Maya Rudolph Gets Career Emmy No. 6, Angela Basset Wins Her First at Creative Arts Emmys

Maya Rudolph poses with her Emmy for outstanding voice-over performance for "Big Mouth" in the press room during night one of the Television Academy's 76th Creative Arts Emmy Awards at the Peacock Theater on Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024 in Los Angeles. (Photo by Mark Von Holden/Invision for the Television Academy/AP Content Services)
Maya Rudolph poses with her Emmy for outstanding voice-over performance for "Big Mouth" in the press room during night one of the Television Academy's 76th Creative Arts Emmy Awards at the Peacock Theater on Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024 in Los Angeles. (Photo by Mark Von Holden/Invision for the Television Academy/AP Content Services)
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Maya Rudolph Gets Career Emmy No. 6, Angela Basset Wins Her First at Creative Arts Emmys

Maya Rudolph poses with her Emmy for outstanding voice-over performance for "Big Mouth" in the press room during night one of the Television Academy's 76th Creative Arts Emmy Awards at the Peacock Theater on Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024 in Los Angeles. (Photo by Mark Von Holden/Invision for the Television Academy/AP Content Services)
Maya Rudolph poses with her Emmy for outstanding voice-over performance for "Big Mouth" in the press room during night one of the Television Academy's 76th Creative Arts Emmy Awards at the Peacock Theater on Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024 in Los Angeles. (Photo by Mark Von Holden/Invision for the Television Academy/AP Content Services)

Maya Rudolph won her sixth career Emmy on Saturday night, taking the trophy for best character voice-over for her work on "Big Mouth" at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards, while Angela Bassett won her first for her narration of the National Geographic show "Queens."

The former and future "Saturday Night Live" star Rudolph is up for three more Emmys. Her voice-over work as the Hormone Monstress on the Netflix animated show "Big Mouth" has earned her four of her Emmys.

"I’m really proud to be a part of this show," she said. "It humanizes being human."

She got emotional when she talked about the privilege that she gets to do what she loves in her life.

"It’s making me cry because I’m very menopausal," Rudolph said.

She won on the first of the two-night Creative Arts Emmys, which honor behind-the-scenes artistic and technical achievement in television and are a precursor to the main Emmys ceremony, hosted by Dan and Eugene Levy, that will air at 8 p.m. EST Sept. 15 on ABC.

Bassett appeared to collect her trophy for best narrator, a category that is usually star studded but where the winner, like Barack Obama last year, rarely shows.

"Oh my God, wow, my first Emmy," an emotional Bassett said. "I couldn’t be more thrilled and more grateful."

Bassett was attracted to the wildlife documentary project because of the all-female-led production team, a rarity in the medium, she said backstage.

"It just touched my heart," she said. "So, I said yes."

Bassett is a two-time Oscar nominee who won an honorary Academy Award earlier this year.

Other winners included the recently retired Pat Sajak, who won best game show host for his final season on "Wheel of Fortune." It was his fourth time winning the award, and first time since 1998.

"Saturday Night Live" thrived in the craft categories with six wins, including victories for its makeup and production design.

Rudolph won two Emmys when she was a cast member on the show, and is nominated for two more for her work as host of the sketch institution last season. Those will be awarded Sunday.

She will be returning this fall to play Vice President Kamala Harris on the 50th season of "SNL" in the weeks leading up to the election.

"I feel like I am connected somehow to an incredible time in this country and an excitement that I haven't felt in a long time," she said backstage on Saturday.

She is also nominated at the main Emmys ceremony for best actress in a comedy for her Apple TV+ series "Loot." She is a longshot for that award, where the favorites are Jean Smart for "Hacks" and Ayo Edebiri for "The Bear," which leads all shows in the comedy category with 23 nominations.

The Ron Howard-directed documentary "Jim Henson Idea Man" won four times and "Welcome to Wrexham" won three including best unstructured reality show. "Shark Tank" won best structured reality show. In an awards show crossover, the telecast of the Oscars won four Emmys including best live variety special.

Dick Van Dyke, who turns 99 next month, may have stolen the show when "Dick Van Dyke 98 Years Of Magic" won best pre-recorded variety special.

Van Dyke did a little dance and announced "that hurt" afterward. As the winners were being played off stage, he said, "I’d like to take this opportunity to invite you to my memorial. I don’t have a date yet but I’m not feeling very well."

Van Dyke became the oldest person to get a daytime Emmy when he won in June for appearing on "Days of Our Lives."

The season's top overall nominee, "Shogun," got a win of sorts Saturday when the team that puts together the post-show making of featurette took home an Emmy. The FX series itself is up for 25 Emmys. Seventeen of those will be handed out on Sunday, which focuses on scripted television.

Plenty of big names are also up for Creative Arts Emmys on Sunday, including Oscar winners Jamie Lee Curtis and Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Oscar nominee Ryan Gosling.



Movie Review: Bring Your Global Entry Card — ‘Beetlejuice’ Sequel’s a Soul Train Ride to Comedy Joy 

US actor Michael Keaton arrives for the UK premiere of "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" at the Cineworld Leicester Square in London, Britain, 29 August 2024. (EPA)
US actor Michael Keaton arrives for the UK premiere of "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" at the Cineworld Leicester Square in London, Britain, 29 August 2024. (EPA)
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Movie Review: Bring Your Global Entry Card — ‘Beetlejuice’ Sequel’s a Soul Train Ride to Comedy Joy 

US actor Michael Keaton arrives for the UK premiere of "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" at the Cineworld Leicester Square in London, Britain, 29 August 2024. (EPA)
US actor Michael Keaton arrives for the UK premiere of "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" at the Cineworld Leicester Square in London, Britain, 29 August 2024. (EPA)

“I have global entry!”

Now, does that sound like a funny line? Of course it doesn’t. Whatever in the history of mankind and airport lines could be funny about global entry?

But put it in the mouth of comedy goddess Catherine O’Hara, and place it in the singularly inventive world of Tim Burton and that wacky afterlife waiting room from “Beetlejuice,” and it may become the one blessed time in your life you'll ever guffaw about global entry.

It likely won't be the only thing you'll guffaw about. Burton is back — and, more significantly, he is BACK — with “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” 36 years after the original. And for once, the question “Why a sequel?” is moot.

Not because we know the answer. (Do we?) But, who cares? It’s funny. It may even make you feel better about, well, death, though not “death death.” And Michael Keaton somehow looks exactly the same as he did in 1988 (to be fair, it helps that his character was already dead.)

Returning to his tale of Keaton's ghostly, fiendish “bio-exorcist,” director Burton brings back much of the team behind the original, including, alongside O’Hara and Keaton, the still-lovely Winona Ryder as Lydia the Goth Girl (also, Bob the shrunken-head guy).

And we've gained Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Willem Dafoe, and for the younger generation, Jenna Ortega, who, as a relatively normal figure, serves as an appealing anchor, her story moving the plot along.

Speaking of plot: if you didn’t see the original, not to worry. It all gets explained (as much as it should be) in time. We begin in Winter River, Connecticut, still home to Lydia Deetz (Ryder), who came as a teenager with batty stepmom Delia and dad Charles, only to learn her new house was haunted by the recently deceased Adam and Barbara (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, alas not back).

Lydia looks much the same — dressed all in black, with spiky bangs and pale skin — but is now a widowed mother, a psychic mediator, and host of a cheesy reality show, “Ghost House,” in which she sees ghosts and asks, “Can the living and the dead co-exist?”

But one day she sees something in the audience that scares her: visions of Beetlejuice, who wrought havoc when she was a teen and who, when we last left him, was wasting away in the afterlife waiting room (apparently, HE did not have global entry.)

Waiting just off set to comfort Lydia after this terrifying vision is her manager and boyfriend, Rory (Theroux), who has a little ponytail almost as smarmy as himself.

Lydia then gets a concerning message from Delia (O’Hara), an artist of questionable talent and unquestionable ego, who’s mounting a gallery show in which she herself is the canvas. There, Delia tells Lydia that she’s lost Charles. “Is he divorcing you?” gasps Lydia. “What a horrible thought!” replies Delia. “No, he’s dead.” (Such lines are catnip for O’Hara, a genius of comic timing).

Lydia calls her daughter, Astrid (Ortega), at boarding school. Astrid lists Lydia in her contacts as “Alleged Mom,” which tells you much of what you need to know about their fraught relationship.

But let’s pause this account of the living, because we also have to catch you up on the dead. Down where Beetlejuice is stuck, where the dead live — but not the “dead dead” —- Delores, Beetlejuice’s ex-wife, has escaped from the crates (emphasis on plural) in which her body has resided. Watching the glamorous Bellucci literally staple herself together is just one of the glorious creative moments Burton and crew give us here. Alas, Delores doesn't have much else to do, but this is rather spectacular.

We're approaching spoiler territory, so let’s just say that things really get complicated when Astrid goes home to Winter River for her father’s funeral. There, she watches as Mom accepts a marriage proposal from smarmy Rory. Racing off to escape, Astrid runs into a cute young guy reading Dostoyevsky.

A relationship begins, one that will lead to unexpected mayhem. Let’s just say Lydia will need to call upon — gasp! — Beetlejuice, who will exact a fearsome price for his services, as he is wont to do.

And he appears none too soon. Keaton, in his white caked makeup and blackened eyes and hair that looks like he is perpetually sticking his hand into a plug in the wall, slips remarkably smoothly into his old role. “The juice is loose,” as he likes to say.

But you know who’s also got the juice flowing? Burton. It’s his inimitable energy that infuses this movie — a joyously rendered sequel that sometimes makes sense, and sometimes doesn’t, but just keeps rollicking. Among the ridiculous delights along the way: A “soul train” in the afterlife, which is not only literally a train of souls, but a replica of the variety show “Soul Train,” with people in Afros dancing their way to wherever they are going.

And if we don't have the lip-synced “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” from the original, we do have a lip-synced “MacArthur Park,” the Donna Summer version. “Someone left the cake out in the rain,” go the ridiculous words of the disco classic. “I don’t think that I can take it, ’cause it took so long to bake it, and I’ll never have that recipe again.”

In the Burtonian spirit, let's just say it took a long time to bake it, yes, but the director has recovered the recipe — at least enough to make us smile, chortle, even guffaw, for 104 minutes. And we can be happy with that.