‘Beetlejuice’ sequel prompted a ‘weird family reunion’
ACROSS
1 Relatives of pistachios 8 Mail-related
14 Baio and Turow
20 Wife of Nero 21 Fingers-in-ears syllables
22 Headwear for
Mr. Peanut
23 Golden State hoopster who lives for Saturdays and Sundays? 25 Existence
26 Days of yore, archaically
27 Ruling group 28 Schlepped through the entrance 30 Ballesteros of golf 33 Groom, e.g. 35 Exemplary Houston hoopster?
38 San Antonio hoopster scaling a mountain? 42 Suffix with lion
43 Guy in the fam
44 High peak
45 Heavenly
46 Health club
48 Gyro bread
49 Semi fuel
51 Cowardly Denver hoopster?
55 “Mom” actress Jaime 58 Start eating
59 Org. against pollution 60 Redding of R&B 61 Event for stunt pilots 64 __ -Z (total)
65 Foot part
68 Brooklyn hoopster using a rod and reel? 71 Phoenix hoopster preparing a typeface for printing?
74 Frau’s “Oh!”
75 Girl in the fam
76 Name originally proposed for Utah
78 Gas guzzler 79 Reindeer kin
80 Notion, to Fifi 81 Damsels
84 Los Angeles hoopster originally from New England?
90 Train in the pool
92 All excited
93 Mtn. stat
94 Tested for fit
97 “__ culpa!” 98 “Stillmatic” rapper 99 Footed vase
101 Sacramento hoopster holding power?
103 Eco-conscious Charlotte hoopster? 107 Livy’s lang.
108 Words in an analogy 109 Some nobles’ domains 110 Jamaican pop genre 112 Baby wolf
114 Justification
116 Chicago hoopster devoid of spontaneity and emotion?
122 Sock with diamond patterns
123 “Seinfeld” character 124 Shrunken Asian lake 125 Some vowel sounds 126 Phrase structure 127 Lower than
DOWN
1 Mooing beast
2 High card
3 Fr. holy woman 4 Olajuwon of the NBA 5 Daredevil Knievel 6 Power sources with spinning sails
7 Tearful
8 Strategize
9 Rowers’ tools
10 35mm camera inits. 11 Alteration pro
12 Not silently
13 Huge
14 Directs
15 Buyable apartments 16 Vision-related 17 Have high aspirations 18 Bit of ink art 19 Pigpen
24 Flying needs 29 Collect bit by bit 30 Cousin of a jack mackerel
31 Oval-shaped 32 Spiteful
34 Even one
35 Capital of Bavaria 36 One-named Deco master
37 Exactly
39 Pollen eaters
40 “Get ’em, Spot!” 41 Syllable after “oom” 46 Broiling bar
47 Church seat
48 Club swingers’ gp. 50 Meeting period, informally
52 Picked ? 53 __ pot (sinus-cleaning product)
54 “Once __ a time ...” 56 Dillydallies
57 Dark half of a Chinese circle
60 Birds __ feather 62 News aggregation website
63 Precipitous
64 “__ girl!”
65 Giant waves
66 Paid more than 67 Musician Brian 69 Capri, e.g.
70 Adidas rival
72 Pro __
73 Celtic speaker
77 Piece for seven 79 Heart test, for short 80 Ailing
82 Apathetic response 83 Ding- __
84 Light half of a Chinese circle
85 Lab gelatin
LAS VEGAS – His Beetlejuice character is known for not fitting in, and Michael Keaton is pretty good at standing out himself.
When director Tim Burton and fellow “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” castmates showed up to a Tuesday presentation at CinemaCon to chat about their movie, Keaton rocked a brown jacket and white pants while everybody else was dressed in black – or as Burton put it, “It’s like attending our own funeral.” Like Beetlejuice, Keaton is quick with the zingers: “I didn’t get the memo. I look happy.”
Burton came to the theater owners’ convention with an extended trailer for “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (in theaters Sept. 6), the long-awaited sequel to the original 1988 supernatural comedy starring Keaton as the demonic “ghost with the most.” The Deetzes, including Lydia (Winona Ryder) and her mom Delia (Catherine O’Hara), return to their home in Winter River after a death in the family, and Lydia’s rebellious teen daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), finds the model of the town in the attic that was home to a certain green-haired menace.
Cue Beetlejuice, who’s back to cause all sorts of chaos and mayhem in the real world and the Afterlife. New footage leaned into the plot of the sequel, which is about the living and the dead needing to figure out how to coexist, and also showcased the shrunken head guy from the first film, Beetlejuice reconnecting with Lydia, and first looks at Willem Dafoe’s fearsome Wolf Jackson and Monica Bellucci’s gothic villainess Delores.
Having Bellucci in the movie “fulfilled my lifelong dream of making an Italian horror film,” Burton quipped. The actress said she loved all the “beautiful sets and amazing costumes. For a moment, it really felt like I was a soul-sucking evil.” 86 Horse feed holders 87 Body of rules 88 Verdi’s “__ tu”
89 Fix illegally 91 Pudding starch 95 China’s Zhou
96 Day, in Peru
99 Open, as a new rug 100 Some French wines 101 Make a new digital image of
102 Dry dog food 104 Class that’s a cinch 105 “Blue” singer LeAnn 106 Hockey great Cam 110 Capital of Yemen 111 Lego alternative 113 __ Bator
114 Jogged, e.g.
115 History unit
117 Smack
118 Taxi
119 D.C.’s nation
120 Tennis call
121 “__ -di-dah!”
Keaton shouted out new cast member Ortega, who couldn’t make it to Vegas because of her production schedule. “She just got it. She’s like, ‘I know what the tone is.’ She was just perfect,” Keaton said.
And his fellow original co-star O’Hara is glad people will stop asking her about a sequel as they have for the past 30 years. “To actually get the call from Tim was delightful. The characters have evolved – not Beetlejuice, but the rest of us.”
The sequel has been a long-gestating project for Keaton and Burton, who called it “a weird family reunion.” Every few years or so, “we’d kick the notion of it around,” Keaton said. “The first one was fun because Tim and were figuring it out. We just went nuts. To duplicate that, I was very nervous to see us pull it off again.”
So did they? “It’s really (expletive) good,” Keaton said in his signature Beetlejuice growl, exciting the crowd. “In fact, it’s great.”