by Victoria Alexander
I’m looking forward to GONE WITH THE WIND 2, CITIZEN KANE 2 and SOME LIKE IT HOT starring Taylor Swift.
Anything, except another OCEAN’S 14! George Clooney has mentioned a script is in the works. Keep flogging your hits from many decades ago. Do we really miss Danny Ocean? How much money do these stars need?
My whole life has been a hallow waste, a futile exercise, for no one at death can take anything with them.” Alexander The Great
Do I remember Tim Burton’s BEETLEJUICE from 36 years ago? Do you know how many films I have seen since then? Sure, I remember Michael Keaton’s memorable, absurd Beetlejuice face and costume and the Deetz and their guests singing around a dinner table.
With my criticism of remakes and drudging up past big money makers for Part 2s, I have to admit that BB was terrific. Willem Dafoe is in everything! I heard Dafoe will be playing a tambourine on the Oasis historic tour – even if it’s an admitted money grab. IMDb.com says Dafoe has 8 upcoming movies.
And Dafoe is fabulous in BB, as always. His Wolf Jackson needs his own movie co-starring confused Delia Deetz.
Screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar have really moved the concept into 2024. The former goth girl, Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), has grown up and is now a media star. She lives in the famed “ghost house” and has a very successful TV series visiting people grappling with ghosts. Lydia has a daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), who is ashamed of the mother’s notoriety. Pretty funny, Astrid’s iPhone name for Lydia is “alleged mother.” She does not believe in ghosts and says her mother is a fraud. Lydia’s boyfriend/director/producer, Rory (Justin Theroux), is sleazy and gratuitously insincere.
In the years since we last saw Beetlejuice, aka Mr Juice, he has now been given an official office job in the underworld. If only Burton and the writers had spent more time in the wondrous underworld. Mr Juice’s staff are the infamous men in big beige suits and little heads. I wanted to know more about the manager, Bob.
Lydia lives with Astrid and her stepmother, Delia (Catherine O'Hara), is always around. Do they all live in the big house? Delia has embraced interactive art. Her art is all about her – well, isn’t all art about the artist?
Delia’s husband, and Lydia’s father, has passed away. Jeffrey Jones, now a registered sex offender, was not invited back. Stardom sometimes – I really mean always - feeds a person’s vile obsessions. Lydia’s husband and Astrid’s father, Richard (Santiago Cabrera), has also passed away. Both men died wacky deaths and are now in Betelgeuse. Here is a real horror: There are jobs in the underworld!
Working in the underworld? Oh, let’s hope not.
Imagine spending your whole life at a job you hated and then be given the same job for eternity in the underworld.
In the underworld, a “janitor” (Danny DeVito) slips and causes Beetlejuice’s spurned ex-wife Delores (Monica Bellucci) to reassemble her boxed-up body parts. Delores has only one directive: To hunt the love rat down. Beetlejuice had hoped to marry Lydia which caused his ex-wife’s wrath. Delores sucks the souls of the dead who are standing in her way as she looks for Beetlejuice. A Hollywood actor, Wolf Jackson (Dafoe), who had a career playing detectives, is playing a detective in the underworld. He’s on the case looking to warn Beetlejuice about Delores’s fury and because she soul-sucked a few dead people, leaving vacant jobs to be filled.
Betelgeuse is the brightest star in the constellation Orion. Someday, Betelgeuse will explode as a supernova. Then, it will be as bright as a full moon and visible in broad daylight. For the ancient Egyptians, Betelgeuse was the name for their god of the underworld.
Astrid meets Jeremy (Arthur Conti) and they are “dating,” sort of. He has a tree house retreat and uninvolved parents.
When Jeremy takes Astrid to the underworld to find her father, Lydia has no choice but to say Beetlejuice three times. His ardor has not dimmed! Lydia agrees to marry Beetlejuice if he will help her get Astrid back.
Director Burton has not mellowed his absurdist view and wisely waiting decades to return to the underworld, will have a huge box office hit. You know that the sequels, the series, a musical, and books are all on the platform – waiting for the opening numbers. DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE is currently passing $600 million. DEADPOOL has competition – though how much does it matter now?
No “spoilers” here. Everything is cleverly summed up.
Ryder looks younger than Ortega. This must be movie magic. Someone gave her a terrible hairdo.
Ortega now has a reputation as a 21-year-old diva. She said that on her enormous Netflix hit, “Wednesday,” many of the original “Wednesday” scripts made no sense to her from a character perspective, so much so that she went ahead and changed dialogue without consulting the series’ writers. Ortega also told producer Burton to not hire a choreographer for the show’s dance scene. For Season 2 of “Wednesday,” Ortega is a producer. If Ortega changes a comma, she will get a writer’s credit.
Bravo or too early to be so greedy?
For the entire first season of “Wednesday,” Ortega was paid $240,000. For Season 2, Ortega demanded and got $250,000 per episode. Really? Ortega has offended many powerful people in Hollywood and, regardless of Vanity Fair’s cover and the imminent success of BB and Season 2 of “Wednesday,” her downfall is sealed in the Tarot card, The Tower. Ortega does not have Taylor Swift fame or Cate Blanchette’s acting credentials to hold Hollywood’s Power Players hostage. Okay, so Ortega will now have a writing credit and a producer credit, which means a Producers Guild of America mark, p.g.a., after her name.
Watch out Margot Robbie, Ortega is coming after you.
Ortega’ s Astrid is rather bland and innocent. Apparently, Ortega did not change her dialogue, demand changes in her character, or tell Burton how to direct. Or did she?
Keaton is fun and understands that Beetlejuice is evil, of course, playfully evil. It’s terrific to see Bellucci (said to be in a relationship with Burton) in a rich, sexy role. Bellucci is one of the great beautiful actresses and Burton will, as he has in the past, cast her again. Bellucci deserves Hollywood stardom.
O’Hara plays Delia as only she can – for her the movie is all about Delia!
The ALL is Mind; The Universe is Mental.”
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Personal email: victoria.alexander.lv@gmail.com