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      Prince Harry Hits the Polo Field in Front of Netflix Cameras

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      The Duke of Sussex competed in a match in South Florida the day after the announcement that he will be working on a new polo-related Netflix project.In front of rolling cameras and a crowd of nearly 300 guests, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, barreled toward one end of a polo field in South Florida on Friday.“The Duke of Sussex may score a goal!” an announcer cried through a loudspeaker at the Royal Salute Polo Challenge to Benefit Sentebale, which was attended by spectators including Serena Williams and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and by film crews with Netflix. The streamer is producing a polo-related project with Harry and Meghan that was announced on Thursday and that will be filmed in Wellington, an affluent area near Palm Beach known for its equestrian scene.The announcer and many in the crowd groaned audibly when Harry missed the shot. He was wearing a blue and white jersey with the No. 2 on it, along with a logo for Sentebale, a charitable organization he founded to support children in the African countries Lesotho and Botswana, and a logo for Royal Salute, a whisky brand and a sponsor of the invitation-only charity match involving three teams.The event took place at the Grand Champions Polo Club and its organizers included Melissa and Marc Ganzi, members of Wellington’s polo community as well as the founders of the World Polo League and the owners of the Grand Champions club. The Ganzis also own the Santa Rita Polo Farm in Wellington and the Aspen Valley Polo Club in Colorado. Mr. Ganzi is the chief executive of Digital Bridge, an investment firm formerly known as Colony Capital, where he succeeded Thomas J. Barrack Jr., the chairman of former President Donald J. Trump’s inaugural committee.Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and Serena Williams were among the spectators at the event.Rebecca Blackwell/Associated PressHarry, 39, one of the highest-profile polo players in the world, competed in the match with other stars of the sport like the renowned Argentine player Adolfo Cambiaso; the English player Malcolm Borwick, an ambassador for Royal Salute; and Nacho Figueras, the Argentine athlete who has regularly faced off against Harry on polo fields and whose career has made him a face not only of the sport but also of Ralph Lauren, a brand that has intertwined its identity with polo.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Netflix’s New Film Strategy: More About the Audience, Less About Auteurs

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      Dan Lin, the streaming service’s new film chief, wants to produce a more varied slate of movies to better appeal to the array of interests among subscribers.Back in, say, 2019, if a filmmaker signed a deal with Netflix, it meant that he or she would be well paid and receive complete creative freedom. Theatrical release? Not so much. Still, the paycheck and the latitude — and the potential to reach the streaming service’s huge subscriber base — helped compensate for the lack of hoopla that comes when a traditional studio opens a film in multiplexes around the world.But those days are a thing of the past.Dan Lin arrived as Netflix’s new film chief on April 1, and he has already started making changes. He laid off around 15 people in the creative film executive group, including one vice president and two directors. (Netflix’s entire film department is around 150 people.) He reorganized his film department by genre rather than budget level and has indicated that Netflix is no longer only the home of expensive action flicks featuring big movie stars, like “The Gray Man” with Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans or “Red Notice” with Ryan Reynolds, Gal Gadot and Dwayne Johnson.Rather, Mr. Lin’s mandate is to improve the quality of the movies and produce a wider spectrum of films — at different budget levels — the better to appeal to the varied interests of Netflix’s 260 million subscribers. He will also be changing the formulas for how talent is paid, meaning no more enormous upfront deals.In other words, Netflix’s age of austerity is well underway. The company declined to comment for this article.“Maestro,” starring and directed by Bradley Cooper, right, was produced by Netflix and cost around $80 million to make. It was nominated for seven Oscars, but did not win any.NetflixNow that Netflix has emerged as the dominant streaming platform, it no longer has to pay top dollar to lure auteur filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Alfonso Cuarón and Bradley Cooper. It also helps that some of the big studios are again allowing their films to be shown on Netflix not long after they appear in theaters, providing more content to attract subscribers. The latest list of the 10 most-watched English-language films on the service featured six produced outside Netflix.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As ‘Sex and the City’ Ages, Some Find the Cosmo Glass Half-Empty

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      As the show became more widely available on Netflix, younger viewers have watched it with a critical eye. But its longtime millennial and Gen X fans can’t quit.Most weeks, hundreds of people board a “Sex and the City” themed bus in Manhattan that takes them to the show’s most recognizable sites: Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment, her favorite brunch spot, a sex shop in the West Village. The tour usually ends with — what else? — a Cosmopolitan.“It never gets old,” said Georgette Blau, the owner of On Location Tours. It’s a three-and-a-half-hour entry into an aspirational world many of the riders had been watching for decades, she said.Twenty years since the series finale of “Sex and the City” aired, a new generation of television watchers has grown into adulthood. After all of the episodes were released on Netflix this month, media watchers wondered how the show — and Carrie’s behavior — might hold up for Gen Z.Would they be able to handle the occasional raunchiness of the show, the sometimes toxic relationships? Were the references outdated? “Can Gen Z Even Handle Sex and the City?” Vanity Fair asked. (For its part, Gen Z seems to vacillate between being uninterested and lightly appalled about what they consider to be a period piece.)The show had a very different effect on its longtime fans, many of them a generation or two older. When it aired, “Sex and the City” changed the conversation around how women dated, developed friendships and moved about the world in their 30s and 40s.Even if some of the show’s character arcs aged poorly, many of its original fans still relate to Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda, no matter how unrealistic it may have been to live on the Upper East Side with a walk-in closet full of Manolo Blahniks on the salary of a weekly newspaper columnist.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What to Watch This Weekend: A Food-Fantasy Anime

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      “Delicious in Dungeon” on Netflix combines the aesthetic pleasures of anime with the food-nerd pleasures of Serious Eats.A scene from “Delicious in Dungeon.” Yes, they eat that mushroom.Netflix“Delicious in Dungeon,” a magical-quest saga with a gleeful emphasis on cooking and biology, combines the aesthetic, kinetic pleasures of anime with the food-nerd pleasures of Serious Eats. First we find the kraken, then we slay the kraken, then we practice safety in handling seafood, then we learn about parasites and the cooking methods that kill them, then we eat.So far 15 episodes of the show, based on the manga by Ryoko Kui, are on Netflix, with new installments arriving Thursdays. As with many adventures that include cloaks and swords, “Dungeon” (in Japanese, with subtitles or dubbed) follows a ragtag crew. The angelic Falin has been eaten by the Red Dragon, and now her brother, Laios, and friends Marcille and Chilchuck are determined to find the dragon, slay it and rescue her before she can be completely digested. Along the way, Laios and friends meet Senshi, a gruff and bearded dwarf who is a gifted chef and knowledgeable ecologist. They decide that their journey will also include eating all the monsters they encounter — and lo, they encounter many monsters, including plants, fungi, creatures and spirits.How ought one truss the chicken half of a half-chicken, half-snake basilisk? How can mud-based golems be repurposed as cabbage gardens? What are the gnarly ethics of eating demi-human creatures? “Dungeon” shines as food-fantasy reverie, with Senshi explaining both the physiology of magical creatures and outlining the tastiest methods for preparing them. Cook those coin-bugs belly-side down, and make sure to swing your jar of holy water through several ghosts to get the creamiest sorbet.Anyone who has ever pored over a map at the beginning of a fantasy book or wished Wookieepedia included more about the food chain will find ample pleasures here. “World-building” is too mild a term to describe the scope of detail in every episode of “Dungeon,” though I do wish Netflix offered more-detailed translations of the many, many diagrams. The lush score and rich, evocative visual language add a sense of grandeur and occasional maturity to the show that the narrative and dialogue can’t generate on their own.I could take or leave the broad plot of “Delicious in Dungeon,” but the charms of all its little asides add up. A montage of Marcille finally convincing Senshi to bathe is so poignant and darling I watched it twice, and all the ways animation can convey tastiness make even the most indulgent live-action food shows seem barren in comparison. More

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      In ‘Ripley’ on Netflix, the Con Man Gets the Art House Treatment

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      Andrew Scott stars in a Netflix series that looks like what you might get if Antonioni or Resnais had directed a season of “The White Lotus.”Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel “The Talented Mr. Ripley” sets its dark action in a succession of colorful Italian locales: the Amalfi coast, San Remo, Rome, Palermo, Venice. Movies based on the book, like René Clément’s “Plein Soleil” (released in the United States as “Purple Noon”) and Anthony Minghella’s “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” have taken the opportunity Highsmith gave them to capitalize on sun and scenery. The audience gets its brutal murders and brazen deceit wrapped in bright visual pleasure.For “Ripley,” an eight-episode adaptation of the book that premieres on Netflix on Thursday, Steven Zaillian has decided to do without the color. Shot — beautifully — in sharply etched black and white by the Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Elswit (“There Will Be Blood”), “Ripley” offers a different sort of pleasure: the chilly embrace of the art house.Reflecting what the more high-minded filmmakers of the show’s time period (it is set in 1961) were up to, Zaillian, who wrote and directed all the episodes, takes an approach that harmonizes with Elswit’s austerity. The entire season moves along sleekly — you could say somnolently — at the same measured pace, with the same arch tone and on the same note of muted, stylish apprehension. Highsmith’s pulpy concoction, with its hair-trigger killings and sudden reversals, is run through a strainer and comes out smooth. It feels like what you might get if the early-’60s Antonioni or Resnais had directed a season of “The White Lotus.”And Zaillian appears to have asked his actors to practice a similar restraint. Their overall affect isn’t flat, exactly, but it’s within a narrow range, with physicality tightly reined in and the eyes asked to do a lot of work. When you have the eyes of Andrew Scott, the gifted Irish actor (“Sherlock,” “Fleabag”) who plays Tom Ripley, that’s not a big problem.Zaillian has been faithful, in broad outline, to Highsmith’s story. Ripley, a slacker and a con man grinding out a living in postwar New York, is sent to Italy to try to persuade a trust-funded idler to come home and take over the family business. He has only a passing acquaintance with his target, Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn), but in the first of a long series of misunderstandings and lucky strokes that go Ripley’s way, Greenleaf’s father thinks they are good friends.Highsmith’s novel is a training manual for the sociopath: Once Ripley sees the indolent lives led by Greenleaf and his sort-of girlfriend, Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning), in a picturesque fishing village on the Amalfi coast, he ups his game from tedious grifting to full-contact identity theft. Wedging himself between Dickie and Marge, he becomes obsessed — an obsession in which the lines between befriending Dickie, sponging off Dickie and becoming Dickie are progressively erased.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Demetri Martin’s Netflix Comedy Special Confronts His Veteran Career

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      In his new Netflix special, “Demetri Deconstructed,” he tries a more conceptual approach than the simplicity he was known for.A comedy career can be a tricky puzzle. You must evolve to stay relevant and interesting, but change too much and fans will revolt.The prolific stand-up Demetri Martin, 50, has always had the mind of a puzzle-maker and a knack for paradox. A characteristic joke: “I am a man of my word: That word is unreliable.” In “Demetri Deconstructed” (Netflix), the inventive seventh special of what has become a major, joke-dense career, he seems to be answering a riddle: How does an eternally boyish alternative comedian mature into middle age?Martin steers clear of common temptations like storytelling or culture war or revelation. He is now married with kids, but he’s not the kind of comic to tell jokes about parenting. After two decades, including three books and a movie, “Dean” (2016), he directed and starred in, we barely know him. The move he’s making with the new special is away from a lodestar: simplicity. His jokes always sought out absurdity in as few words as possible; the delivery was unvarnished and there was little physicality. His floppy hair and crisp bluejeans are so consistent that they have become a kind of uniform.Embracing the increasingly cinematic aesthetic of stand-up specials, his new hour, which he directed and is actually closer to 50 minutes, takes his act and wraps it around an intricate high concept. The first step to this move was in his previous special, “The Overthinker” (2018), which was funnier, if less radical. The theme there was in the title, and he illustrated it through the formal device of occasional interruptions with narration that represented his inner voice.In one bit, his narrator wondered what the cartoon sitting on an easel next to him onstage would like from the balcony, which led to a shot from farther back where you couldn’t make out the picture at all. This perspective shift was heady: It wouldn’t get a big laugh but made for a memorable critique of comedy in big rooms and a self-mocking joke about how not everyone would get him.“Demetri Deconstructed” doubles down on such experiments. Instead of occasional intrusions of thought, the conceit here is that the special takes place entirely inside his mind, allowing for a more surreal visual language. A framing device has him hooked up to an EEG of sorts with a dubious doctor who wants him to imagine a comedy show. (Think “The Matrix” but for comedians.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As ‘Ripley’ Revives the ‘Talented’ Con Man, Here Are Earlier Versions

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      “Ripley” on Netflix is the latest riff on the con-artist character the author Patricia Highsmith invented in the 1950s. Here’s a look at the earlier versions.One of fiction’s most famous impostors returns on Thursday with the debut of Netflix’s “Ripley,” the latest adaptation of a character invented in the 1950s by the author Patricia Highsmith. In eight episodes, all written and directed by the Oscar-winning screenwriter Steven Zaillian (“Schindler’s List,” “The Night Of”), a classic chameleon changes colors yet again, returning to a few core elements of Highsmith’s original creation while also boosting the creepiness quotient.Over nearly seven decades, Tom Ripley has appeared in five books by Highsmith, five films, multiple television episodes and even a radio show. He has been played by interpreters as varied as Matt Damon, Alain Delon, Dennis Hopper, John Malkovich and now, Andrew Scott. What has made him so enduring?The details change, but the foundation of the character remains the same: a con artist who becomes a killer, someone so enamored by upper-class comfort that, once he experiences it, will do anything to hang on to it. Ripley dreams of a better life for himself, which makes him relatable. What makes him fascinating is his willingness to go to murderous lengths to secure it.As a new version of Tom Ripley arrives, here is a look at how this grifter has evolved over the generations.The BooksThe character debuted in Patricia Highsmith’s “The Talented Mr. Ripley” in 1955.By the time Highsmith created Ripley, she was already an accomplished writer. She burst onto the scene in 1950 with her first novel, “Strangers on a Train,” which would be adapted into the Alfred Hitchcock film a year later. Other acclaimed Highsmith works include “The Two Faces of January,” made into a 2014 film starring Viggo Mortensen; and “Deep Water,” adapted into a 2022 film starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas. Using the pen name Claire Morgan, Highsmith also wrote “The Price of Salt,” renamed “Carol” for Todd Haynes’s 2015 film adaptation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Netflix in April

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      “Sex and the City” and a new adaptation of “The Talented Mr. Ripley” highlight the new offerings this month.Every month, Netflix adds movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of April’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)‘Sex and the City’ Seasons 1-6Starts streaming: April 1The latest HBO original to land on Netflix is one of the network’s most popular and influential series: a fast-paced and quippy dramedy that helped prove a cable TV show could be at the center of the cultural conversation. Adapted from a Candace Bushnell newspaper column by the writer-producer Darren Star (in close collaboration with the writer-director Michael Patrick King), “Sex and the City” premiered in 1998. It stars Sarah Jessica Parker as the columnist Carrie, who meets up regularly with her friends Samantha (Kim Cattrall), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) to dine at New York hot spots and dish about their love lives. With its romantic melodrama, raunchy jokes and fabulous fashions, this show has been a comfort watch for women and men for over 25 years.‘Ripley’Starts streaming: April 4The writer-director Steven Zaillian becomes the latest filmmaker to adapt Patricia Highsmith’s novel “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” turning the book into an eight-episode mini-series that aims to capture more of the nuances of Highsmith’s slippery antihero. Andrew Scott plays Tom Ripley, a small-time New York con artist who is hired by a shipping magnate to travel to Italy and check in on the idle heir Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn), a man Ripley barely knows. Clumsily at first — and then more confidently — Ripley integrates himself into the life of Dickie and his girlfriend, Marge (Dakota Fanning), before mapping out a way that he could live the couple’s jet-setting lifestyle forever. Shot in black-and-white, Zaillian’s “Ripley” takes the character back to his pulp-noir roots, emphasizing the dark desperation at his core.‘Scoop’Starts streaming: April 5In 2019, Prince Andrew tried to quell a growing scandal about his relationship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein by sitting for an hourlong TV interview with BBC Two’s “Newsnight.” The interview went horribly for the prince, who suspended his royal duties not long after it aired. The movie “Scoop” is about that bombshell “Newsnight” special. Rufus Sewell plays Prince Andrew, while Gillian Anderson plays Emily Maitlis, the journalist who calmly, persistently grilled him. The director Philip Martin and the screenwriter Peter Moffat cover the prep that the royal family and the Maitlis team put in before the conversation. “Scoop” though is primarily about Sam McAlister (Billie Piper), the producer who landed the interview by persuading all concerned that, whatever the outcome, this was a story that needed to be told, for the sake of Epstein’s victims.‘The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem’Starts streaming: April 5During the 20-plus years that 4chan has been online, the website has rarely gone more than a few months without being at the center of some radical social movement — or some disturbing controversy. The directors Giorgio Angelini and Arthur Jones (who previously collaborated on the documentary “Feels Good Man,” about the Pepe the Frog meme) try to make sense of 4chan’s turbulent existence in “The Antisocial Network,” a film that traces how some adolescent jokes and pranks evolved into conspiracy theories, public protests and cyberterrorism. Through interviews with some of the most influential 4chan (and 8chan) users, Angelini and Jones end up covering topics as far-reaching and significant as Rickrolling, Anonymous, Occupy Wall Street, Gamergate, QAnon and the Jan. 6 riots.‘City Hunter’Starts streaming: April 25Tsukasa Hojo’s “City Hunter” franchise started as a manga serial in 1985 and has since been adapted into multiple anime series and animated movies, along with video games and a few live-action movies. The latest live-action film comes from the director Yuichi Satoh and the screenwriter Tatsuro Mishima, who make it easy on “City Hunter” newcomers by starting at the beginning of the story, when the suave private detective Ryo Saeba (Ryohei Suzuki) begins working with his late ex-partner’s tomboy sister Kaori Makimura (Misato Morita). The two of them patrol the flashy, modern streets of Tokyo’s Shinjuku area, looking cool as they offer help to the helpless.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More