he were anyone else, I’d half expect some angry nerd to have lit his house on fire by now (this is not a plea, it is a joke. Don’t burn anyone’s house down, least of all Tim Burton’s).

And, Mr. Burton, for the love of all things once wonderful and sacred PLEASE don’t fuck this shit up. I won’t be seeing it in the theatres anyway, cause I only let people piss in my eyes so many times before I learn to say “no” when they ask if I “want another drink there, big fella?”. But when I pirate the fucker, I might one day consider buying the DVD if it’s not as full of suck as I’m betting a shiny angry fist it will be.

Quick Notes

1. Julene told me to write this. Read her blog, too. She’s funny. And she shows her tits on there a lot.
2. Guano is bat dung. Yes, I’m aware of the irony. We call this “humor”.
3. You can see what I mean right here
4. Hey ladies – I use a straight razor, too. I’m no Johnny Depp, but uhh.. I have a lot of his DVDs.

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