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From: "Ian J. Ball" <ijball@mac.invalid>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-02-07 (Friday)
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2025 08:54:59 -0800
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On 2/8/25 1:30 AM, Ubiquitous wrote:

> What did you watch?

Yesterday, I managed to get through a movie - if I hadn't been so tired 
after a long week, I could have gotten through two (probably the new 
Tubi flick), but I was tried enough that I went to bed relatively early 
after the first movie.

I watched:

soaps: Y&R - Mon's ep. Not very interesting. Filis[sic!] is outraged, 
rightly, that Sharon will have no charges against her, but they ruin the 
character by having her knuckle under to Daniel and NuSummer rather than 
going after Sharon. Pathetic. Later, Billy pitches his new business idea 
to Filis and Daniel, and Daniel correctly points out that this seems 
like he's still going after Adam, just in a different way... After 
finding out about the Jordan/Ian stuff, Jack goes over to Nikki, and 
runs into the whole Newman clan, including the vile Mustache who acts 
like his typical asshole self. In the least interesting storyline, it's 
revealed that the guy Nate has been talking to is not his brother, but 
instead is working for his brother. Meanwhile, Audra keeps talking about 
her mother, which makes me wonder if the show is going to introduce 
Audra's mom to the show.

Then, the reason I haven't watched "Beeteljuice Beeteljuice" yes is 
because I felt like I had to watch the original "Beeteljuice" (which I 
haven't seen in decades!) first. So I finally got to that last night:

Beetlejuice (back on Max, after a month on Peacock) - In "glorious 4k!" 
- or, rather, it would have been had Max not taken that away from us 
cable subscribers!!  >:/
    I admit - I was fooled by the opening credits fly-over shot. In 
fact, I still can't figure out if that was partly real footage of a 
fly-over of the actual Vermont(?) village (note: the film is actually 
supposedly set in Connecticut, though I missed this if it was said 
onscreen...) they filmed that seamlessly transitions to a fly-over of 
the model, or if it was the model 100% of the time (which means the 
first part of the model was so life-like as to fool the audience!).
    This is an enjoyable film. I am not a Burton fan, but this may be 
the most easily enjoyable film Burton has ever done. Yes, it's still 
"weird", but it's weird in fun ways, rather than being either precious, 
annoying or overdone.
    More amazingly - it's pleasingly *short*, clocking in at just 92 
minutes.
    I honestly had forgotten the "plot" of this movie, and didn't 
realize going in that its "stars" were really a young Alec Baldwin 
(puh-TUWIE!!) and Geena Davis (easy to forget how attractive she was 
back in the 1980s!), whose characters are heinously and deliberately 
murdered (with malice of forethought!) by a small dog on a bridge into town.
    They soon realize they are ghosts, trapped in the country house they 
were trying to fix up before they died.
    Soon enough, though, a nouveau riche family moves in, led by the 
awful "artist" stepmom (Catherine O'Hara) married to a schmuck (Jeffrey 
Jones, before getting nailed as a child predator) - his daughter is a 
sullen weirdo teen (patented Winona Ryder of the era). O'Hara's stepmom 
has got a gay best-friend/partner in crime (Glenn Shadix).
    The now-ghost couple can't stand the parents (they come to like 
Winona Ryder's weirdo teen, as the only one who can initially see them 
as ghosts) and want to drive the family out of the house.
    That's where Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton, at his most enjoyably, and 
gross! "wacky"!) comes in, as 'independent contractor spirit' who 
specializes in "bio-exorcism" (IOW, driving living folks out of places 
that ghosts don't want them in!).
    Of course Beetlejuice is more than anyone bargained for. Oops.
    This has a lot of fun people in it (e.g. Robert Goulet, Dick Cavet), 
but Sylvia Sidney probably steals the show as the couple's "spirit case 
worker".
    This isn't deep, but it's mostly fun...
    What is with this flick and the almost non-stop Harry Bellafonte tunes?!
    I am now curious as to how the sequel is going to explain the 
absences of Baldwin and Davis (and without them, it will be easy to omit 
Sidney, who died in 1999, as well), not to mention Jones...


What did you watch?