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      Ghibli Park Celebrates “Totoro” And Other Miyazaki Movies

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      One of our first infractions at Ghibli Park was hoisting our 1-year-old onto the polyester tummy of a woodland spirit creature. Another was letting him slip under a barricade and shelter inside a furry bus with cat eyes for headlights.“He’s not following the protocol,” I told my wife, as the staff overseeing the cat-bus play zone looked on anxiously.“He’s making a mockery of it,” she said. But we didn’t stop him.Ghibli Park, which opened in November outside Nagoya, Japan, pays homage to the eccentric, enchanting films of Studio Ghibli, a company co-founded in the 1980s by the director Hayao Miyazaki. We took our two toddlers there because their favorite movie is “My Neighbor Totoro,” a beloved 1988 Miyazaki film starring the spirit creature and its cat-bus sidekick.As parents, we thought it would be fun for our boys, 3 and 1, to experience a “Totoro” immersion. And as longtime Ghibli fans, we were keen to see what the place looked like.Ghibli Park has said that a clock tower on the premises was influenced by the “late 19th century sci-fi architecture” that features in some Ghibli movies.Andrew Faulk for The New York TimesThe park includes a recreation of an antiques shop that features in the 1995 Ghibli film “Whisper of the Heart.”Andrew Faulk for The New York TimesAmerican visitors may wonder how Ghibli Park compares with Disney World. It doesn’t really. It feels much lower-key and has no rides, exotic animals, jumbo turkey legs or animatronic American presidents, among other things. The main point is to wander around soaking up Miyazaki vibes.Also, the park is not finished. Grafted onto an existing municipal park, it opened late last year, but as of early July only three of five planned ticketed sites were open. When I booked for a June visit, tickets to only one of those sites — a building called “Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse” — were available to international visitors reserving through the park’s website. (It was possible to book the other two sites through Japanese travel agencies, but I only learned that much later, from a Japanese speaker.)Susan Napier, a biographer of Mr. Miyazaki at Tufts University who visited Ghibli Park in April, told me that it had struck her as a “work in progress.” She also described the ticketing process, which has included lotteries and long online queues, as “byzantine and not fun.”Maybe this is why Studio Ghibli itself seems ambivalent about promoting Ghibli Park. In Japan, it has run advertisements advising fans to “take your time” visiting.A hypothetical theme park celebrating Nintendo or Pokemon, two other iconic Japanese creative brands, would almost certainly feel more Disney World-like, said Matt Alt, the author of the 2021 book “Pure Invention: How Japan’s Pop Culture Conquered the World.” But he added that the park’s diffuse layout and low-key marketing were in character for a studio co-founded by Mr. Miyazaki, a director who has never hidden his anticapitalist politics.Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse is the size of a modest mall or sports arena, with replicas of structures from the films, and long lines to get close to them. Andrew Faulk for The New York TimesGhibli Park is not a place to “turn your brain off,” Mr. Alt told me. “It demands a level of intellectual engagement that most parks do not.” When I booked our visit, in March, a bit of mental stimulation sounded nice. I imagined wandering the grounds in dappled sunlight, musing on Mr. Miyazaki’s cinematic oeuvre as our boys paused to collect acorns — just as the two sisters who star in “Totoro” do. (The boys, who are Anglo-American, love the acorn scenes so much that they learned the Japanese word for the nut, donguri, before the English one.)In reality, we arrived just before our three-hour afternoon visiting slot at Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse, and our intellectual capacity was limited. Our parental nerves were fraying from the hourlong journey from Nagoya and the general struggle of moving tiny, diapered humans around an unfamiliar place.Our morning in Nagoya had already been tarnished by a 4 a.m. wake up and some public displays of unchecked toddler emotion. On the grounds of the 17th century Nagoya Castle, for example, our 3-year-old, nicknamed T, burst into tears when he learned that the castle was closed for renovation.To break his mood, we took the emergency measure of buying him and his brother, nicknamed B, ice cream cones as a second breakfast. That stopped the crying, but our mounting fatigue had raised the stakes for our visit to Ghibli Park. Would the trip to meet our favorite magical creatures make all the time, money and energy that it entailed worthwhile?The park lets visitors interact with their favorite characters, including Marnie from “When Marnie Was There.”Andrew Faulk for The New York TimesA visitor catches Sheeta from “Castle in the Sky.”Andrew Faulk for The New York TimesGhibli Park may see a bump in domestic tourism this summer because Mr. Miyazaki released a new film in Japan this month. But, for my family, making a pilgrimage there was all about seeing Totoro and the cat bus.“Totoro” follows the two sisters, Mei, 4, and Satsuki, 10, as they settle into a spooky house in the Japanese countryside with their father, an archaeologist. Their mother is stuck in a nearby sanitarium, suffering from an undisclosed illness.After Mei meets Totoro by stumbling into its lair inside a giant camphor tree (and falls asleep on its tummy), she and her sister encounter the creature a few more times and learn more about its magical powers. Eventually, as their mother’s condition appears to worsen, they call in some very important favors from Totoro and the wild-eyed cat bus.Professor Napier told me that “Totoro” illustrates an aesthetic that runs through the Ghibli catalog, and which tends to be more ambiguous and subtle than Disney’s. She described it as “the immersive, low-key magic of being a human being connected with other things.”“It’s a world that you like,” Professor Napier, who is writing a book comparing Ghibli with Disney, said of Mr. Miyazaki’s animated universe. “But it’s also full of the unexpected and complex, and sometimes scary.”Totoro and the cat bus can indeed be a little frightening, especially when they flash their teeth. But the movie is much sweeter than it is scary. It’s set in “a time before television,” as Mr. Miyazaki once told an interviewer, and infused with sublime, hand-drawn pastoral imagery — pastel sunsets, a snail crawling up a plant stalk — that makes you want to be a kid growing up in rural idyll.The face of the cat bus, a magical creature that figures in the 1988 Ghibli film “My Neighbor Totoro.”Andrew Faulk for The New York TimesNo Face, a character from the Oscar-winning 2001 Ghibli film “Spirited Away,” sits in a recreation of a train car.Andrew Faulk for The New York TimesThe film also celebrates a child’s sense of wonder. Mr. Miyazaki created “Totoro” with kids in mind — he said he hoped it would make them want to pick acorns — and many critics have seen it as an ode to childhood innocence. It’s no accident that Totoro and the cat bus are visible only to the sisters, not adults.Maybe this is why I still cry every time I watch the final credits roll: “Totoro” reminds me that my boys will never be this young or innocent again.In our Seoul apartment, they play with Totoro and cat-bus dolls, sleep in Totoro pajamas and sit on a Totoro potty. Their fandom is so intense that my mother-in-law bought us tickets to a “Totoro” stage adaptation at the Barbican Theater during our last trip to London.In Nagoya, before we left for Ghibli Park, B demonstrated his enthusiasm by bringing a plastic cat bus to the hotel buffet — and feeding it a breakfast of whipped cream. He also showed the toy to a man in a ninja costume who posed for a selfie with us outside the castle.The ninja cracked a knowing smile, indicating that he, too, was a “Totoro” fan. “Cat bus,” he said in Japanese, as if the phrase were a code word.In Children’s Town, a fuzzy Totoro lies sleeping in its carpeted lair.Andrew Faulk for The New York TimesA robot from the Studio Ghibli movie “Laputa: Castle in the Sky”Andrew Faulk for The New York TimesGhibli Park lies in Nagakute, a small city in the hills outside Nagoya, a few stops down a highway from an Ikea. There’s no Ghibli entrance gate, exactly; you just wander into an unremarkable municipal park and look around for the Ghibli sites for which you have reserved tickets months in advance.The Grand Warehouse is a sleek, multistory building the size of a modest mall or sports arena, with plenty of sunshine streaming in through skylights. It sits near a grassy lawn, an ice rink and some future Ghibli sites that are under construction.Inside, there are replicas of structures from the films, including the towering bathhouse from the Oscar-winning 2001 film “Spirited Away,” and dozens of made-for-Instagram tableaux of Ghibli scenes and props.The attention to detail is striking. In an area devoted to the Ghibli film “Arietty,” I saw a giant drop of plastic dew affixed to a giant fake flower, for example. Nearby was an intricately detailed replica of the castle from “Howl’s Moving Castle,” my older son’s favorite Miyazaki film after “Totoro.”“The castle, daddy!” Three-year-old T said with delight. At last, a Japanese castle that didn’t make him cry.The problem was that most of the tableaux were mobbed with Ghibli fans — and lines that we didn’t have time to stand in with restless toddlers. The building’s only restaurant was similarly oversubscribed. We eventually found a kiosk advertising cake, but the staff said that the cake had run out.Yubaba, a character from “Spirited Away,” sits at a wooden desk.Andrew Faulk for The New York Times After about an hour of canvassing the warehouse, we headed for “Children’s Town,” a play area devoted to scenes from “Totoro” and other Ghibli films.Children’s Town has three rooms. The first is a labyrinth combining scenes from more Ghibli films than I could count: The orange train from “Laputa: Castle in the Sky,” the bakery from “Kiki’s Delivery Service” and so on. The boys loved it, even if daddy thwacked his head following them through a crawl space.The other rooms were devoted to “Totoro” and had mercifully higher ceilings. There was the house where Mei and Satsuki live with their dad. Over there was the camphor tree, where a giant Totoro lay regally beside some oversize donguri. And in the far corner sat the majestic, furry cat bus.It all looked fun, kid-friendly and immersive — almost, in fact, like something you’d find at Disney World. The boys were in heaven.“Toe-toe-row! Toe-toe-row!” B said, standing inside the tree, with the same intonation as the movie’s rousing, marching-band-style theme song.“Hey, Totoro!” said T, who had been carefully inspecting the giant acorns. “Wake up!”But even though Children’s Town seemed designed to nurture the child’s sense of wonder that Mr. Miyazaki celebrates in his movies, the warehouse staff informed us of several rules that dampened the vibe. Notably, it was forbidden to put children on Totoro’s plush tummy, or to allow them to play inside the cat bus zone for longer than three minutes — even if the zone was not crowded, which it wasn’t.The staff members were friendly, but their rules made little sense for kids as small as ours. I wondered if that was another sign that Ghibli Park was still a bit rough around the edges. Take your time visiting, as the studio says.We grudgingly agreed to the no-tummy policy, but B wished to play nowhere else but inside the cat bus. We were with him. We had spent several months — a good chunk of his life! — waiting for this moment.The staff, sensing our resolve, suggested a compromise. A special time extension could be granted under the circumstances, they said. Rather than the usual three minutes, our B could have six.Make that nine. Then 12. Et cetera. At 5 p.m., he was among last, and smallest, Ghibli fans to leave the building.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2023. More

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      In Hollywood Strike, Actors and Studios Are ‘Far Apart’ on Key Issues

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      The actors’ union and the organization that bargains on behalf of the studios traded statements underscoring how much work needs to be done to reach an agreement.As tens of thousands of actors go into their fifth day of a strike versus the Hollywood studios, the two sides have shown no signs of returning to the bargaining table — and are even exchanging barbed messages that underscore how far apart they are.Late Monday, leadership of SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, sent members a 12-page memo laying out its demands and the studios’ counterproposals. They “remain far apart on the most critical issues that affect the very survival of our profession,” the note said.“We marched ahead because they intentionally dragged their feet,” it continued.The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the organization that bargains on behalf of the studios, answered with a note to the news media arguing that the message from the union “deliberately distorts” the offers it had made.“A strike is not the outcome we wanted,” the alliance said. “For SAG-AFTRA to assert that we have not been responsive to the needs of its membership is disingenuous at best.”Thousands of Hollywood actors went on strike on Friday after failing to reach a new contract with the major studios, including old-line companies like Paramount, Universal and Disney and tech giants like Netflix, Amazon and Apple.The actors joined 11,500 screenwriters who went on strike 78 days ago, the first time both unions had walked out at the same time since 1960. The writers have not returned to the bargaining table with the studios since their negotiations collapsed in early May.SAG-AFTRA’s note said the two sides remained far apart on several key issues, including compensation, guardrails against artificial intelligence, and health care and pension costs.The union’s leadership said it had asked for 11 percent wage increases in the first year of a new contract; the studios came back with an offer of 5 percent, the union said.When it comes to artificial intelligence, the union’s leaders said they had argued for a number of provisions to protect them “when a ‘digital replica’ is made or our performance is changed using A.I.”They said the studio alliance “failed to address many vital concerns, leaving principal performers and background actors vulnerable to having most of their work replaced by digital replicas.”The studios said that the union’s note to its members “fails to include the proposals offered verbally” during negotiations, and that its overall package was worth more than $1 billion in wage increases, improvements on residuals (a type of royalty) and health care contributions.Regarding artificial intelligence, the studios said they had offered a “groundbreaking proposal, which protects performers’ digital likenesses, including a requirement for performer’s consent for the creation and use of digital replicas or for digital alterations of a performance.”Union leadership sent out a chart laying out each proposal and the studios’ response. Over more than two dozen proposals, the studio response amounted to one word, according to the union: “Rejected.”“So who’s making the T-Shirt that says ‘Rejected’?” the actress Senta Moses posted on Twitter.“This is why we’re on strike,” the union note said. “The A.M.P.T.P. thinks we will relent, but the will of our membership has never been stronger. We have the resolve and unity needed to defend our rights.” More

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      Summer Fashion Inspired By Eric Rohmer’s Films

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      The outfits featured in the late French filmmaker’s work, celebrated by a new Instagram account, offer an antidote to all that is plastic and pink.She’s rolling in the grass dressed in sunflower yellow, kissing a man about whom she’s passionately ambivalent (“Boyfriends and Girlfriends,” 1987). She’s strolling through the countryside in a fleecy blue sweater, having no fun at all (“The Green Ray,” 1986). She’s lounging on a beach in a red bikini and ivory bucket hat, about to embark on a confusingly ambiguous friendship with the shirtless Frenchman she’s observing (“A Summer’s Tale,” 1996).This is summer love, Eric Rohmer-style: It isn’t easy, but it sure is chic.The outfits featured in the late French filmmaker’s works have long been celebrated, and continue to build a following, now quite literally, on an Instagram account called @Rohmerfits, which debuted in May.Rohmer’s films, which spanned the 1960s to 2000s, were famous for their unhurried plots: Characters bounce around France, in between the countryside, the seaside and the city; they analyze their romantic entanglements; they read Balzac; they seduce and irritate each other — and they do it all while wearing Mediterranean-blue sweaters, high-waisted jeans, billowy cotton shirts and pops of red.“There’s just this air about them where you want to be within them,” Alexandra Tell, the creator of @Rohmerfits, said of the costumes. The characters are “often on vacation, so you want something that’s sort of breezy that you can move in,” she said. “His clothes aren’t extravagant, but they’re elegant in this easy, ineffable way.”The secret to such aesthetic ease may lie in Rohmer’s devotion to naturalism. Like his contemporaries Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, Rohmer, who died in 2010, began as a film critic. These critics-turned-auteurs “were very much against a sense of artificiality that stemmed from the shooting in studios,” said Ludovic Cortade, a film scholar who teaches French cinema at New York University.Amanda Langlet plays Margot in “A Summer’s Tale” (1996). Rohmer often asked actors “to come up with several costume options that would reflect their own tastes,” said Ludovic Cortade, a film scholar.via The Criterion ChannelAn extension of that naturalism, Professor Cortade said, was Rohmer’s decision not to use costume designers for many of his films, and instead asked actors “to come up with several costume options that would reflect their own tastes, which was a great strategy to convey a sense of authenticity.”The aesthetic is a sharp contrast to movies like the upcoming “Barbie,” which will be released this month. While “Barbie” plays with literal plastic, Rohmer did the opposite. “Maybe the ‘Barbie’ world is more reflective of our reality,” Ms. Tell said, while Rohmer’s earthy naturalism now “feels like more of an escape.”Though the looks were fastidiously curated by Rohmer, they never felt forced, Professor Cortade said. In “Boyfriends and Girlfriends,” for example, a marigold tank top and belt, as worn by Blanche, who is played by Emmanuelle Chaulet, match the color of some orange juice in a glass cup. “You can see the wrinkles in the clothes,” said Ms. Tell, a 32-year-old writer and curatorial assistant who lives in Brooklyn. “It’s very tactile.”The outfits’ simplicity allows audiences to focus on the characters and their relationships as they grapple with complex questions of morality and love. Though Rohmer’s tone could be witty and farcical, his films astutely tackled “the challenges of personal interactions and the awkwardness behind that” — a dynamic that has only been heightened with the advent of digital technology, Professor Cortade added.In “Boyfriends and Girlfriends,” a marigold tank top and belt, as worn by Blanche, who is played by Emmanuelle Chaulet, match the color of some orange juice in a glass cup.via MetrographIn “The Green Ray,” Delphine is wearing a crimson blazer when she says to a friend, played by Rosette, through sobs: “I need a real vacation.”via The Criterion ChannelOnce she does go on vacation, Delphine wanders around morosely, lonely and dressed in all blue.via The Criterion ChannelIn other words, it’s Rohmer’s blend of aspiration and realism that keeps his films — and costumes — so fresh, Ms. Tell said: His characters, like Margot in “A Summer’s Tale,” played by Amanda Langlet, wear clothes you would wear, but better styled. They too have challenging so-called situationships, but with the handsome Gaspard, played by Melvil Poupaud, and amid the backdrop of a grassy path.In one scene in “The Green Ray,” Delphine, played by Marie Rivière, moans about going on vacation with her family after a breakup. Clad in a glorious crimson blazer, Delphine says through sobs: “I need a real vacation.” A friend, played by Rosette, convinces her to join a trip to Cherbourg, promising her they’ll “have fun and meet people.” Instead Delphine wanders around against the muted sun, morosely, lonely and dressed in all blue. More

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      ‘Barbie’ vs. ‘Oppenheimer’: The Real Winner May Be the Box Office

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      The toy-based comedy is expected to draw $100 million; the biopic half that. But in an uneven year for movies, the duel seems to be engaging audiences.It’s a matchup for the ages, up there with Ali vs. Frazier, the Hatfields vs. the McCoys and Athens vs. Sparta.Well, let’s not get carried away.But it is fair to say that with “Barbie” vs. “Oppenheimer,” Hollywood has not captured the popular imagination in this way for quite some time. On Thursday night, the two wildly incongruous Hollywood megamovies arrive in theaters after weeks of internet meme-ification and questionable marketing tie-ins. (We’re looking at you, Barbie-inspired Burger King sandwich topped with what looks like chewed bubble gum.) Together, the movies could generate the biggest crowds at North American multiplexes in four years, numbers not seen since before the pandemic, box office prognosticators said.“‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ are basically the perfect frenemies at the box office this weekend,” said Dave Karger, the Turner Classic Movies host. “Yes, they’re technically competitors, but they’re largely going after different audiences, and the Barbenheimer hype seems only to be helping both films.”Greta Gerwig’s candy-coated “Barbie,” which cost an estimated $145 million to make, not including marketing costs, has the potential to earn $100 million in the United States and Canada through Sunday, according to analysts who track audience interest and use complex formulas to forecast box office performance. Christopher Nolan’s weighty “Oppenheimer,” which cost at least $100 million before marketing, is looking at around $50 million in domestic ticket sales over the same period.Warner Bros., citing presales of about $30 million, said it was expecting closer to $75 million in weekend ticket sales for “Barbie.” (Studios try their darnedest to downplay expectations.) The studio has booked the PG-13 comedy onto about 4,200 screens in North America.Universal Pictures, the studio behind “Oppenheimer,” an R-rated historical drama about the making of the atomic bomb, declined to comment. It will unfurl Nolan’s film on about 3,600 domestic screens.“Barbie” has a run time of just under two hours. “Oppenheimer” stretches three, limiting the number of screenings that theaters can squeeze into the weekend. “Oppenheimer,” however, has the benefit of playing on most of North America’s large-format screens, which come with a ticket surcharge of up to $12 in New York. IMAX is devoting its entire footprint to Nolan’s opus for the next three weeks (to the chagrin of Tom Cruise, who hoped his “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One” would continue to play on some of those screens after opening last week).AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest cinema chain, said on Monday that more than 40,000 people had purchased tickets to see “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” as a double feature, up from 20,000 last week.Hollywood urgently needs a weekend that exceeds — or even meets — expectations. This was the year when moviegoing was finally supposed to bounce back from the pandemic, which closed many theaters for months on end and sped the growth of streaming services in homes. At last, cinemas would reclaim a position of cultural urgency.But ticket sales in the United States and Canada for the year to date (about $5 billion) are down by about 20 percent from the same period in 2019, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. Blips of hope, including strong sales for the innovative “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” and the hyper-violent “John Wick: Chapter 4,” have been blotted out by disappointing results for expensive franchise films like “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” and “Fast X.”The latest “Mission: Impossible” film arrived last weekend to solid results, but below what Hollywood had been expecting.Ticket buyers seem to be tiring of new installments in decades-old franchises. What is succeeding? For the most part, characters that have not been onscreen in recent memory (“The Super Mario Bros. Movie”), new chapters in series that are not as well worn (“Creed III”) and movies that cater to audiences ignored by Hollywood (“Sound of Freedom,” which has been promoted by the right).For all of her world domination, Barbie has never before had her own big-budget movie. “Oppenheimer” is based on the 2005 biography “American Prometheus” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. “Both studios went all-in on original films, directed by notable auteurs with an interest in pushing the envelope,” said Paul Dergarabedian, a senior Comscore analyst. “These are not the tried-and-true safe bets that are the hallmark of the summer movie season.”“Barbie” has major movie stars — Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling — while “Oppenheimer” cast the lesser-known Cillian Murphy in the title role. “Barbie” is aimed at women, while “Oppenheimer” has the edge with men. One represents what many cinephiles loathe about Hollywood: movies based on toys. The other was written and directed by one of Hollywood’s most serious cinephiles.Comedy against drama. The brightest side of human imagination vs. the darkest. Creating worlds, destroying worlds.The contrasts are irresistible.While rare, such box-office matchups are not without precedent. Just ask Nolan. In July 2008, his sinister Batman movie “The Dark Knight” (Warner Bros.) arrived head-to-head with Universal’s silly, sun-drenched “Mamma Mia!” His was No. 1 that weekend, but both movies became runaway hits. More

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      Margot Robbie’s Best Barbie-Inspired Looks From Her Press Tour

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      The actors’ strike effectively ended the “Barbie” film’s press tour. But Margot Robbie’s pink-carpet outfits are worth remembering.The actors’ strike has hit the brakes on the hot pink convertible that is the “Barbie” film’s press tour.Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling and other stars of Greta Gerwig’s forthcoming movie inspired by the doll are unlikely to appear on pink carpets until further notice in solidarity with SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union. That means the parade of neon fashion led by Ms. Robbie has probably come to an end.Ms. Robbie, who was styled by Andrew Mukamal, had her pick of designers throughout the press tour, from vintage Versace to Vivienne Westwood. But several of the actress’s best looks took inspiration from Barbie’s clothing archive, including a black-and-white-striped swimsuit the doll wore when it was introduced in 1959, a prim skirt suit from the ’80s and a swirly minidress Barbie wore in the ’90s.Those outfits, seen here alongside the Barbie clothes that inspired them, struck the exact right balance between kitschy and chic. “It’s not subtle,” Ms. Robbie said in an interview with People, “but it’s very fun!”This Barbie is glamorous.Mattel; Lia Toby/Getty ImagesEnchanted EveningAt the “Barbie” premiere in London, Ms. Robbie wore a Vivienne Westwood gown accented by a white tulle stole and a three-strand pearl necklace. The look recreated the glamorous get-up of the “Enchanted Evening” Barbie introduced in 1960.This Barbie works hard and plays hard.Mattel (Barbie); Jung Yeon-Je/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images; Chung Sung-Jun/Getty ImagesDay to NightThe “Day to Night” Barbie doll, released in 1985, was ready for work and play. Its transitional wardrobe inspired what Ms. Robbie wore at the Seoul premiere: a Versace pencil skirt and blazer, which morphed into a sequined pink bodice and tulle skirt.This Barbie is classic. Mattel; Warner Bros.Original BarbieIn Sydney, Ms. Robbie wore a Hervé Léger bandage dress that paid tribute to the black-and-white one-piece swimsuit worn by the original Barbie. The actress, like the doll, completed her look with white sunglasses and black open-toe shoes.This Barbie is a star.Mattel; Nina Prommer/EPA, via ShutterstockSolo in the SpotlightThe strapless, sequined mermaid gown Ms. Robbie wore to the film’s Los Angeles premiere was a custom Schiaparelli recreation of the dress for the “Solo in the Spotlight” Barbie, a doll released in 1960.This Barbie is groovy. Hector Vivas/Getty ImagesTotally HairIn an abstract Pucci minidress, hot pink Manolo Blahnik heels and long, crimped blond locks, Ms. Robbie channeled the style of “Totally Hair” Barbie, introduced in 1992, at a photo call in Mexico City.This Barbie knows how to accessorize.Mattel; Hector Vivas/Getty ImagesEarring MagicBalmain made the pink leather minidress Ms. Robbie wore to the film’s Mexico City premiere. The look took inspiration from “Earring Magic” Barbie, released in 1992, down to its low-slung belt and chunky earrings.This Barbie is ready for Palm Springs.Mattel; Jon Kopaloff/Getty ImagesPink & FabulousAt a press appearance in Los Angeles, Ms. Robbie wore a custom Valentino halter dress that referenced the “Pink & Fabulous” Barbie, a doll introduced in 2015.This Barbie is polished.Mattel; Lee Jin-Man/Associated PressSparkling PinkThe bedazzled three-piece Moschino set that Ms. Robbie wore in Seoul was an updated version of the skirt suit worn by the “Sparkling Pink” Barbie, released in 1964.This Barbie is Ms. Robbie. Mattel; Steve Marcus/Reuters‘Barbie’: The MovieOf all Ms. Robbie’s Barbie-inspired outfits, the most meta might have been the pink-and-white gingham set she wore at CinemaCon in Las Vegas. The look referenced a dress Ms. Robbie wears in the “Barbie” trailer and the frock made for a new Barbie doll based on Ms. Robbie’s likeness.Elizabeth Paton More

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      Why You Should See ‘Oppenheimer’ in IMAX 70-Millimeter

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      The IMAX 70-millimeter format is usually associated with action. But Christopher Nolan says his biopic benefited from the tall image.On Friday morning, Vasili Birlidis and three friends will pile into a rented car in Gainesville, Fla., and drive 10 hours round-trip to see a movie that will be playing on thousands of screens across the country, including in their own town.But this is not just any movie. And more important, they are not traveling for just any screen.It’s “Oppenheimer,” the new biopic about the man who spearheaded the development of the atomic bomb during World War II, and Birlidis, 27, insists on seeing it at the Mall of Georgia outside Atlanta on opening day because that is the closest the movie is being shown in IMAX 70-millimeter.Many movie aficionados consider that format the gold standard, and Christopher Nolan, the writer and director of “Oppenheimer,” made it to be seen that way. But the film is available in IMAX 70-millimeter at just 30 screens in the world, 19 of them in the United States. None of those sites are in Gainesville. Or Chicago, where Ayethaw Tun, 30, lives; he is driving to Indianapolis to see it. Or Rome, where Federico Larosa, 34, lives; he is flying to London.If you see an IMAX theater option for “Oppenheimer,” odds are it is not 70-millimeter film but a digital projection. This format, in which “Oppenheimer” is available on more than 700 screens globally, has much to recommend it: high resolution, excellent sound. Like IMAX 70-millimeter, digital IMAX has a different aspect ratio than standard theaters, meaning you will get a taller image. Imagine watching E.T. and Elliott bicycling past the moon, but you also see the night sky above the moon and all the way to the ground.Film threaded through an IMAX 70-millimeter projector. The frames provide a much taller image than usual. Evelyn Freja for The New York TimesTo film buffs who are buffs, specifically, of film — of movies shot and projected with a physical, photochemical product — comparing IMAX 70-millimeter to IMAX digital, let alone standard digital, is like comparing lightning to the lightning bug.“It’s how much of the image you’re missing if you see it on another screen,” said Birlidis, a former theater manager. “To be able to see the full film the way the director intended,” he added, “and see it on film, which is a dying breed, and at one of 30 theaters on the planet — that’s pretty special.”Nolan acknowledged in an interview that the vast majority of moviegoers will not see “Oppenheimer” in what he considers the optimal way. “I am of the first or second generation of filmmakers for whom it was absolutely clear that the majority of people were going to see their work on television, after the fact,” he said. The first time he saw the 1982 film “Blade Runner,” one of his favorites, he added, was on a pirated VHS tape.But Nolan, who brought to our interview two kinds of film stock and a flip book the IMAX company made for him to illustrate film’s superior visual detail over digital, is evangelical about the format. He explained that IMAX 70-millimeter negatives are roughly 10 times the size of those for 35-millimeter film, for decades the theatrical standard that digital projection aspired to supplant, resulting in a crisper, clearer image. He can cite several IMAX 70-millimeter destinations off-the-cuff. (The AMC Metreon in San Francisco is “a wonderfully huge screen.”) He knew Brooklyn has one of the roughly 100 theaters showing “Oppenheimer” in ordinary 70-millimeter film — an “absolutely beautiful” print, he said.Despite the comparatively few theaters showing the most advanced formats, he argued, the effort to make it available at all was worth it to him as well as to audiences, who can expect to pay a premium (an evening ticket to see “Oppenheimer” in IMAX 70-millimeter film in Manhattan costs nearly $30). “It’s like getting a nice dinner rather than going to Jimmy John’s,” Julian Antos, the executive director of the Chicago Film Society, said, referring to the Midwestern sandwich chain.“The event, epic size, quality of that trickles down to the excitement for the film in all other mediums, down to when somebody’s watching on their telephone,” Nolan said. “They have different expectations of what a film that has been distributed in that way is. And so it’s always been important beyond the sheer number of screens.”The IMAX 70-millimeter projectors require specialists to run. Evelyn Freja for The New York TimesA digital projector. “Oppenheimer” will be shown this way on most screens.Evelyn Freja for The New York TimesA digital-projector lens. Nolan recommends that audiences see his movie on film.Evelyn Freja for The New York TimesIMAX has come to stand for an entire experience: IMAX certifies theaters for stadium-like seating, viewing angle and darkness. The film itself is projected onto a huge screen — the one at the AMC Lincoln Square in Manhattan is 97 feet by 76 feet — that dominates your peripheral vision.Nolan’s are practically the only feature films these days that both use IMAX film cameras and are shown using IMAX projectors. (Several recent movies shot partly with IMAX cameras, including last year’s “Nope,” were not projected on IMAX 70-millimeter.) For “Oppenheimer,” theaters are trotting out most of the 48 working IMAX 70-millimeter projectors left in the world. These mammoth machines can drag an “Oppenheimer” copy — 53 reels that together weigh 600 pounds and hold footage that would run 11 miles — across their 15,000-watt lamps. The theaters call into service 60 projectionists with special training, some of them retired. “Chris has a particular affinity — and he’s almost a unicorn in this regard — for IMAX film,” Rich Gelfond, IMAX’s chief executive, said. “Without Chris, certainly, there wouldn’t be as many as exist today.”The director working with the star, Cillian Murphy, on the set of “Oppenheimer.” Nolan is the rare filmmaker to use IMAX cameras and projection.Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures, via Associated PressAfter his 2005 action movie “Batman Begins,” screened in digitally remastered IMAX, Nolan’s follow-up, “The Dark Knight” (2008), was the first Hollywood feature shot partly with IMAX cameras. He used them for the opening set-piece, a daring bank heist masterminded by Heath Ledger’s the Joker, and showed a reel to studio executives. “They were absolutely thrilled,” Nolan said. “Once you see it, you understand it kind of in your bones.”Almost every Nolan movie since has used IMAX cameras. “Dunkirk” (2017) is roughly two-thirds IMAX, and, as in both his 2020 drama “Tenet” and now “Oppenheimer,” what is not IMAX was shot in traditional 70-millimeter. If you are seeing a Nolan film in IMAX, you might notice how the image toggles between filling up the whole screen and letterboxing to fill just the middle.Unlike many Nolan movies, “Oppenheimer” is dominated not by action spectacle, but by tense conversations. Nolan said he and his cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema, realized IMAX was “a wonderful format for faces” and even for the cramped committee room where a good deal of “Oppenheimer” takes place. “The screen disappears,” Nolan said. “So you’re in intimate space with the subjects.” (The filmmakers also helped develop the first black-and-white IMAX film expressly for certain scenes.)“It’s how much of the image you’re missing if you see it on another screen,” one fan, Vasili Birlidis, said, explaining why he’s driving hours to watch “Oppenheimer” in IMAX 70-millimeter.Evelyn Freja for The New York TimesNolan argued that his passion for how his movies are made and displayed was justified by their influence over the viewer’s ultimate experience, even if the average filmgoer might not consciously register the difference.“I have to believe I wouldn’t care about it as much if it didn’t have an emotional effect,” Nolan said. “There’s a favorite tactic of studio executives,” he added, “which is to say, Well, at the end of the day, isn’t it all about story? To which you say, Well, no, otherwise we would be distributing audiobooks or radio plays. In the last analysis, it is not all about story. It’s about the moving image, it’s about cinematic storytelling, and the greatest movies made could only be films.” More

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      ‘Unknown: Cave of Bones’ Review: Making Us Human

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      This Netflix documentary chronicles archaeological discoveries that shed light on an ancient human relative.“It challenges us to question: What does it even mean to be human?” This declaration comes from Agustín Fuentes, an anthropologist, at the beginning of “Unknown: Cave of Bones,” and it becomes a refrain throughout this documentary. It’s the kind of statement that can read as trite and grandiose — particularly in the context of a science program — but here it has a gravity that is reinforced and viscerally felt over the course of the film.Directed by Mark Mannucci, “Unknown: Cave of Bones,” focuses on a recent expedition into a South African cave that contains skeletal remains of the ancient human relative homo naledi. The archaeologists’ findings lead them to conclude that the naledi, who may have existed as far back as 335,000 years ago, ritualistically buried their dead, which was previously unheard-of for such an ancient species.As the team unearths evidence, the documentary offers a ripe window into the process of scientific discovery. Most of all, the film offers an affecting story of a species told through a single cave, where according to researchers including Fuentes and the paleoanthropologist Lee Berger, the naledi would risk life and limb to memorialize their dead.In this sense, in the experts’ telling, to challenge what makes us human is also to remind us of the most basic hallmarks of ourselves: to love, to grieve, to honor a life and to hope that we’ll see each other again.Unknown: Cave of BonesNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Hollywood Strikes: Labor Day Looms as Crisis Point

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      Ongoing strikes could disrupt the entertainment industry in fundamental ways, putting the 2024 box office and the fall broadcast lineup in jeopardy.In May, when 11,500 movie and television writers went on strike, Hollywood companies like Netflix, NBCUniversal and Disney reacted with what amounted to a shrug. The walkout wasn’t great, but executives had expected it for months. They could ride it out.The angry response from Hollywood’s corporate ranks when actors went out on Friday was dramatically different. What began as an inconvenience has become a crisis.For a start, the actors’ union is much more powerful than the writers’ guild, with a membership of about 160,000 that includes world-famous celebrities studied in the art of delivering messages to captivated audiences. The film and TV scripts that studios had banked in case of a writers’ strike have been suddenly rendered inert, deprived of actors to bring them to life. Numerous big-budget movies that had been shooting had to shut down immediately, including “Twisters,” “Venom 3,” “Deadpool 3” and “Gladiator 2.”In interviews, three studio chairs who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the labor situation, said Hollywood’s content factories could sit idle for little more than a month — roughly until Labor Day — until there would be a serious impact on the release calendar for 2024, particularly for movies. A work stoppage that stretches into September could force studios to delay big projects for next year by six months, making 2024 resemble the ghost town of recent memory set off by the Covid-19 pandemic.Studios had just gotten the release schedule looking normal again, with one big movie following another. Another significant lull in offerings may be devastating for theaters. This year’s box office has already been underwhelming and, with striking actors barred from publicity efforts, films scheduled for the second half of 2023 could be affected — especially those with awards aspirations. One of the studio executives on Friday predicted it could imperil at least one of the national cinema chains.Bobbie Bagby Ford, the chief creative officer and executive vice president of B&B Theatres, a midlevel chain with more than 50 locations in 14 states, said the strikes “have impacted the industry at a difficult time.”“The duration of the ongoing strike will play a significant role in its impact on cinemas,” Ms. Bagby Ford said. “If it remains short enough to prevent an overwhelming backlog of movies, the situation can be managed.”Greg Marcus, chief executive of the Marcus Corporation — which owns the fourth-largest theater chain in the country — agreed that the strikes were unnerving but said they were less threatening to the industry than the pandemic.“Depending on the length of time, there could be a gap in a year,” Mr. Marcus said. “But it’s not like being closed for months on end, people debating the value of theatrical, and then big gaps because of production delays.”Labor Day will arrive in a heartbeat, which would seem to prompt studios to break the standstill with the actors sooner rather than later. But there’s a problem: Studio executives were genuinely surprised by the Screen Actors Guild’s reaction to their proposed terms. They felt they had made significant concessions and were stunned by the union’s rhetoric, especially since they were able to amicably negotiate a lucrative new contract in 2020.The proposed terms included increased pay, protections around the audition process and more favorable terms for pension and health contributions. They also offered that dancers receive an on-camera rate for rehearsal days.In particular, the studios — acknowledging in private conversations that they had made a mistake by largely ignoring the writers’ demands for guardrails around artificial intelligence — proposed terms for use of A.I. that their negotiators said would protect actors.But it wasn’t enough to avert a strike. Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the actors’ chief negotiator, said in an interview on Saturday that the studio’s proposal was unreasonable. The artificial intelligence terms jeopardize “the entire field of acting,” Mr. Crabtree-Ireland said, adding that studios also weren’t offering actors revenue participation in streaming.“Those are the core issues,” Mr. Crabtree-Ireland said. “And the fact that the companies won’t move on them reflects a colonial attitude toward the workers who are the entire basis of the existence of their companies.” He said actors want to begin bargaining again.The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which negotiates on behalf of the studios, disputed Mr. Crabtree-Ireland’s characterization of its members’ attitudes, citing terms of its proposal including a “groundbreaking A.I. proposal that protects actors’ digital likenesses.”An empty red carpet for Disney’s premiere of “Haunted Mansion” in Anaheim, Calif., on Saturday.Allison Dinner/EPA, via ShutterstockThe frustration on the other side of the bargaining table was evinced by comments made on Thursday by Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, who said during an interview on CNBC that workers were being “unrealistic.” Pouring gas on the fire was an article on the show business website Deadline that quoted an anonymous studio executive, who threatened to “bleed out” writers until they “start losing their apartments.” The studio alliance said the anonymous executive did not speak for its members.Though some executives see a brief stoppage as an opportunity to slash costs, a long-term shutdown has the potential to cause havoc in an entertainment industry already buffeted by the rise of streaming and struggles at the box office.“While media execs try to spin the dual strikes as a positive as production spending stops, investors are far more concerned that this will be a long strike that hurts the performance of already completed movies and TV series,” said Rich Greenfield, an analyst at the research firm LightShed Partners.If the twin strikes drag on for just one or two months, companies will probably seize on the shutdown as an opportunity to save cash that they otherwise would have been spending on preproduction — the work done before shooting starts — and bidding on scripts, said Michael Nathanson, an analyst at SVB MoffettNathanson who focuses on the media and entertainment industries. Some of those costs will be incurred later anyway, he noted.They can also take a second look at the shows and films they have in the pipeline, pruning ones that are too costly, Mr. Nathanson said. He compared a brief strike to a halftime break for a losing team that needs to draw up a new strategy.The strike also threatens lucrative, long-term deals struck by media companies during the streaming boom, when they were willing to shell out astounding sums to lure creators like Shonda Rhimes, Ryan Murphy and J.J. Abrams. Some long-term deals have force majeure clauses, which take effect on the 60th or 90th day of a strike, allowing the studios to terminate their contracts without paying a penalty. Mr. Greenfield said those clauses could theoretically let studios get expensive deals off the books, but invoking them would jeopardize relationships with top talent in the future.If actors aren’t back to work by the fall, it will hurt network television, which needs them for new shows coveted by advertisers, Mr. Nathanson said. He added that traditional media companies based in the United States are at a disadvantage compared with Netflix, the dominant streaming company, which can take advantage of its production facilities around the world.“It’s like if the United Auto Workers go on strike, and all of a sudden you see more cars from Japan and Germany on the road,” Mr. Nathanson said.Publicly, studio executives are urging Hollywood to get back to work. Mr. Iger said last week in an interview from the annual Sun Valley conference for business titans that the strike would have a “very damaging” effect on the entertainment industry.There’s little indication, however, that a deal is close.The negotiating parties have all said they want to reach a fair agreement, placing the blame for the standstill on the other side. But they all acknowledge privately that if Hollywood doesn’t thaw out in time, everyone will get frostbite.”Making nothing as a cost-saving strategy is foolish with the fall TV season rapidly approaching and advertisers and consumers expecting new programming,” said Ellen Stutzman, the chief negotiator for the Writers Guild of America. More