Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

I remember who introduced me to the original Beetlejuice movie: It was my late godfather, a native of the U.S. Virgin Islands, who got a particular kick out of the scene in which the Ghost with the Most turns a dinner party into a flesh puppet show set to Harry Belafonte's tune "Day-O." Everything about that movie worked where I was concerned. Well, it has a sequel now, complete with a scene in which Beetlejuice makes a roomful of people dance and sing to a golden oldie – this time, it's Richard Harris singing "MacArthur Park," the Donna Summer cover of which turns up in the closing credits – and while I don't dislike Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, I think the MacArthur Park gag goes on too long and stops being funny before it's over, and in some ways that's a thread that ties this whole movie together.

Time has passed. Think about it. Beetlejuice came out in 1988. That amount of time. 36 years! Winona Ryder, Michael Keaton and Catherine O'Hara still have it (more or less). Willem Dafoe, Monica Bellucci, Justin Theroux, Santiago Cabrera and Danny DeVito add their entertaining bits (more or less). Actually Dafoe is probably the most hilarious member of the cast, and Bellucci is underutilized. Decades after almost being forced to marry a ghost/demon named Beetlejuice, former Goth girl Lydia Deetz (Ryder) has made a fortune as a reality TV ghost whisperer, but she's still (cough) haunted by the experience that opened her sensorium to the paranormal. She has a teenage daughter (Jenna Ortega) who, not being a believer, exists in an ironic sort of rebellion against her twitchy, sensitive mum. But now Lydia's dad has died (a hilariously horrible death depicted in a way that creatively skirts around the absence of Jeffrey Jones), and the whole family has to return to "the Ghost House" where it all happened to, um, artistically mourn, and Lydia's shmuck producer/boyfriend chooses that moment to make a public proposal of marriage (so it can be all about him). Meanwhile, back in the afterlife, Beetlejuice still wants to tie the knot with Lydia, more than ever now that his (literally) soul-sucking wife is back. Throw in a ghoulish love interest for Astrid (the daughter), and a subplot about Astrid's dad dying but suspiciously failing to haunt the family, and a bunch of shrunken-headed zombies (notably "Bob"), and a B-movie actor who died doing his own stunts and spends his afterlife living out (if that's the correct verb) the tough cop fantasy of his signature role, and various methods by which characters come and go from the afterlife, and you have a rough roadmap of the overly complicated, sometimes farcelike adventure this movie houses.

I like the off-bubble teen romance angle. I dig Dafoe's rogue cop-wannabe antics. I enjoy seeing Theroux's shmuck-fiance character get his comeuppance. I kind of adore Bob. Poor Bob! And of course the bureaucratic nightmare of the afterlife is still kind of funny. But not as funny as the original 1988 film. In fact, that's pretty much thematic for why and how this movie falls short of its forerunner. The macabre surrealism of the "Neitherland" (?) and the so-idyllic-it-makes-your-flesh-crawl, "American Gothic" quality of the town of Winter River are still there, but the spare-no-one, cutting social satire of spoiled rich people is gone. Could that be because Tim Burton has grown so successful?

The purgatorial quality of the waiting room and the "take a number" line for the information desk in the afterlife are diminished. The incomprehensibility, to the point of uselessness, of The Handbook for the Recently Deceased has gone by the board, conveniently for plot purposes. The sandworms of the Saturnian moon of Titan are back in their original stop-motion-animation glory, but they contribute materially to the plot rather than just being a weird and threatening detail of the landscape for the dead. Delia Deetz's bizarre modern art is back (and how!) but its contrast to the Maitlands' salt-of-the-earth aesthetic is lost; which also, strangely, blurs the boundary between the real world and the afterlife. The Maitlands' model of Winter River is still up in the attic but the Maitlands are gone, meaning you have to sympathize with twisted people (like the Deetzes) because there's no one else.

All the things about the 1988 movie that made you think, "Ouch, that cut where it hurts," have given way to pure whimsy and fantasy. The only thing that has kept its purity is the subversive, lovably loathable character of Beetlejuice himself. I don't know what it'll take to make a third movie work (because, obviously, "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice") but I hope one thing they think about is re-establishing a point-of-view that joins the audience in its fear and trembling at the weird, wonderful, wicked and ultimately hilarious netherworld from which a Beetlejuice might arise.

Alert viewers might recognize Burn Gorman (the local minister), who played Owen on Torchwood. Astrid's love interest is played by Arthur Conti, a grandson of Tom Conti. Amy Nuttall, playing the real estate agent who is champing at the bit to sell the Ghost House, was on Downton Abbey for a minute. For the rest of the cast, you're on your own.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Astrid realizes Jeremy, the local boy she's been bonding with, is a ghost – a discovery you've been waiting for her to make because isn't it suspicious how his parents don't turn to look when he introduces her to them? (2) The shmuck producer-boyfriend takes a syringe of truth serum in the neck and, again, confirms what you've long since guessed, in a way that perfectly sets up his eloquent fate. (3) The newspaper Beetlejuice is reading in his office, which I'd like to have more time to read!

Re-Vamped!

Re-Vamped!
by Sienna Mercer
Recommended Ages: 11+

Olivia is a pink-wearing, perky cheerleader. Ivy is a Goth who happens to be a vampire. Now the whole world knows they're twin sisters who were separated as babies, and who found each other in middle school. They'd still like to know who their real parents are (they were both adopted) and, maybe, how it's possible for one identical twin to be a "bunny" (vanilla human) and the other to be a vamp. But while they sneak around, looking for evidence to explain this, they have bigger problems. For example, Ivy's dad, who refuses to meet Olivia apparently because he is prejudiced against humans, has accepted a job offer from, like, Luxembourg. And then there's the fact that Olivia knows the Blood Secret, which no mortal is supposed to know, and the secret of her knowing the secret is bound to get out sooner or later. The consequences of the vampire world finding out she's in on it could be, um, deadly. And not in the fun, vampire-slangy way.

It's a thin synopsis, I know. But it's also a thin, kids' chapter book and I don't want to overspill. This third adventure in the "My Sister the Vampire" series is loaded with ghoulish humor, teen drama and a bit of spooky suspense. It also presents the sisters and their closest friends with some new revelations that may shake the foundations of what they know and believe, dovetailing directly into book 4 of the series, Vampalicious! For further titles in this 18-book series and the thematically related "My Brother the Werewolf" series, check this out.

Robbie's Kilominx Tutorial

My 3D twisty puzzle collection jumped to 30 toys this past week. Omitting two duplicates – the stickered FTO and my original 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube ‐ my puzzling repertoire in progress includes, front row from left: the Skewb, Square-1, Dino Cube, Ivy Cube, Redi Cube; row 2: FTO, CTO, ETO, Skewb Diamond, 3-, 4- and 5-Layer Pentahedron; row 3: 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, 6- and 7-Cube, Master Pyraminx, Pyramorphix, Pyraminx and 2x2x4 Tower; back row: Kilominx, Megaminx, Skewb Ultimate, Master Kilominx, Gigaminx and the immovable object itself, Evgeniy's Icosahedron. I've been having a ball teaching myself how to solve the newest additions. I figured out Dino, Ivy and Redi with no trouble at all and spent a night and a day grappling with Square-1, despite pouring over a video tutorial and a solution guide. But that's not what we're here to talk about.

When I learned the Megaminx (below, at right), I reckoned I was mastering the basic, dodecahedral version of the Rubik's Cube. It's kind of a 3x3x3 puzzle, with each pentagonal side lined with iterations of two three-colored corner pieces and one two-colored edge piece, all the way around. The idea was to make the corners and edges of all 12 pentagons align with the non-moving center pieces of the same color, like on the 3-Cube. You were faced with pretty much the same problems in the same order: solving the first side, building rows of matching edges and corners layer by layer from there, then orienting and permuting the corners and edges of the last layer to clinch the solve. Labor intensive, a little strategic, a little intuitive, fraught with a few algorithms/procedures that take a minute (ha) to learn by heart, and best enjoyed by someone who doesn't mind practicing their moves over and over because they will screw up numerous times before they can reliably do it right, it's essentially the same experience only with 12 pentagons instead of six squares. And still, after months of practice, fun to do!

But then I found out about the Kilominx (at left), and I realized there was actually a simpler 12-sided twisty puzzle designed along the same principle. It's to the 3x3x3 Megaminx what the 2-Cube is to the 3-Cube: a face-turning dodecahedron with two corner pieces on each edge – in other words, no edge pieces as such. A step in the simpler direction from the Megaminx, the Kilominx also doesn't have colored centers – not that the Megaminx's centers moved or anything, but the centers of the Kilominx's sides are even more trivial, with a neutral color such as black or white throughout; or more basically, just some of the exposed guts of the puzzle showing between the moving pieces. It's the 2-cube of Minxes; it's a 2x2x2 dodecahedron. Funnily enough, this both liberates you and challenges you in a new way, as you move from Mega- to Kilominx: It allows you to build your first side wherever the heck you want; but as the sides still need to go together in a certain order, it forces you to arrange them without the helpful hint that the Megaminx's unmoving centers provide. Which way you need to twist the corner you're trying to slot into place depends on which direction its "top" color's side is in; but when there are no pieces, even a center, of that color to guide you, you often have to make a leap without a net under you. You could call it thrilling.

Now it turns out, both Minxes are at the bottom end of parallel series of puzzles with an increasing number of layers or axes of rotation. The even-numbered puzzles ascend from the Kilominx, such as the 4-layer Master Kilominx pictured below at the far left. The odd-numbered ones rise from the Megaminx, like the 5-layer Gigaminx below at the far right.

Actually, they're pretty much the same series of puzzles, apart from the bizarre manner in which they're named. It's just that, like the cube-shaped puzzles, the ones with even numbers of layers don't have fixed centers, requiring you to manage the color order of the sides for yourself, while the odd-layered puzzles offer just that little bit more help. (EDIT: Just noticed that the Master Kilominx in my photo does actually have colored centers. Oops.) For your information (and thank you, Wikipedia), the names of some higher-level variants include the 6-layer Elite Kilominx, the 7-layer Teraminx, the 8-layer Royal Kilominx, the 9-layer Petaminx, the 11-layer Examinx, the 13-layer Zettaminx, the 15-layer Yottaminx, the 19-layer Quettaminx and the 21-layer Minx of Madness, which like the 21-Cube is where mass production currently tops out. I don't know why, but the even-numbered sequence seems to end at the 8x8 level, at least as far as my sources go.

Digging a little deeper (and delaying getting to the tutorial part of this tutorial), the Kilominx was invented in 2008 by David Litwin. It has 20 corner pieces, and like, that's it. Early versions of the Kilominx were marketed as the Flowerminx, and it's apparently similar to the Impossiball puzzle of the 1980s. According to Grubiks.com, this puzzle can be scrambled almost 23.6 septillion ways – that's a 26-digit number. Nevertheless, it's not too hard to solve; easier than the Megaminx, really. I taught myself to solve it without looking at a solution guide or a tutorial, based on my prior experience with the Megaminx (one way the analogy to the 3-Cube vs. 2-Cube relationship breaks down). It's practically the same puzzle but with fewer steps, thanks to the omission of edge pieces. It isn't a sanctioned speed cubing event, but again pace Grubiks, the unofficial record for fastest solve is 9.17 seconds. Ready now? OK, let's go.

First, scramble the sucker. I recommend this scrambler, which is bookmarked on my phone. Here's a screenshot showing which silhouette to pick from the graphic menu (that little black dingus above the text). Note that, like cube-shaped puzzles, you're meant to start your scramble with the darker green side at front and white on top.

It takes an oddly long time for it to generate a scramble, compared to some of the other puzzles. Also interesting to note, the Kilominx scramble uses standard(-ish) cubing notation instead of the R++/D-- stuff developed for scrambling the Megaminx. Look at this scramble, for instance:

Notice that there are some notational oddities that you don't see on cube-shaped puzzles. For example, you can do either a U2 or a U2' move, because two 72-degree turns only twist the "up" layer 2/5 of the way around, clockwise or counterclockwise; whereas on the cube, a U2 move turns the top layer 180 degrees regardless of which direction you go. Also, those BL and BR moves, as distinguished from L and R, assume that you're holding a face (not an edge) toward you; L and R are the sides immediately to the left and right of F (front), while BL and BR are toward the back. And finally, see that x2 move in the middle of the scramble? Yeah, you get at least one of those every time. And to save you having to look up what an x2 move is, I'll tell you right here that it means flip the whole puzzle over 180 degrees, turning in the direction of a standard cube R move (i.e., around an axis of rotation running horizontally from left to right). Trust me, I clicked on the x2 on the scrambler and it was apparent from the where the animation froze at that point, compared to the prevous step, that this is what x2 means. Or check it out for yourself. It's neat. Don't worry, the scrambler won't make you do any y or z moves, so you only need to remember what whole-puzzle rotation x stands for.

So, I attempted to do that exact scramble, shown above, and got the result below. It doesn't look quite right, but that might be because I bought a puzzle with the "bright" color theme. Or maybe I goofed it up. No matter, a scramble is a scramble unless you're competing at a sanctioned event, and the Kilominx isn't a sanctioned event anyway.

Here is a series of pictures showing how I put the first layer together (solving the white side, which we'll think about as the bottom of the puzzle even when it sometimes isn't). First, I lign up one white-orange edge to dial in next to the other, using a U'-R-U-R' move that assumes the dark blue side will go to the right. Missing those centers yet?

Looks like that worked (below). If it didn't (and believe me, my first guess didn't always work), there's always backing up and doing over.

Now I'm dialing in the other blue-white corner, using the same algorithm because red, which is at the top of the corner piece, belongs to the right (see below).

You might sometimes have to dial a corner piece around a bit to get the color you want at the top. Or there's always that corner-flip algorithm to fall back on: R-U'-R'-U-R-U'-R'-U. (Can't abbreviate that with an "x2" anymore, for reasons you now know.) For example, the fourth white corner (below) came in with the white side at the top, which needs to end up at the bottom:

After doing that corner-flip algorithm, it's now ready for the U'-R-U-R', slotting the green side toward the right. Remember, though, if the top color goes to the left, the move is U-R-U'-R'. Megaminx basics.

That just leaves one corner out of the bottom layer:

Which, of course, was completed in a trice.

You then just keep applying those same algorithms to complete the sides going around the lower half of the puzzle, as shown (without further comment) in the series of photos below. Just be alert to the fact that without center pieces, getting these corners in the right order will require some spatial reasoning, critical thinking and strategy. Either that or a bunch of trial and error, or a flawless memory for the order in which the colors go around the sides of the puzzle.

Finally, you're left with the top layer, which most likely, won't have all five gray sides facing up.

The first thing to do is the Megaminx procedure for orienting the top corners – the one where you put an unsolved corner at top-front-right, chant "down, down, up, up" to yourself while alternately turning the R and DR layers, and repeat until the gray side is up, then twist the top layer to the next unsolved corner and do it again, etc. Result:

The last step, then, is permuting the top corners, which was the last Megaminx step as well. That's where you dial one of the corners out of the way, replace it with a dummy piece, and very carefully twist the top layer to put the corner where it belongs above it, then swap it with whatever piece is there, etc. What makes this step extra spooky, right on the point of solving the puzzle, is that you don't have any edge pieces to help you figure out which corner you're shooting for. This way you kind of miss those edge pieces despite the steps saved by not having to solve them. What I suggest is picking at least one to coner to be "solved" and starting this step with that corner right where it belongs. Then dial a corner that belongs next to it out of the way, twist the top layer and swap it into where it belongs, and continue from there, reasoning out where each corner should go. It gets easier the more solved the top layer is, until:

It's quite satisfying to see it all come together, innit.

I reckon I'll keep going back to the Megaminx when I want to occupy myself with a puzzle for a while. I repeat once again, I'm no speed cuber. I'm in this to enjoy solving puzzles, not to set speed records. So I'll embrace all those fiddly edge pieces and their long-ass algorithms, and the extra steps they bring to solving the last layer, for the sake of passing time and stimulating my brain. But I can also see myself doing the Kilominx quite often when I can only snatch a few moments here and there from other stuff going on, or maybe to relax my mind at the end of a long day. It has just a few wrinkles that need one's full attention – like deciding whether or not the last corner or two in the middle layers need to be solved on the top layer, to avoid re-scrambling something you've already solved. I'm not sure that's necessary in all cases, on the Kilominx — but it sometimes seems to help. It's a puzzle that you'll get through quickly, during one of those fits where you scramble every puzzle you have and then solve them one at a time. That isn't just me, is it? Or an easy, but not too easy, solve to clear your mind when you're banging your head against that d****d Square-1, about which more another time. I like it. It's a keeper.