Tim Burton

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice — so good, they named it twice. At least, that’s what you would have hoped. Unfortunately, Tim Burton’s latest movie is a dismally confused hotchpotch that aims for a curious mixture of comedy, mild horror and the usual Burton wackiness, along with performances from his regular actors including Michael Keaton, Jenna Ortega and Winona Ryder. Sequel to an Eighties curio that was diverting rather than brilliant in the first place, it has nevertheless capitalized on the ever-present vogue for nostalgia that has permeated theaters over the past few years. It made an astonishing $111 million at the US box office last weekend; the original grossed $75 million worldwide during its entire run at movie theaters, albeit the best part of four decades ago.

The year was 1991. Actress Sean Young was trending — which in the Nineties means tabloids were dumping on her. The scandal: she barged onto the Warner Bros. lot dressed as Catwoman for an audition for Batman Returns. Two years earlier, Young was set to play Batman’s love interest in the first film, but she fell off a horse on set, fracturing her shoulder, so director Tim Burton replaced her with Kim Basinger. Young believed she deserved an audition for the sequel’s villain. After all, she was Sean Young. She played Chani in David Lynch’s original Dune (a role a not-yet-born Zendaya would reprise in a remake). She made love to future Yellowstone star Kevin Costner in No Way Out.

Sir Michael Gambon, who has died aged eighty-two, played countless iconic and legendary roles over the course of a sixty-year career on stage and screen. Yet the part that he will always be best remembered for — and, in truth, not one that stretched this fine actor to his limits — was that of Professor Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films. Gambon was offered the role after Richard Harris, who played the part in the first and second pictures, died (and after, rumor had it, Ian McKellen turned it down, not wanting to play another fictitious wizard after Gandalf). Gambon claimed neither to have read the books nor to know anything about the character, saying instead that he took on the role for his grandchildren.

The death of actor Paul Reubens of cancer at the age of seventy was an oddly low-key departure for a man who created one of the twentieth century’s iconic comic characters, and also found himself mired in scandal that threatened to destroy his career, and to a large extent took him away from the A-list fame that he would have expected to attain. Yet throughout his more than four-decade career, Reubens was nothing if not a survivor, even a fighter. The fact that incidents that would have ruined most other men were treated by him as obstacles to be overcome indicated both his resilience and — to some — a refusal to kowtow to the expected demands of the industry that both made and ruined him.