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      How ‘3 Body Problem’ Created a Spectacular Disaster, With Strings Attached

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      Technical artists used a combination of digital and practical effects to slice an oil tanker into pieces in the fifth episode. Here’s how they did it.It begins slowly, almost soundlessly. As an oil tanker glides through the Panama Canal, the flow of a hose slows to a trickle. The hose has been sliced in two. Then the man holding the hose falls apart, his body severed at the knees and waist. Strands of nanofibers, each a hundredth the thickness of a human hair and strung across the canal at its narrowest point, knife through the ship, cutting smoothly through walls, through pipes, through flesh and bone. The sundered ship fans out like a deck of cards then collapses, smoldering. Every soul onboard — a thousand people, many of them children — has been killed.This harrowing sequence occurs in the fifth episode of the first season of “3 Body Problem,” the new Netflix adaptation of a popular science-fiction trilogy by the Chinese author Liu Cixin. Occurring in the first book, it lasts just a few pages and as a plot driver, it is minor. (The ship is destroyed to obtain a hard drive containing messages from an alien race.) But onscreen, as a marvel of televisual imagination and an example of a seamless integration of practical and computer-generated effects, the scene is unforgettable.“It’s basically an egg slicer going through this big tanker,” Stefen Fangmeier, a supervisor of visual effects, said. “You’ve never seen anything like that.”In the episode, nanomaterials created by Auggie Salazar (played by Eiza González as perhaps the world’s most beautiful materials physicist) are employed to deadly effect. To understand how the science might work, the series creators — David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo — consulted Matt Kenzie, a physics professor at the University of Cambridge whose father had worked with Benioff and Weiss on “Game of Thrones.”Together they imagined how nanomaterials that don’t yet exist — or exist only in minute quantities in carefully controlled lab conditions — could be deployed. The goal wasn’t necessarily realism — “It’s a science-fiction show, so in some cases the fiction has to take precedence,” Kenzie said — but a sense of plausibility given current technology.“You try not to veer into things that just look wrong or cannot be possible,” Kenzie said.The opening moments of the sequence depict the nanofibers slicing through first a hose and then the man using it.NetflixWe 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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      Stream These 12 Movies Before They Leave Netflix in April

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      A Ryan Gosling detective comedy, a Formula One racing drama and the romantic musical “Mamma Mia!” are among the movies exiting the streaming service.Fast cars, jazz drummers, time travelers, bounty hunters — you’ll find everything but the kitchen sink in this month’s roundup of noteworthy titles leaving Netflix in the United States. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)‘The Nice Guys’ (April 8)Stream it here.Ryan Gosling is having a bit of a moment — he may not have won the Oscar for best supporting actor, but he won the Oscars telecast for his performance of “I’m Just Ken” — and those who prefer the intense actor in his loosey-goosey comic mode would be wise to check out this 2016 comedy-mystery. Gosling stars as a bumbling private detective who teams up with a bone-breaker-for-hire (an uproariously gregarious Russell Crowe) to solve a convoluted missing person case. The co-writer and director is Shane Black, who helped popularize the buddy-action comedy with his “Lethal Weapon” screenplay, and subsequently perfected it here and in “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.” Keep an eye out for the up-and-comers Angourie Rice (“Mean Girls”) and Margaret Qualley (“Drive Away Dolls”) in supporting roles.‘Rush’ (April 15)Stream it here.Ron Howard spent a fair amount of his youth appearing in vroom-vroom car movies like “American Graffiti,” “Eat My Dust” and “Grand Theft Auto” — the latter marking his feature directorial debut — so it’s not surprising that he was drawn to this thrilling dramatization of the mid-70s glory days of Formula One racing. He tells the story of a rivalry between two of the sport’s stars: James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl), a study in contrasts, the matinee idol and the ugly duckling, the party boy and the teetotaler. The nuanced screenplay by Peter Morgan (who penned Howard’s earlier “Frost/Nixon,” and would go on to create “The Crown”) mines the complexities of their relationship, while the thrilling race sequences effectively place us in the driver’s seat through the hairiest moments of trading paint.‘Synchronic’ (April 15)Stream it here.Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead make brainy sci-fi pictures, small-scale indie movies like “The Endless” and “Something in the Dirt” that traffic in ideas over special effects. This 2019 effort was the closest they’ve come to a play for the cinematic mainstream, casting Marvel mainstay Anthony Mackie and “Fifty Shades” star Jamie Dornan in the leading roles. But their signature style and thematic occupations remain thankfully intact in this tale of two New Orleans paramedics who discover the mind-bending effects of a new designer drug. The central conceit is ingenious, but the filmmakers don’t just rely on its cleverness; there are genuine, human stakes, and the payoff is refreshingly poignant.‘The Hateful Eight’ (April 24)Stream it here.Quentin Tarantino followed “Django Unchained” by again riffing on the venerable Western genre, this time by crossing it with the Agatha Christie-style “locked room” mystery. He populates his story, of a poisoning in a tucked-away haberdashery during a deadly blizzard in the post-Civil War West, with faces familiar from his previous films, including Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Tim Roth and Michael Madsen; they’re joined by an Oscar-nominated Jennifer Jason Leigh, in a particularly foul-mouthed and ill-tempered mood. Tempers flare, blood is shed and vulgarities fly in typical Tarantino fashion, but in its unflinching portraiture of the racial hostilities of a splintered country, the work is by no means exclusive to its period setting. (Also leaving on April 24: the Netflix-exclusive “The Hateful Eight Extended Version,” which adds footage and breaks the film up into four one-hour episodes.)‘Malignant’ (April 26)Stream it here.James Wan started out directing bone-crunching horror pictures like “Saw,” “Insidious” and “The Conjuring” before going mainstream with “Furious 7,” “Aquaman” and its sequel. Between those two superhero flicks, he directed this gloriously unhinged, go-for-broke horror thriller, in which a young woman (Annabelle Wallis) is haunted by visions of grisly murders — visions that prove to be true, and suggest some sort of a psychic link to the brutal killer. If that sounds slightly peculiar, boy, just you wait. The screenplay by “M3GAN” writer Akela Cooper (with story assists from Wan and Ingrid Bisu) is an admirably unrestrained trip into the genre’s wilder corners, full of inventive kills, bananas story turns and cuckoo supporting characters, all rendered in a baroque, hurdy-gurdy visual style.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 Beautiful Game’ Review: A Different Kind of World Cup

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      This heart-string-tugging Netflix movie about a homeless soccer team, featuring Bill Nighy and Micheal Ward, puts the emphasis on play and uplift.It’s moderately surprising that it’s taken filmmakers two decades to concoct a heart-string-tugging underdog story out of the annual coed sport event known as the Homeless World Cup, a weeklong international competition featuring homeless soccer players.Directed by Thea Sharrock and written by Frank Cottrell Boyce, “The Beautiful Game” is an upbeat, amiable picture that, as its title suggests, puts the sport in front. Which isn’t to say the conditions of the players are ignored. Nathan (Callum Scott Howells), a recovering addict, has a particularly tough time. But the emphasis is on play and uplift. The sunny climes of Rome, where the tournament in the movie is set, help sell it.The great Bill Nighy plays Mal, the coordinator and coach for England’s team, who one afternoon spots Vinny (Micheal Ward) giving pointers to some younger players. Vinny’s got talent, but Mal seems to recognize more in him. Mal also correctly guesses that Vinny’s more or less living out of his car.The writer, Boyce, is known for more adventurous fare than this (see “Tristram Shandy,” from 2006), but this is a more conventional story. Here, Boyce steers around some clichés, but not others. For example, when Ellie (Jessye Romeo), Vinny’s ever-disappointed former partner, tells him to admit that he’s not going to be able to attend their daughter’s school event, rather than prevaricating, Vinny does just that, proudly proclaiming that he’ll go to Rome despite his initial resistance to Mal’s pitch.Peppered with funny and inspiring moments, like the charming way the South African team gets a makeup game after being held up at their airport, “The Beautiful Game” is a model of a modern “nice” movie.The Beautiful GameRated PG-13 for language, themes. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      6 Terrific Comedy Specials Worth Streaming

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      Jenny Slate, Dan Soder, Cara Connors, Tig Notaro, David Cross and Dave Attell stamp these hours with particularly rich sensibilities.Jenny Slate, ‘Seasoned Professional’(Amazon Prime Video)Wearing a bow tie, pocket handkerchief, crop top and shorts, Jenny Slate stands on a shiny circular platform on the distressed BAM Harvey theater stage. It’s an image of sharp contrasts, the kind you find in her comedy, where commonplace subjects are imbued with manic, absurd charisma. Her version of relatable is asking: “You know that one feeling when you can tell you’re going to pass away?”Whereas her debut special incorporated documentary elements, this hour effectively captures the improvisational eccentricity of her live act. Slate is blessed with a spectacularly nimble comic voice. She’s also a deft physical comedian, and her best bits show off both traits. When trying to describe the strangeness of giving birth, she likens it to the discomfort of being invited to audition for Pennywise the evil clown. Rattled, she expresses the shame at being considered for the part by flapping her hands, looking perplexed (“That couldn’t be the murdering, kidnapping, balding male clown, right?”), doing a creepy impression of the character as well as the meeting among producers that led to this offer. It’s a screeching, sputtering display of kvetching that builds runaway comic momentum.Dan Soder, ‘On the Road’(YouTube)While most specials go too long, this one, at 39 tightly funny minutes, is just right. Punchy, diverting, varied, it’s a perfect pick-me-up for your lunch hour. In clothes as casual as his delivery, Dan Soder presents himself as a laid-back people-pleaser, the kind of guy aiming for a specific kind of dumb. As he puts it, he wants to see a trailer for a new “Fast and Furious” movie and be shocked that they found a way to go faster. But make no mistake: His lightness requires heavy effort. And his comedic tool kit is full, featuring sharp impressions (Batman villain, Enrique Iglesias), melancholy notes and clever phrasemaking. In a story illustrating the childhood joy of curse words, he says this line with a genuine (and ridiculous) sense of nostalgia: “I was 8 years old, just out having a cuss.”Cara Connors, ‘Straight for Pay’(Apple TV+)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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      Review: ‘3 Body Problem’ Is a Galaxy-Brained Spectacle

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      The Netflix sci-fi adaptation has done its physics homework, even if it sometimes falls short on the humanities.The aliens who menace humankind in Netflix’s “3 Body Problem” believe in doing a lot with a little. Specifically, they can unfold a single proton into multiple higher dimensions, enabling them to print computer circuits with the surface area of a planet onto a particle smaller than a pinprick.“3 Body Problem,” the audacious adaptation of a hard-sci-fi trilogy by Liu Cixin, is a comparable feat of engineering and compression. Its first season, arriving Thursday, wrestles Liu’s inventions and physics explainers onto the screen with visual grandeur, thrills and wow moments. If one thing holds it back from greatness, it’s the characters, who could have used some alien technology to lend them an extra dimension or two. But the series’s scale and mind-bending turns may leave you too starry-eyed to notice.David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, partnering here with Alexander Woo (“The Terror: Infamy”), are best known for translating George R.R. Martin’s incomplete “A Song of Ice and Fire” fantasy saga into “Game of Thrones.” Whatever your opinions of that series — and there are plenty — it laid out the duo’s strengths as adapters and their weaknesses as creators of original material.Beginning with Martin’s finished novels, Benioff and Weiss converted the sprawling tomes into heady popcorn TV with epic battles and intimate conversations. Toward the end, working from outlines or less, they rushed to a finish and let visual spectacle overshadow the once-vivid characters.In “3 Body,” however, they and Woo have a complete story to work with, and it’s a doozy. It announces its sweep up front, opening with a Chinese scientist’s public execution during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, then jumping to the present day, when a wave of notable physicists are inexplicably dying by suicide.The deaths may be related to several strange phenomena. Experiments in particle accelerators around the world suddenly find that the last several decades’ worth of research is wrong. Brilliant scientific minds are being sent futuristic headsets of unknown provenance that invite them to join an uncannily realistic virtual-reality game. Oh, also, one night all the stars in the sky start blinking on and off.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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      ‘Game of Thrones’ Creators on Their New Show, ‘3 Body Problem’

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      In an interview, David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo discuss their latest fantastical epic, the alien space saga “3 Body Problem” for Netflix.The “Game of Thrones” creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were finishing off their hit HBO series after an eight-season run and wondering what was next. That was when the Netflix executive Peter Friedlander approached them with a trilogy of science-fiction books by the Chinese novelist Liu Cixin called “Remembrance of Earth’s Past.”“We knew that it won the Hugo Award, which is a big deal for us since we grew up as nerds,” Benioff said of the literary prize for science fiction. Barack Obama was also on record as a fan.Benioff and Weiss dipped in and were intrigued by what they found: a sweeping space invasion saga that begins in 1960s China, amid the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, and involves a superior alien race that has built a rabid cultlike following on Earth. A heady mix of science and skulduggery, featuring investigations both scientific and criminal, it felt utterly unique. “So much content right now feels like, ‘Oh, here’s another forensic show, here’s another legal thriller,’ it just feels like it’s a version of something you’ve seen,” Benioff said. “This universe is a different one.”Or, as Weiss added, “This is the universe.”Those novels are now the core of “3 Body Problem,” a new series that Benioff and Weiss created with Alexander Woo (“True Blood”). It premiered on opening night at the South by Southwest Film Festival and arrives Thursday on Netflix. The setting has changed along the way, with most of the action unfolding in London rather than China (although the Cultural Revolution is still a key element), and the characters, most of them young and pretty, now represent several countries. But the central themes remain the same: belief, fear, discovery and an Earth imperiled by superior beings. Among the heroes are the gruff intelligence chief Thomas Wade, played by the “Thrones” veteran Liam Cunningham, and a team of five young, reluctant, Oxford-trained physicists played by John Bradley — another “Thrones” star — Jovan Adepo, Eiza Gonzáles, Jess Hong and Alex Sharp. Can they save the world for their descendants?In an interview in Austin the day of the SXSW premiere, the series creators discussed life after “Thrones,” their personal ties to “3 Body Problem” and the trick to making physics sexy. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.The series is quite different from the books, particularly the settings and characters, both of which are a lot less Chinese. How did this come about?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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      ‘Irish Wish’ Review: Beware of Getting What You Want

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      Lindsay Lohan plays a book editor whose romantic dream comes true in this Netflix rom-com. But then Ed Speleers shows up in a red sports car.Lindsay Lohan’s well-loved early comedies involve her playing characters pretending to be someone else: think of the chaotic swaps of “The Parent Trap” and “Freaky Friday,” or the social climbing of “Mean Girls.”In “Irish Wish,” Lohan takes up another character who’s role-playing in her own life: Maddie, a diligent book editor who suddenly finds herself in another version of the world, where she’s marrying the handsome author she handles.The story doesn’t start that way. The guy, Paul (Alexander Vlahos), originally falls for Maddie’s friend Emma (Elizabeth Tan). Paul and Emma prepare to marry at his family’s manor in County Mayo, Ireland (cue extremely green touristic panoramas). Attending as a guest, Maddie takes a fateful walk and voices her wish that she were the bride instead. Presto — thanks to Saint Brigid, apparently — she wakes up at the manor, engaged to Paul.The movie (directed by Janeen Damian and written by Kirsten Hansen) skips over Maddie savoring the outcome of her wish, and shifts right into charming comedy around her confusion, including having no memory about how she got engaged. Maybe that’s another way of expressing that the match was never going to be a great fit. Paul is a bit of cad, and not even entertainingly awful. But hark, an alternative to this alternate reality appears with James (Ed Speleers of “You”), a photographer she meets by chance who’s forthright, sensitive and the owner of a sweet red sports car.Maddie warms to James’s wisdom, and her wedding plans with Paul begin to unravel. There’s also a worthy subplot about Maddie’s growing independence from her phone-clingy mother (Jane Seymour), but mostly the movie is a determinedly mild addition to the Lindsay Lohan “what-if” universe.Irish WishNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Paula Pell Is a Comic Scene-Stealer in ‘Girls5eva’

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      Breastchester, the rustic upstate New York residence that is home to the “Girls5eva” star Paula Pell, is a two-hour drive from Manhattan, at the end of a long stretch of road where occasional yoga studios and art galleries eventually give way to a tranquil countryside. It is secluded, but its proprietor is hardly in need of companionship.Pell’s coterie here includes her wife, Janine Brito, the comedy writer and actor who gave their mini-estate its body-positive nickname. Then there is the congregation of rescue dogs that had overtaken the living room of the main house one recent Friday morning, all scratching and barking for attention. Eloise and Verbena, Pell’s horses, were in a stable on a hill above the house.“There’s two old mares up there and one old mare down here,” Pell said theatrically, running a hand through her long silver locks.Pell has been known to nurse stunned birds back to health. She volunteered at a nearby sanctuary, where she took care of neglected pets and farm animals. “I was called the pig whisperer,” she said. “I have pictures of me sleeping on the pigs. I’d lay there and sing to them.”Her love of animals is sincere and integral to her personality, as much a part of Pell as the brassy, oblivious characters she dreamed up on “Saturday Night Live,” where she spent 18 years as a writer, and which she continues to play in movies and on TV.“Humans, always, will be imperfect,” Pell said. “They will still say I love you when they don’t. Animals, to me, are the only ones that when they love you, you totally believe it.”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