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      ‘Untold: Hall of Shame’ Review: Cheaters Never Prosper

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      An infamous sports-world doping scandal is related with insight in this compelling, albeit slight, Netflix documentary.Why would an athlete use performance-enhancing drugs? “Untold: Hall of Shame,” a documentary about a high-profile doping scandal in the early 2000s that shocked the world of competitive sports, offers a persuasive reason: because every other athlete is taking them.Victor Conte Jr., a self-taught sports nutritionist and trainer who provided several sports stars and Olympians with steroids through his Bay Area firm Balco, insists in “Hall of Shame” that performance-enhancing drug use in pro sports is “rampant,” to the extent that using them is all but necessary to win. He frames the decision to dope as one between unethical victory or noble failure. “Show me an athlete not on steroids,” he says, “and I’ll show you a loser.”With compelling verve, “Hall of Shame,” from the director Bryan Storkel, tells the story of Conte’s ignominious rise and fall. It draws you into the addictive thrill that his athletes felt as they were winning medals and breaking records, and although it’s somewhat slight on the whole, the film makes clear why elite competitors such as Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery and Barry Bonds were willing to compromise themselves for a taste of elite glory.Both Jones and Bonds declined to appear in the film — and both have denied ever knowingly taking performance-enhancing drugs — but Montgomery, candid and vulnerable, opens up about his reasons, to dramatic effect. “I don’t care if I die,” he describes having told Conte, in dope-boosted pursuit of the world record for 100-meter dash. “I want to see what it feels like to be the greatest.” He broke the record in 2002; it was invalidated two years later. As “Hall of Shame” makes clear, if you win by cheating, greatness is not what you achieve.Untold: Hall of ShameNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Michael Oher, Depicted in ‘The Blind Side,’ Says He Was Conned With Adoption Promise

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      Michael Oher, whose life was depicted in the 2009 film, says in a lawsuit that he was never fully adopted by the family that took him in and was swindled into signing away his decision-making powers at 18.The former N.F.L. player Michael Oher, whose journey out of poverty and into football stardom was dramatized in the 2009 movie “The Blind Side,” asked a Tennessee court on Monday to formally end his legal relationship with the family who took him in, claiming that he had never actually been adopted and had been tricked into signing away his decision-making powers so the family could make millions of dollars off his life story.Oher, 37, is seeking a termination of the conservatorship that began when he was 18, plus money that he says he should have earned from the movie, as well as an injunction preventing Leigh Anne Tuohy and Sean Tuohy from using his name and likeness.The petition, filed in Shelby County in Tennessee, claims that when he thought he was being adopted, the Tuohys urged him to sign a conservatorship in which he relinquished his ability to enter into contracts. The lawsuit also claims that Oher, who started living with the Tuohys at age 16, unknowingly signed away the rights to his life story to 20th Century Fox in 2007.Oher’s lawyer, J. Gerard Stranch IV, declined to comment beyond what was stated in the lawsuit.For “The Blind Side,” the hit film that starred Sandra Bullock as Leigh Anne Tuohy, Tim McGraw as Sean Tuohy and Quinton Aaron as Oher, the Tuohys negotiated a contract of $225,000 plus 2.5 percent of future “defined net proceeds” for themselves and their biological children, the lawsuit said.Oher says in the lawsuit that he received nothing while the movie generated more than $300 million in revenue worldwide.The Tuohy family did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The New York Times. In an interview with The Daily Memphian on Monday, Sean Tuohy said that he had been “devastated” to hear about the lawsuit and that it was “upsetting to think we would make money off any of our children.” Tuohy said that he would be willing to end the conservatorship and that everybody in his family, including Oher, got an equal share from the movie, around $14,000.Sean Tuohy went on to say the conservatorship had been intended to allow Oher to play at the University of Mississippi, which he and his wife attended.Sean Tuohy Jr., the son of Leigh Anne and Sean, said in an interview with Barstool Sports on Monday that he made “60, 70 grand over the course of the last four, five years” from the movie.In Tennessee, a conservatorship is defined as an arrangement in which a court removes at least some “decision-making powers and duties” from “a person with a disability who lacks capacity to make decisions in one or more important areas” and grants those duties to a conservator or co-conservators. The 2004 order that granted Oher’s conservatorship to the Tuohys states that Oher appeared to have “no known physical or psychological disabilities.”According to the petition, Oher only recently found out — in February this year — that he had not been legally adopted. Oher agreed to enter into the conservatorship thinking that it was a required part of the adoption process, the lawsuit says.Oher, who retired from football in 2017, was selected with the No. 23 overall pick in the 2009 N.F.L. draft by the Baltimore Ravens and played eight N.F.L. seasons as an offensive tackle for the Ravens, the Tennessee Titans and the Carolina Panthers. He won the Super Bowl with the Ravens in 2013.He played college football from 2005 to 2009 at Mississippi, where he earned two first-team All-Southeastern Conference honors, in 2007 and 2008, and was named a consensus first-team all-American in 2008.“The Blind Side,” which was released in 2009 and was adapted from a 2006 book by Michael Lewis, depicts Oher as a poor teenager growing up in Memphis and looking after his mother, who was addicted to cocaine. The movie portrays Oher as a naturally talented athlete, at both basketball and football, who is spotted by a coach at a local private school, which later admits him. Oher comes to know Sean Tuohy Jr. before moving in with the family and earning a scholarship to Mississippi.But Oher seemed uncomfortable with the movie’s depiction of him, and what it meant for his career. In a 2015 interview, when he was playing for the Panthers, Oher said that the movie had portrayed him as less intelligent than he was and had influenced how people saw him within the sport.“People look at me and they take things away from me because of a movie,” Oher said. “They don’t really see the skills and the kind of player I am. That’s why I get downgraded so much, because of something off the field.” More

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      Will Hollywood Learn These 5 Lessons From ‘Barbie’?

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      If studios greenlight more movies about toys, they’ll be missing the point. Greta Gerwig’s hit is about smart filmmaking, not brand awareness.Over the past week and a half, Greta Gerwig’s comedy “Barbie” passed the billion-dollar mark at the global box office, and it won’t be long before it overtakes “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” to become 2023’s highest-grossing movie worldwide — a title it’s likely to hold onto. That’s a staggering achievement in so many ways: No movie directed by a woman has ever topped the yearly box office, and it’s been well over two decades since a live-action film without any significant action elements became the biggest movie of the year. (That’d be the Jim Carrey vehicle “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” which ruled 2000.)But can the runaway success of “Barbie” reshape Hollywood? I’m too cynical to think studio executives will learn all the right lessons from it. Instead, they’ll probably just greenlight more movies about toys. Still, “Barbie” proved at least five things to be true, if decision makers are willing to think outside the pink box.1. A summer movie can be smartly writtenWe count on summer movies to deliver spectacle, but how many also come with a witty, thoughtful script? Too often, big-budget blockbusters are rushed into production before the screenplay is finished, and even while shooting, they’re in a constant state of flux, with new writers clambering aboard to stitch everything into some sort of viable patchwork quilt.“Barbie,” by contrast, feels totally thought through instead of frantically rewritten. Despite the outsize scale of the film, it still shares a distinctive comic sensibility and offhand intellectualism with “Frances Ha” and “Mistress America,” the two movies previously written by Gerwig and her partner, Noah Baumbach, and there are actual ideas at play here that have given “Barbie” a conversational shelf life far longer than most summer films. Though “Barbie” proves that a big movie can be both fun and thoughtful, that’s likely to happen only when a studio hires smart writers, resists sanding down their sensibilities, and gives them enough time and space to truly make the story sing.2. Make more female-led event filmsThough movies as varied as “Bridesmaids,” “Crazy Rich Asians” and “Where the Crawdads Sing” have all become breakout hits in recent years, they’re often treated as aberrations: Peruse a typical theatrical calendar and you’ll find little trace of those films’ influence. Studio executives routinely take female audiences for granted, handing their biggest budgets to movies made by and starring men because the conventional wisdom is that though women will go see those titles, male moviegoers are reluctant to watch a female-driven story.“Barbie” has now blown a hole in that argument. It isn’t just that men had no choice but to see “Barbie,” lest they be left out of the cultural conversation — the film also demonstrated how women will show up in record-breaking numbers to watch something that truly speaks to them (often bringing friends and going a second or third time, too). Female-led blockbusters don’t all have to star a superheroine: They can be comedies, romances or dramas based on best-selling books, as long as they’re presented as major events.3. Don’t rely on past-their-prime franchises“Barbie” will end this summer outdrawing every major sequel. That’s in part because those franchises are so long in the tooth: We’re on the seventh “Mission: Impossible” movie, the 10th “Fast and Furious” and the fifth “Indiana Jones.” Younger audiences have no sense of ownership over those older series, and even longtime fans may be experiencing diminishing returns. If any lasting lesson can be drawn from the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon that sent both “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” soaring past their initial projections, it’s that audiences are eager for big movies that feel genuinely new. Films that stoke their curiosity can be even more potent than old reliables.4. A great soundtrack is effective marketingThough studios will explore every possible method to market a movie — from billboards to Instagram ads to Happy Meals at McDonald’s — there are few tie-ins as potent as a really killer soundtrack. We used to count on our big summer movies to deliver radio hits, but loaded soundtrack albums have become few and far between these days, despite films like “Black Panther” and “The Greatest Showman” amply demonstrating the boost a film can get from an album that people can’t stop playing.It’s nice, then, that the “Barbie” soundtrack is filled with bops, like Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night” and “Barbie World” from Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice. Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” is destined to make the shortlist for the original-song Oscar, and even Ryan Gosling’s plaintive power ballad “I’m Just Ken” debuted on Billboard’s Hot 100. In an era when TikTok has become a music-industry hitmaker and virality on that platform can rival any paid marketing push, a fun pop soundtrack like the one “Barbie” boasts is worth its weight in rose gold.5. Stop saving the good stuff for the sequelWith “Barbie” on a path to become the year’s highest-grossing movie worldwide, Warner Bros. will inevitably try to conjure a franchise from it. Yet much of what makes “Barbie” feel fresh is that it tells a complete story and doesn’t spend time setting up spinoffs or sequels. In fact, it ends in a place that would be hard to roll back: with its lead at the definitive end of her character arc. Gerwig and her stars aren’t signed for “Barbie” sequels, and when I spoke to Gerwig after her blockbuster opening weekend, she said she’d put every idea she had into this movie without the thought of doing more: “At this moment, it’s all I’ve got.”A “Barbie” sequel would certainly make money, but there’s no way it could capture the lightning-in-a-bottle moment that makes this movie feel like such a collector’s item. Would Warner Bros. and Mattel have the guts to preserve the value of “Barbie” by letting it stand on its own? As a top-tier legacy title undiluted by shoddy sequels, it could continue to generate untold amounts of revenue in the years to come. So although it’s unlikely that studio heads will ever choose common sense over cynical cash grabs, the idea of “Barbie” as a one-and-done deserves consideration: After all, a toy only lasts forever if you know when to put it away. More

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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