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      ‘Barbie’ Debuts in Saudi Arabia, Sparking Delight, and Anger

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      Denounced in some Middle Eastern countries for undermining traditional gender norms, the hit movie is finding an audience in Saudi Arabia, illustrating the region’s shifting political landscape.On Friday night, Mohammed al-Sayed donned a pale pink shirt and denim overalls to join a friend at a movie theater in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, where the men settled in to watch a film about a doll on a mission to dismantle the patriarchy.Similar scenes played out across the conservative Islamic kingdom last weekend, as women painted their nails pink, tied pink bows in their hair and draped pink floor-length abayas over their shoulders for the regional debut of the movie, “Barbie.” While critics across the Middle East have called for the film to be banned for undermining traditional gender norms, many Saudis ignored them.They watched as the movie imagined a matriarchal society of Barbie dolls where men are eye candy. They laughed when a male character asked, “I’m a man with no power; does that make me a woman?” They snapped their fingers in delight as a mother delivered a monologue about the strictures of stereotypical femininity. Then, they emerged from the darkened theaters to contemplate what it all meant.“The message is that you are enough — whatever you are,” said Mr. al-Sayed, 21, echoing the Ken doll’s revelation.“We saw ourselves,” said Mr. al-Sayed’s friend, Nawaf al-Dossary, 20, wearing a matching pink shirt.Watching Barbie’s search for identity and meaning, Mr. al-Sayed said he was reminded of the fraught period when he started college and wasn’t sure of his place in the world. He said he believed that the movie had important lessons for men as well as women.“I felt like my mom should see the film,” he said.“All of our families — all families,” Mr. al-Dossary said, laughing.That this was happening in Saudi Arabia — one of the most male-dominated countries in the world — was mind-boggling to many in the Middle East. When “Barbie” opened on Thursday in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, it arrived suddenly and overwhelmingly. Moviegoers rushed to prepare Barbie-pink outfits. Some theaters scheduled more than 15 showings a day.Moviegoers wore pink during a screening of “Barbie” in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on Thursday.Ali Haider/EPA, via ShutterstockA snide headline in the Saudi-owned newspaper Asharq al-Awsat declared that Saudi cinemas had become “havens for Gulf citizens escaping from harsh restrictions” — a twist in a country whose people once had to drive to Bahrain to watch movies.Eight years ago, there were no movie theaters in the Saudi kingdom, let alone any showing films about patriarchy. Women were barred from driving. The religious police roamed the streets, enforcing gender segregation and shouting at women to cover up from head to toe in black.Since he rose to power, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 37, has done away with many of those restrictions while simultaneously increasing political repression, imprisoning conservative religious clerics, leftist activists, critical businessmen and members of his own family.Even now, despite sweeping social changes, Saudi Arabia remains a state built around patriarchy. By law, the kingdom’s ruler must be a male member of the royal family, and while several women have ascended to high-ranking positions, all of Prince Mohammed’s cabinet members and closest advisers are men. Saudi women may be pouring into the work force and traveling to outer space, but they still need approval from a male guardian to marry. And gay and transgender Saudis face deep-seated discrimination, and sometimes arrest.So as word spread through the kingdom that “Barbie” would debut on a delayed schedule — a sign that government censors were most likely deliberating over it — many Saudis thought the movie would be banned, or at least heavily censored. Bolstering their expectations was the fact that neighboring Kuwait banned the film last week.Lebanon’s culture minister, Muhammad Al-Murtada, also called for the film to be banned, saying that it violated local values by “promoting homosexuality” and “raising doubts about the necessity of marriage and building a family.” It is unclear if the government will follow his recommendation.Even in Arab nations that have allowed the film to be shown, it has faced intense criticism. The Bahraini preacher Hassan al-Husseini shared a video with one million Instagram followers calling the movie a Trojan horse for “corrupt agendas.”Even while Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has done away with many social restrictions in Saudi Arabia, he has increased political repression.Pool photo by Ludovic MarinAnd in Saudi Arabia, not everyone is receptive to the film. To the entrepreneur Wafa Alrushaid, who suggested that the film be banned in her country, its messages are a “distortion of feminism.”“I’m a liberal person who has called for freedom for 30 years, so this isn’t about customs and traditions, but the values of humanity and reason,” she told The New York Times. The film, she argued, excessively victimizes women and vilifies men, and she objected to the fact that a transgender actress had played one of the Barbies.“This film is a conspiracy against families and the world’s children,” Ms. Alrushaid, 48, declared.Many Arab critics of the movie expressed views similar to those of some American politicians and right-wing figures who have castigated the film as anti-male. The tussle in the Middle East over the movie illustrates how battles that sometimes echo the so-called U.S. culture wars are playing out on a different landscape.The animated film “Lightyear,” which showed two female characters kissing, was banned in several countries in the region last year. And six Gulf Arab countries issued an unusual statement last year demanding that Netflix remove content that violates “Islamic and societal values and principles,” threatening to take legal action.In Kuwait, religious conservatives have become more vocal in recent years, Gulf analysts say, broadcasting views that many Saudis would be hesitant to express in public now, fearing repercussions from the government.“Banning the movie ‘Barbie’ fits into a larger tilt to the right that’s increasingly felt in Kuwait,” said Bader Al-Saif, an assistant professor of history at Kuwait University. “Islamist and conservative forces in Kuwait are relishing in these culture wars to prove their ascendancy.”Some Kuwaitis expressed astonishment that they would have to travel to the Saudi kingdom to watch the movie. Many pointed out the irony that Kuwait and Lebanon, despite objecting to the film, had long provided greater freedom of expression than many other Arab countries.Streaming out of movie theaters in Riyadh, people who watched “Barbie” seemed to leave with their own understanding.Lining up for “Barbie” in Dubai. Many Arab critics of the movie have expressed views similar to those of some American right-wing figures who have castigated the film as anti-male.Ali Haider/EPA, via ShutterstockYara Mohammed, 26, said that she had enjoyed the movie, dismissing the Kuwaiti ban as “drama.”“Even if kids saw it, it’s so normal,” she said.To Abrar Saad, 28, the message was simply that “the world doesn’t work without Ken or Barbie; they need to complete each other.”But to teenage girls like Aljohara and Ghada — who were accompanied by an adult and asked to be identified only by their first names because of their ages — the film felt deeper.“The idea was pretty realistic,” said Aljohara, 14, wearing a hot pink shirt underneath her black abaya. She said she liked that the film ended with a type of equality between men and women.“But it wasn’t nice that it ended with equality,” interjected Ghada, 16. “Because I feel like equality is a little bit wrong; I feel like it’s better for there to be equity because there are things a boy can’t do but you can do them.”Asked if they ever thought they would watch such a movie in Saudi Arabia, both exclaimed, with laughter: “No!”“I was expecting them to censor a lot of scenes,” Ghada said.In fact, it did not appear censors had cut anything major. A scene in which Barbie declares that she has no vagina and Ken no penis remained, as well as a scene with the transgender actress. The Arabic subtitles were rendered faithfully — including the word patriarchy.Hwaida Saad More

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      Nechama Tec, Polish Holocaust Survivor and Scholar, Dies at 92

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      She wrote about heroic Jewish resisters in her book “Defiance,” which was later made into a film starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber.Nechama Tec in 2018 at her home in Manhattan. A sociologist, she wrote about Jews as resisters of the Nazis and why certain people became rescuersvia Tec familyNechama Tec, a Polish Jew who pretended to be Roman Catholic to survive the Holocaust and then became a Holocaust scholar, writing about Jews as heroic resisters and why certain people, even antisemites, became rescuers, died on Aug. 3 at her home in Manhattan. She was 92.Her death was confirmed by her son, Roland.In “Defiance: The Bielski Partisans” (1993), Dr. Tec’s best-known book, she described the courageous actions of Tuvia Bielski, who commanded a resistance group that fought the Germans and, more important, saved some 1,200 Jews. The partisans entered ghettos under siege and brought Jews back to the Belarusian forest, where Mr. Bielski had built a community for them.“Defiance” gave Dr. Tec a platform to show that Jews saved other Jews during the war and were more active in resisting the Nazis than some have commonly believed.When a friend suggested to the filmmaker Edward Zwick that “Defiance” would make a good movie, he was not immediately persuaded.“Not another movie about victims,” he recalled his response when he wrote in The New York Times about directing the film, released in 2008, which starred Daniel Craig as Tuvia Bielski and Liev Schreiber as his brother Zus.“No, this is a story about Jewish heroes,” he said his friend told him. “Like the Maccabees, only better.”As Mr. Zwick put it, “Rather than victims wearing yellow stars, here were fighters in fur chapkas brandishing submachine guns.”By then Dr. Tec had written “When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland” (1986). Her interviews with rescuers for that book yielded a portrait of Christians who hid Jews, despite the likelihood of being imprisoned or killed for providing such aid. They were, she concluded, outsiders who were marginal in their communities; had a history of performing good deeds; did not view their actions as heroic; and did not agonize over being helpful.The cover of Dr. Tec’s book “Defiance.”“Many were casually antisemitic, but that wasn’t their prime purpose in life,” said Christopher R. Browning, a Holocaust expert who is a professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina and who edited, with Dr. Tec and Richard S. Hollander, a collection of letters written by Mr. Hollander’s Polish Jewish family from 1939 to 1942. “Using her skills as a sociologist, she was able to portray a more complex spectrum of interactions than the simplistic ones that people who didn’t collect empirical data as she had.”Nechama Bawnik was born on May 15, 1931, in Lublin, Poland. Her father, Roman, owned a chemical factory. Her mother, Esther (Finkelstein) Bawnik, was a homemaker.Soon after the Nazis occupied Poland in 1939, Mr. Bawnik transferred title of his factory, rather than have the Nazis confiscate it, to his foreman, who also gave him a job and a place for the Bawniks, including Nechama’s older sister, Giza, to live on the top floor of the building. Nechama hid in the living quarters, her only link to the outside a hole in a wall that let her look onto the courtyard of a convent school.As conditions for Jews worsened and rumors of deportations frightened them, the family considered relocating to Warsaw but found it too perilous. In mid-1942, Nechama’s parents sent her and Giza to live with a family in Otwock, Poland, a half-hour’s train ride from Warsaw. Nechama had false papers that identified her as Krysia Bloch. To help her play the role, she learned Catholic prayers and a family history.The sisters, who both had blond hair and blue eyes, were able to pass as orphaned nieces of the family they were living with and moved around without hiding. In the summer of 1943, they and their parents moved in with a family in Kielce.When the Bawniks needed money in Kielce, Nechama’s mother baked rolls and sent Nechama to sell them in a local black market. Nechama also sold bottles of vodka that had been distilled by a local farmer, Roland Tec said. Once, he said in a phone interview, a retailer denounced her and the Gestapo chased her away; when she returned, her father told her to run into nearby fields, while her parents hid under floorboards, until it was safe.After the war, the family returned briefly to Lublin and then moved to Berlin. In 1949, Nechama immigrated to Israel, where she met Leon Tec, a Polish-born internist who later became a child psychiatrist. They married in 1950 and moved to the United States two years later.Daniel Craig, left, as Tuvia Bielski and Liev Schreiber as Zus Bielski in the 2008 film “Defiance,” based on Dr. Tec’s book.Entertainment Pictures/Alamy Stock PhotoNechama studied sociology at Columbia University, where she received a bachelor’s degree in 1954 and a master’s in 1955.After working at the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene, she began teaching sociology in 1957 at Columbia. She then taught at Rutgers University, returned to Columbia and moved to Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., before joining the sociology faculty of the University of Connecticut’s Stamford campus, in 1974. She remained there for 36 years.She earned a Ph.D., also in sociology, from Columbia, in 1965.Dr. Tec said that she had been determined to put her Holocaust past behind her, but that in 1975 her childhood experiences demanded her attention.“When these demands turned into a compelling force,” she wrote in “Defiance,” “I decided to revisit my past by writing an autobiography.”In that autobiography, “Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood” (1982), she recalled the attitude that Helena, the grandmother in the family of rescuers in Kielce, had toward Jews.“I would not harm a Jew,” Dr. Tec recalled Helena saying, “but I see no point in going out of my way to help one.” She added: “You and your family are not like Jews. If they wanted to send you away now, I would not let them.”In another book, “Into the Lion’s Den: The Life of Oswald Rufeisen” (1990), Dr. Tec explored the life of another Polish Jew, who hid his identity, worked as a translator for the German police and helped save about 200 Jews in the Mir ghetto.“Especially riveting are the details of his translations for his German superiors,” Susan Shapiro wrote in The New York Times Book Review, “in which his careful change of two words could save an entire Jewish community.”After his identity was revealed, Mr. Rufeisen took refuge in a monastery, converted to Catholicism and joined partisan fighters, according to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance and research center in Jerusalem. He became a Catholic priest after the war and moved to Israel, where he joined a monastery on Mount Carmel.In addition to her son, Dr. Tec is survived by her daughter, Leora Tec; two grandsons; one great-grandson; and a half sister, Catharina Knoll. Her husband and her sister, Giza Agmon, both died in 2013.During the filming of “Defiance,” Dr. Tec was pleased to see that the Bielski partisan camp in the Belarusian forest had been faithfully recreated in Lithuania, with a kitchen and workshops to repair shoes and watches and to tan leather.“She was in awe of what they had built; it was really incredible,” said her son, who was a co-producer of the film. He added: “As soon as Daniel Craig saw her on the set, he cornered her and spent an hour or an hour and a half asking her questions. It was wonderful.” More

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      As Hollywood Strikes Roll On, Viewers Catch Up With a TV Glut

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      After years of being inundated with new shows, some are using a pause in production to finally watch all the stuff they missed when it came out.With Hollywood’s labor disputes grinding on, and virtually all production stopped, anxiety began creeping into Zain Habboo’s house in Chevy Chase, Md.She and her husband had recently finished the latest season of HBO’s “The Righteous Gemstones,” but now they were worried that new episodes of favorite shows like “The Handmaid’s Tale” would be significantly delayed.What on earth were they going to watch?Ms. Habboo, 49, quickly realized she had options. She might revisit classics like “30 Rock” and “Arrested Development” with her 17-year-old son. She could join him in watching a show he’s bingeing, like all 62 episodes of “Breaking Bad.” She has also never seen any of the “Mission Impossible” movies, and she has barely made a dent in the Oscar-nominated films from the past four or five years.For many viewers, the writers’ and actors’ strikes in Hollywood will soon be felt in the form of altered film release schedules and prime-time lineups littered with game shows, reality TV and reruns.At the same time, the pause in new scripted material provides a moment for many viewers to catch up after the breakneck pace of the so-called Peak TV era, when dozens of shows were premiering each month.“I have a Netflix queue that is so deep and so long, it would take me months or a year or two to go through it all,” said Dan Leonhardt, a 44-year-old engineer who lives in Copenhagen. “And that’s just Netflix! I also have a Max subscription.”Dan Leonhardt subscribes to two streaming services. “I have a Netflix queue that is so deep and so long, it would take me months or a year or two to go through it all,” he said.Mathias Eis for The New York TimesThe slowdown will represent a major shift from recent years, when viewers were inundated with a fire hose of content — a record 599 new television scripted premieres last year.On almost a daily basis, audiences found themselves clicking past new shows on their TVs, often ones they had never heard of, trying to figure out from a one-sentence description whether a series like “Altered Carbon” on Netflix or “The Path” on Hulu was worth their time.For streaming services, the strategy was straightforward: The more shows they produced, the more chances they had to attract subscribers. The number of people who watched any one show wasn’t as important as the number of people who paid for the service.So the promise of a constant flow of new stuff became a hallmark of the streaming era. One of the outstanding questions as the labor stalemate goes on has been whether viewers would start to cancel subscriptions to streaming services en masse when fewer new shows and movies became available.For many, though, a slower output is just fine, giving them time to pick their way through streaming libraries, one missed TV series and movie at a time.Emily Nidetz, a 41-year-old in Madison, Wis., said she was relieved that production for reality series had not been affected and that there were still plenty of sports to watch. And though she is worried about a slowdown in prestige shows, she said she could always stop by a Facebook community page for The Ringer’s podcast “The Watch” to get some ideas.“If you go to the Facebook page and write, ‘Hey, I really loved “The Bear,” tell me what to watch,’ there will be like 400 replies,” she said.Tasha Quinn said she planned to take her time to enjoy shows without feeling pressure to keep up with the latest series.Obinna Onyeka for The New York TimesTasha Quinn, a 36-year-old therapist from Chicago, said there was a moment last year when she was so overwhelmed by the conveyor belt of new series that she finally had to take a break. HBO’s “House of the Dragon” was the breaking point.“I made it through two episodes, and didn’t finish it,” she said. “There was too much hype, and there were a lot of other things coming out at the same time. I was like, nope, I’m too overwhelmed, I’m too overstimulated, I’ll just go back to my comfort shows. I’m going to go watch ‘The Office.’”Ms. Quinn said that the labor disputes had worried her briefly because new episodes of the dystopian workplace drama “Severance” on AppleTV+ would be delayed — but that she then quickly thought of the upside.“I can take my time without everyone talking about what’s coming next,” she said, adding that she’s currently wrapping up “Succession.”The length of the labor disputes will determine the length of the disruption. Actors have been on strike since July 14. Writers have been walking picket lines for more than 100 days. Formal talks between the writers and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of the studios, were held on Friday for the first time since early May. No talks involving the actors are scheduled.Third-party researchers believe that most of the streaming services should be well insulated if the strikes last another month or two — though that risk rises the longer production is shut down. The amount of content in their streaming libraries was one reason the studios initially said they could weather the strikes, at least in the short term, a pointed message to writers and actors currently going without paychecks. (For instance, “Suits,” a USA Network show that went off the air in 2019, has recently surged in popularity on Netflix.)Leaders of the Writers Guild of America, the union that represents thousands of striking screenwriters, recently said it was “disinformation” that the strike would have “no impact because streaming services have libraries and some product in the pipeline.”“It is not a viable business strategy for these companies to shut down their business for three months — and counting — no matter how much they try and pretend it is,” they said in a note to members.Ms. Habboo said she sympathized with the striking writers and actors, but had no plans to cancel her streaming subscriptions.Samuel Corum for The New York TimesMany viewers say they support the striking writers and actors. Ms. Habboo said she believed they were not being fairly compensated, and “that is a huge bummer.”Still, when asked if she would cut any of her streaming subscriptions, she was emphatic. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “Canceling is never an option.”Mel Russo, a 56-year-old yoga teacher who lives in Brooklyn, said the Max service alone “could keep you busy for the next 10 years, to be honest.”“I think it’s disgusting what’s going on,” she added. “But I am not in dire straits about it as a watcher and as a lover of entertainment.”The streaming services seem keen to capitalize. Last month, Netflix rolled out a new banner, “10 Years of Netflix Series,” which presents viewers with dozens of older titles from its library.Eric Martinez, a 25-year-old video producer who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, had been a big fan of the HBO series “Euphoria.” But the earliest that show will return for its third season is now 2025, so he went looking for an alternative.On his Amazon Prime page, Mr. Martinez had been seeing a tile for the show “The Boys” for some time. The superhero series was one he thought he had no interest in. But with time on his hands, he finally took the plunge. “I’m enjoying it, and I’m glad I started it,” he said.Not all the viewers need a new old show to watch.Brenda Stewart, a 71-year-old Nebraskan, said she and her husband often fired up their Roku and watched reruns of older series including “CSI” and “Murder, She Wrote.” She’s also a big fan of rewatching movies like “The Lion King” and other Disney classics.Ms. Stewart, who has six grandchildren, said it was not uncommon to have “Bluey” episodes playing again and again in her house when the children were over. And, sometimes, it’s not exclusively for the little ones.“It’s a cartoon series for kids, but I’m not going to lie — it’s also for adults,” she said, laughing. “There’s stuff in there that just makes me chuckle.” More

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      This Isn’t Barbie’s First Time Onscreen: She’s Been a Movie Star for Decades

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      Before Margot Robbie’s live-action take on the doll, Mattel put out more than a dozen animated films that have an avid following, even now.Every Christmas season starting when I was 5, my sister and I had a go-to movie: “Barbie in the Nutcracker.”We’d pop in the VHS tape and watch Barbie as Clara dance the night away with the Nutcracker on a journey to find the Sugarplum Princess and defeat the Mouse King. We cheered as she landed her prince and consoled each other when she lost him again.It was just the tip of our fandom for the animated Barbie films that Mattel began releasing at a rate of around one per year beginning with “Nutcracker” in 2001 and eventually totaling about 40 films. Our affection came to encompass VHS tapes of the first five princess movies, as well as my “Barbie of Swan Lake” eighth birthday party with an Odette ice cream cake and pink paper-swan tiaras (which my 70-something grandfather gamely donned).Though Greta Gerwig’s new live-action “Barbie,” which just crossed $1 billion at the box office, has been a smash, attracting reams of pink-clad moviegoers to cheer Kate McKinnon’s Weird Barbie and lust after Ken’s tie-dye “I Am Kenough” hoodie, it’s hardly the first beloved movie to feature the doll, as my sister and I well knew. But until recently, I thought the hold the animated films had on us was unique.And then I learned that there’s a whole generation obsessed with them, drawn perhaps by nostalgia for a simpler time of sparkly princess gowns, beautiful music and, despite a few obstacles, happy endings for Barbie and her friends.On college campuses across the country, 20-somethings host watch parties, mainlining hours at a time of the 90-minute animated adventures, the earliest of which feature classical scores played by illustrious outfits like the London Symphony Orchestra and star villains voiced by name actors like Martin Short (the traitorous Preminger in “The Princess and the Pauper”) and Tim Curry (a conniving Mouse King).There are dozens of TikTok accounts devoted to clips from the movies. On eBay, play sets associated with the earlier films — like the royal music palace from “Princess and the Pauper” — can command upward of $1,000.“There’s so much positivity in the movies, friendship, and love, that people can’t not love them,” said Hannah, a 26-year-old Barbie cosplayer in Neuberg, Germany. (The New York Times agreed to identify her only by her first name because of privacy concerns.) Since 2016, she has run a popular Instagram account in which she posts photos of herself dressed up as the franchise’s heroines, like Odette, Rapunzel and Clara. (“Nutcracker” is her favorite film.) The heroine always had to be portrayed as “kind, clever, brave,” said Kelly Sheridan, who voiced the doll in “Barbie of Swan Lake” (2003) and other entries in the franchise.Artisan EntertainmentOne reason she is so drawn to the early animated films, Hannah said, is the gorgeous backdrops and the fabulous fairy-tale wardrobe.“At first, my idea of making a Barbie ball gown for myself caused a lot of people around me to shake their heads and laugh,” she said. But she wanted to show them “that I could be whatever I wanted.”Even, she added, a princess.The success of the animated films, at first glance, is not obvious: The one regarded as the best, “The Princess and the Pauper,” sits at just 75 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics have been lukewarm, with The New York Times calling “Barbie in the Nutcracker,” the first installment, a “pallid but likable” tale for “very small children.” Aspects like the greedy, hooknosed villain of “Swan Lake” have not aged well, provoking criticism for antisemitic tropes.The problems are painfully obvious to me now. But, on a recent rewatch, I also saw what had initially engrossed me and my sister: Barbie is incorruptible, resistant to the human forces of temptation, pride, selfishness. By the rules of fairy-tale logic — good things happen to good people — her happy ending is a foregone conclusion.Kelly Sheridan, the Canadian actress who voiced Barbie in 28 of the films between 2001 and 2015, said the initial mantra for the Barbie character was “kind, clever, brave.”“Barbie was flawless,” Sheridan, 46, said in a recent phone conversation from her home in Vancouver, British Columbia. “She could do no wrong.”For instance, in “Nutcracker,” the script initially had Barbie as Clara stumbling when she carried a tray and catching herself before spilling it contents. But a meeting of the film’s producers and Mattel representatives led to a change because, Sheridan said, “Barbie would never stumble.”Another time, when she was recording the scene in which Clara confronts the Mouse King, a Mattel representative asked if Barbie could sound less angry. “Because Barbie would never be angry, even confronting the villain,” she said. “She was always kind, clever and brave.”The reins had loosened, she said, by the 16th film, “Barbie and the Three Musketeers,” in which an athletic, ambitious Barbie engages in sword fights. The studio, she said, realized people actually wanted to relate to her.“She was able to be more silly and goofy and to have more comedic moments,” she said.By the career-focused titles of the mid-2010s, Barbie had shed her princess gowns for pants. Now, she was exploring space, going on spy missions and designing video games.The artist known as Purcy, a 22-year-old illustrator who on Instagram posts her work picturing Barbie as various characters from the animated films, has seen 33 of the films. (She also asked not to use her full name for privacy reasons.) The ones she rewatches the most are set in the modern day, like her favorite, “Barbie: Princess Charm School.”The Barbie of those films, she said, “showed us that we can be kind, caring, feel love, love pink, while also be strong and standing up for ourselves.”For Hannah, the best Barbie animated films will always be the original princess tales.Whenever she attends a cosplay event or posts a photo of her costumes on Instagram, she said, both men and women approach her to share childhood memories they associate with the movies and the dolls.“Barbie connects us,” she said. More

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      Action Movies to Stream Now: ‘Call Her King,’ ‘Supercell’ and More

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      From films with swift swordplay to those with mega-tornadoes, this month’s action picks go big.‘Call Her King’Stream it on BET+.Though Jaeda King (Naturi Naughton) practices martial arts, she isn’t your prototypical hero. The married mother is a judge, and she’s presiding over the biggest case of her career. Despite his pleas of innocence, Sean Samuels (Jason Mitchell) has already been convicted of murder and his sentencing is imminent. However, Sean’s brother, Gabriel (Lance Gross), isn’t waiting for the outcome. Armed with a fleet of gunmen, Gabriel, a.k.a. Black Caesar, storms the courthouse to spring Sean. And Jaeda — let’s call her King — uses more than her gavel to fight back.King winds through the baddies with the prowess of Foxy Brown and the confidence of Shaft. But the director Wes Miller’s film is also an origin story of sorts. King’s fight isn’t only with Black Caesar and his crew, but also with the broken justice system itself, and the way it both targets Black people and pits them against one another. Along the way, the nimble Naughton announces herself as a bona fide action star.‘Eye for an Eye: The Blind Swordsman’Stream it on Hi-Yah!Dreamlike and visually expressive, this film by the Chinese writer-director Yang Bingjia takes delight in exploring the formula associated with swordplay movies. It has the cool mythological man of few words: in this case, Blind Cheng (Xie Miao), a visually impaired bounty hunter. It has the innocent maiden: Ni Yan (Gao Weiman), a wine merchant in need of saving from the big bad, He Qufeng (Ben Liu). And just for added flavor, Lady Qin (Zhang Di), Blind Cheng’s unrequited love, acts as femme fatale.“Eye for an Eye” would be entertaining even if it only relied on those tropes. But its delectable kills elevate it even higher. Take the torture scene where Blind Cheng plies a goon for answers not by beating him, but by tying the villain’s every limb to an elaborate array of sharpened liuqin strings. Another character endures the punishment of having arrows slowly pulled from her body. The culminating face-off between Blind Cheng and He Qufeng, a scene bathed in ethereal lighting — blinding white snow amid a pitch-black setting — gives this gore-and-guts film a rare, spellbindingly poetic quality.‘Fighting Olympus’Stream it on Tubi.At first, the writer-director Julian Hampton’s film seems like a simple cop drama. Adhering to his wife’s wishes, the SWAT officer Charles Biddle (Devinair Mathis) retires to a seemingly safe line of work as a cameraman for a dogged investigative reporter. Their assignment turns deadly, however, when men in silver masks appear, leaving Biddle’s fate in the balance. Rucker (Leslie A. Jones), Biddle’s grief-stricken best friend, searches for answers. While the title might be a tiny giveaway, it’ll still be difficult to guess where “Fighting Olympus” goes next.Similar to the Boots Riley film “Sorry to Bother You,” Hampton opts for an ingenious premise to critique white supremacy. This one involves a descent into hell, as well as encounters with dangerous gods and misunderstood demigods alike. Hampton works around the film’s low budget by creating compelling characters. Medusa (Haley Jackson), for instance, is a Black woman. The white Athena stole her child, and then rewrote history to portray Medusa’s Black hair as deadly and ugly. With Medusa’s help, Rucker fights off mask-wearing, gold-sniffing henchmen in a series of obstacles that make “Fighting Olympus” one of the year’s most original action flicks.‘Night of the Assassin’Stream it on Hi-Yah!Yi Nan (Shin Hyun-joon) was once Korea’s deadliest assassin. But heart problems ended his career, making him vulnerable to an unnamed spirit who wants him dead. Hunted and rendered a lonely pauper traveling the countryside in search of a mythical plant rumored to cure such ailments, he stumbles upon bandits attacking Seon Hong (Kim Min Kyung), a widowed tavern owner. He helps the woman; in return she offers him a job as a server. His peace in this quaint village is short-lived after he murders bandits who work for Yi Bang (Lee Moon-sik), an opium dealer, gang leader, government official, and all-around slimy guy.In the writer-director Kwak Jeong-deok’s film, punchy comedy via harsh zooms gives way to kinetic fights as Yi Nan works to protect Seon Hong and her young son from terror. Kwak adds new flavors to swordplay scenes by mounting a camera on Shin for point-of-view shots. The result, particularly in the final battle, which features Yi Nan against so many men his heart might explode, is a ferocious whiplash of splayed, bloody bodies.‘Supercell’Stream it on Hulu.From a nostalgic score with hints of a John Williams influence to the soft, kind lighting, “Supercell,” the director Herbert James Winterstern’s preposterous disaster flick, is in conversation with films from the 1990s like “Twister” and “Jurassic Park.” Using a journal that belonged to his deceased storm-chasing father, the teenage William (Daniel Diemer) leaves his mother (Anne Heche) for West Texas to find his Uncle Roy (Skeet Ulrich). Once reunited with his uncle, William hopes to follow in his father’s footsteps by building a radio capable of detecting storms (an unrealized invention previously taken up by his dad).In the deep ensemble, Jordan Kristine Seamón plays William’s girlfriend Harper, while Alec Baldwin portrays the head of a tourist company who takes storm enthusiasts as close to danger as possible. Rather than living a dream, William finds his disgraced Uncle Roy reduced to the nightmare of driving for Baldwin’s outfit. This big, dumb disaster flick not only features mega-tornadoes as the background to William’s coming-of-age, but it also ends on one of the funniest deaths ever in a film that manages to balance family ache with a wide adventurous canvas. More

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      How ‘Red, White & Royal Blue’ Reimagined a BookTok Sensation

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      The filmmakers didn’t want to disappoint fans of Casey McQuiston’s novel about the romance between a U.S. president’s son and a British prince.On most Fridays, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London closes at 10 p.m. sharp. But one night last summer, after all of the tourists had spilled back onto the streets of South Kensington, two men slow-danced among the Berninis and Rodins until the sun rose the next morning. A cover of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by the indie-pop singer Perfume Genius echoed through the sculpture hall, soundtracking their tender moment.The nocturnal scene was a scripted one from “Red, White & Royal Blue,” the film adaptation of the 2019 novel by Casey McQuiston. The two men under the dimmed lights were the actors Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine, and they swayed until the director, Matthew López, called “Cut!” around 2 a.m. for a lunch break.“It was just the three of us and our crew,” said López, who’s also the film’s co-writer. “It made for an incredibly intimate, really special night.”The romantic comedy follows Alex Claremont-Diaz, the bisexual son of the first female U.S. president (played by Uma Thurman, with a thick Southern drawl), and Prince Henry, the younger brother of the heir to the British throne who has known since birth that he’s “gay as a maypole.” What starts as a simmering rivalry between the impulsive American (Zakhar Perez) and the buttoned-up Brit (Galitzine) soon develops into a clandestine relationship. Neither is publicly out, and their secret love complicates things, especially for Henry.Amazon Studios and Berlanti Productions secured the film rights to McQuiston’s novel at auction ahead of its May 2019 release, and the book has since spent more than 20 weeks as a New York Times best seller.But best-seller lists don’t fully convey the adoration that “Red, White & Royal Blue” has garnered on BookTok — the literature-loving corner of TikTok — where fans have shared their obsession with the escapist love story en masse, and videos tagged #redwhiteandroyalblue have received more than 500 million views.Jacob Demlow, who frequently posts about “Red, White & Royal Blue” on his “A Very Queer Book Club” account, said he flung his copy across the room in delight when he first encountered it.“I couldn’t believe what I was reading. It was all these amazing tropes that romance lovers have loved forever, but there was a couple in it who looked like a couple I would be in,” said Demlow, who estimated that he’d read the novel at least a dozen times. “I grew up watching movies about the girl falling in love with the prince, but I’d never seen that through a queer lens before. It was kind of earth-shattering in ways I still don’t fully know if I can comprehend.”The film, premiering on Prime Video on Friday, hopes to recreate that excitement onscreen, and represents the directorial debut of López, a Tony-winning playwright known for penning “The Inheritance,” as well as writing (with Amber Ruffin) the musical adaptation “Some Like It Hot.” López was working on those projects in 2020 when his agent first floated the idea of turning “Red, White & Royal Blue” into a stage musical.“I read it and said, ‘Yeah, sure, maybe. But let’s talk about the movie,’” López recalled. “I knew I wanted to be the person who made this film by, like, Page 50.”The director Matthew López, at right, working with his stars on set. “I knew I wanted to be the person who made this film by, like, Page 50,” he said.Rob Youngson/AmazonAfter pleading his case to the producers Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter, López signed on to direct and did a second pass on an original script by Ted Malawer. He cast two lead actors who had cut their teeth on Netflix romances: Zakhar Perez, 31, who starred as Marco in “The Kissing Booth” sequels; and Galitzine, 28, who appeared in the streamer’s military romance “Purple Hearts.” Galitzine also played the prince in Amazon’s Camila Cabello-led “Cinderella.”For both Zakhar Perez and the director, the character Alex’s biracial identity was particularly meaningful. López grew up in Panama City, Fla., with his Puerto Rican father and Polish Russian mother, while Zakhar Perez is of Mexican, Middle Eastern and Mediterranean descent and was raised in northwest Indiana, where he said there was only one other Mexican family.“Matthew and I talked a lot about the mestizo journey,” Zakhar Perez said in a video call before SAG-AFTRA, the actor’s union, went on strike. “Being part Mexican, part lots of other things, I don’t want to say you’re forgotten, but in today’s world, it’s like, you’re either this or you’re that. There’s nothing in between. I’m kind of a cultural chameleon.”“As a young Latiné queer man, I never read something that centered someone like Alex,” López said, echoing his star. “If I had been presented with this character when I was in my late teens, early 20s, it may have changed how I thought about myself.”During the audition process, Zakhar Perez and Galitzine did their chemistry reads via video and did not meet in person until rehearsals began in London. But the nature of the script meant they would need to quickly become comfortable shooting a variety of passionate scenes, which were overseen by the intimacy coordinator Robbie Taylor Hunt.“Nick and I trusted each other quite quickly,” Zakhar Perez said of Galitzine. “We had to build a sexual tension from dislike to like to love, and we wanted to show that journey through the choreographed, intimate moments.”“I was never going to entirely fulfill the image of this book that the millions of people who love it individually have in their heads,” López said.Jonathan Prime/AmazonIn the book, McQuiston described Alex and Henry’s amorous bedroom — and tack room and hotel room — scenes in great detail, and López said he “never, ever shied away from the sexuality” onscreen.“At times, it’s extremely hungry and at times, it’s really tender,” Galitzine said in a separate prestrike call. “Matthew was always adamant that he wanted to portray gay sex in an accurate way, which he felt maybe hadn’t been the case in other L.G.B.T.Q.+ movies.”While the only lingering sex scene is a carefully cropped, emotional moment, and the only nudity is the flash of a naked buttocks, “Red, White & Royal Blue” received an R rating from the Motion Picture Association.López was surprised: “If we had put six bullets into the prince, we probably would have still gotten PG-13,” he said, and added, “If it had been a man and a woman, I question whether or not it would have gotten an R rating.”(The filmmaker Ira Sachs recently expressed similar confusion over the NC-17 rating for his new film “Passages,” which also features gay sex. The M.P.A. said in a statement to The Associated Press, “The sexual orientation of a character or characters is not considered as part of the rating process.”)In the weeks leading up to the movie’s release, anticipation continued to build among fans, coupled with fears that it might not capture the magic of the book. Some worried about the casting choices, the elimination of several supporting characters or the switch from a fictional queen of England to a fictional king, played in a single scene by Stephen Fry.“I was never going to entirely fulfill the image of this book that the millions of people who love it individually have in their heads,” López said. “I knew from the beginning,” he also emphasized, “that this movie would succeed or fail based in part on the fans’ belief that one of them has made this film. I am one of them.”Broader critiques take issue with the premise of the story itself and the fact that it’s yet another queer romance that involves the distress of coming out. But Demlow of A Very Queer Book Club sees it differently.“There are so many coming-out stories that need to be heard, and we also need more stories that aren’t coming-out stories,” he said. “It’s not that we need less of something. It’s that we need more of everything.” More

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      ‘The Shark Is Broken’ Review: A Bloodless Postscript to ‘Jaws’

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      Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the theater, a play about the making of Hollywood’s first summer blockbuster bobs up on Broadway.For nine weeks in 1974, off the shore of Martha’s Vineyard, the shooting of “Jaws” was repeatedly delayed by the whims of its temperamental stars. And by “stars,” I mean Bruce.Bruce was the name given to the three mechanical predators built to simulate the great white shark at the heart of the story. As one after another became bloated with saltwater or entangled in seaweed and failed to operate or flat-out sank — the crew called the movie “Flaws” — there was little the three equally temperamental human stars could do but try (and usually fail) to be patient. Occasionally they wondered if it might not have been better to train an actual great white for the role.After seeing “The Shark Is Broken,” a play about that disastrous shoot, you may wonder the opposite: whether it might not have been better to cast the movie with mechanical humans. The real ones were nearly as glitchy as Bruce. Aboard the Orca, the lobster boat on which much of “Jaws” was filmed, the actors Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider bickered, brawled, vomited, kvetched, drank, backstabbed and, like Bruce, broke down.All of that is faithfully rendered in “The Shark Is Broken,” which opened on Thursday at the Golden Theater, in a production directed by Guy Masterson. There’s a perfect replica of the Orca bobbing prettily on a C.G.I. sea, and costumes minutely matched to the film. (Duncan Henderson is the designer.) Accents, postures, props and hairstyles are fanatically accurate; there’s even a hat-tip (by Adam Cork) to John Williams’s sawing, rasping theme at the start.But these details do not on their own create much dramatic interest. Plots consisting of hurry-up-and-wait rarely do. Were it not for its curious meta-story, the play would be little more than a pleasant diversion: 95 minutes of bloodless, toothless, Hollywood-adjacent dramedy.The meta-story gives it a bit more bite. Robert Shaw, who played the Ahab-like shark hunter Quint in “Jaws,” is played here by Ian Shaw, who is one of his sons. Ian, who could be his father’s twin, is also, with Joseph Nixon, the play’s author. The ancient theme of paterfamilias versus prodigal is obviously engaged, also organizing the arcs of the characters. Like a dorsal fin poking over the waves, their filial conflicts suggest the story’s dark undertow.Unfortunately, the undertow remains mostly under in Masterson’s leisurely, self-satisfied staging; you could ask for more urgency even in a play about filling time. But this is quite clearly a love letter, if a complicated one, to a parent who achieved greater success in the same field as his son. (A noted stage actor who crossed back and forth to film, Robert won an Oscar for “A Man for All Seasons.”)So even though we see him drink himself into a stupor, ruthlessly bully Dreyfuss (Alex Brightman) to “improve his performance,” and browbeat Scheider (Colin Donnell) about his sunbathing and spirituality, Ian has him winking with gruff charm to take the edge off the awfulness. He also makes sure to show us, in two set pieces, how fine an actor his father was and thus, in an Oedipal somersault, how fine he is, too.Accents, postures, props and hairstyles are fanatically faithful to the movie, our critic writes, and the set is even a replica of the Orca, the lobster boat on which much of “Jaws” was filmed.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesOne of those set pieces — the “U.S.S. Indianapolis” monologue from the movie, in which Quint reveals the origin of his shark hatred — can at least be justified by the story. We watch Robert rehearse it and flub it until, in the play’s last beat, he nails it. But the barely motivated inclusion of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29 (“When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”) comes off as overkill, even though gorgeously spoken; it’s as if “The Shark Is Broken” were a brief for Robert’s admission to actors’ heaven, with Gielgud at the gate.The sonnet’s supposed purpose is to calm Dreyfuss, who is having a panic attack, but Dreyfuss, playing the marine biologist Hooper in the movie, is a full-time panic attack anyway. Brightman’s wicked impersonation, complete with Dreyfusian giggles, shrugs and glasses-pokes, highlights the boundless neurosis of a character who says, “Nothing good ever happened to any Jew on the water.” When he admits he took the role in “Jaws” only because he was sure, at 26, his career was over, it sounds like he means his life was.That he and Scheider (as the police chief Brody) are given daddy issues helps bind their stories thematically to that of both Shaws. Robert’s father, we learn, was an alcoholic who died by suicide; Ian’s of course was Robert, enough said.Still, Dreyfuss’s guilt over not becoming a lawyer and Scheider’s mild recollections of his father’s beatings feel underwhelming. In the competition for messed-up-ness, they lose every heat handily to Robert, and recede in his wake — especially Scheider, who has little to do but placate the others. His best scene, which the silky Donnell carries off perfectly, finds him stripping to his Speedo to catch some rays; there are no lines.That’s telling, because the dialogue overall is labored. Through much of the longish first scene, the authors stuff résumé excerpts and scraps of back story into envelopes of supposedly casual dialogue. (“I shot this thing last year,” Dreyfuss says, “‘The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.’”) Casting about for laughs, they use whatever chum they can, whether it’s borrowed W.C. Fields or cheesy backfilled irony. “There will never be a more immoral president than Tricky Dicky,” Scheider says of Richard Nixon, welcoming the audience’s look-how-that-turned-out response.In the end, “The Shark Is Broken” isn’t interested in argument and interpretation any more than “Jaws” was. When Dreyfuss says the movie they’re making is about the subconscious, and Scheider posits that it’s about responsibility, Shaw, as always, wins by proclamation. “It’s about a shark!” he brays.So is the play, in a way, and that’s why it remains diverting enough for a summer on Broadway. Its sharks are human, though. They’re called sons.The Shark Is BrokenThrough Nov. 19 at the Golden Theater, Manhattan; thesharkisbroken.com. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. More