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      Sundance, Once a Hotbed for Film Deals, Tries to Find Its Footing

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      The kind of independent movies that the festival showcases have struggled at the box office, spurring worries about what the market would be like this year.The past two years have been a time of major upheaval in the film business — and at the Sundance Film Festival.Between the diminishing audiences in movie theaters, the consolidation of studios and the shrinking amount being spent on content after the streaming giants had their wrists slapped by Wall Street, few were certain about what kind of market there would be for new films at the current Sundance — typically a hotbed of acquisitions for the brightest lights in the independent film world.Even the festival’s opening-night gala last Thursday, its first in person since 2020, felt tempered by the reality facing movies.“These last few years have brought extraordinary challenges for our industry, along with opportunities to respond to the needs of artists and reach audiences in new ways,” Sundance’s chief executive, Joana Vicente, told those assembled. “And as many of this year’s films illustrate, this is a moment when so much is at risk — the health of our planet, human rights, women’s rights, freedom of expression and democracy itself.”Not exactly a celebratory introduction.So on Monday, a collective sigh of relief rose through Utah’s Wasatch mountain range, where, within two hours, two high-profile films that had premiered at the festival found eager buyers. Netflix plunked down $20 million to take the worldwide rights to the thriller “Fair Play,” while Searchlight Pictures spent just under $8 million for the musical-theater-geek mockumentary “Theater Camp,” starring Ben Platt.A day later, Apple TV+ nabbed the musical drama “Flora & Son” for $20 million, and the indie distributor A24 bought the Australian horror film “Talk to Me” for a wide theatrical release this summer.Despite the deals, the state of movies and how audiences will watch them remained an underlying worry.The Race to Rule Streaming TVA Changing Medium: A decade of streaming has transformed storytelling and viewing habits. But we may be starting to hit that transformation’s limits.Netflix: Reed Hastings, one of the founders of Netflix, said that he was ceding his co-chief executive title and becoming the company’s executive chairman.Crime Shows: Just a few years ago, it looked as though old-fashioned police and court procedurals might not make the leap to the streaming future. Now, they aren’t just surviving, they are thriving.AMC’s Troubles: The company has struggled to earn enough from streaming to make up for losses from its traditional cable business. It is a widespread issue in the industry.“Everybody is wringing their hands about the industry,” said Vinay Singh, the chief executive of Archer Gray, a production company whose film “The Persian Version” was shown in competition at Sundance. “A lot of people have lost their jobs. There are cost-cutting measures happening on spending content. People are worried.”Indeed, no one seems to know any longer what kind of movie is worthy of theatrical release and what should be sent straight to a streaming service. Distribution and marketing executives have to figure out not only how to sell a movie to an increasingly fickle audience but also how to navigate the needs of corporate parents, often giant conglomerates whose business priorities are constantly in flux.Plus, there is always the fear of succumbing to “Sundance Fever”— making lightheaded decisions because of the high-altitude fervor of the audience. Over the decades, both streaming services and theatrical distributors have overpaid for films at the festival. Harvey Weinstein spent $10 million for “Happy, Texas” in 1999 only to see it flop at the box office. Focus Features paid $10 million for “Hamlet 2” in 2008, and in 2019, Amazon scooped up three movies for a combined $41 million while New Line paid $15 million for “Blinded by the Light,” only to have it gross $12 million. And that was when the industry was healthier.Now, with so much riding on every decision, a positive response to a film at Sundance is no longer enough to guarantee that it will attract a theatrical distribution deal.Netflix paid $20 million for “Fair Play,” starring Alden Ehrenreich and Phoebe Dynevor.Sundance Institute“I’d like to believe this movie could have done well in theaters,” said Ram Bergman, a producer of “Fair Play,” one of the festival’s most acclaimed and sought-after films. But despite the enthusiasm from the traditional studios, he said, there was little faith that the $5 million R-rated thriller, starring Phoebe Dynevor (“Bridgerton”) and Alden Ehrenreich (“Solo: A Star Wars Story”), could succeed opposite the superhero spectacles without a prohibitively expensive marketing budget.“You are dealing with a lot of the studios that have convinced themselves that these movies cannot really do well in theaters,” Mr. Bergman said. “It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. And if a streamer, let’s say Netflix, really wants to get behind it and treat it as one of, like, their high-priority movies, it’s hard to compete.”Therein lies the challenge. Most filmmakers come to Sundance with the expectation that their film will be shown on big screens across the country. The reality is that their movies are exactly the kinds that are performing poorly at the box office: small, inexpensive, complex and lacking movie stars.Add the fact that independent chains like ArcLight Cinemas and Landmark Theatres, which were the traditional supporters of indie fare, have closed and the calculus required to make these films successful becomes even more challenging.Searchlight is counting on fans of Mr. Platt (“Dear Evan Hansen”) and live theater in general to power “Theater Camp,” which celebrates all those who dream of hitting it big on Broadway. The thinking goes that if Mr. Platt can sell out Madison Square Garden, as he has with his one-man show, he can draw audiences to a movie theater. (However, Mr. Platt’s last film endeavor, the adaptation of “Dear Evan Hansen,” grossed only $15 million at the domestic box office.)“This is a crowd-pleasing movie, and it was designed with an audience in mind from inception,” said Erik Feig, chief executive of PictureStart, one of the producers of “Theater Camp.” “Yet we didn’t mitigate our risk with presales. We took a flier. We did our research into the market, but comparisons change like every 90 seconds, so you kind of build something for a business model that two weeks later is extinct.”Other buzzy projects did not generate the kind of sales that Sundance, which ends on Sunday, is normally known for. “Cat Person” pleased crowds at the festival, but the critics excoriated it, particularly for veering away from the viral New Yorker short story it was based on. “Magazine Dreams” features an Oscar-caliber performance by Jonathan Majors (“Lovecraft Country”), but he plays a character who spirals into madness and begins carrying a loaded gun — a particularly difficult film to buy in the wake of the two recent mass shootings in California.And the documentary “Justice,” which turns an investigative eye toward Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court appointment and was added to the festival’s lineup at the last minute with much fanfare, disappointed critics, too.“Magazine Dreams,” starring Jonathan Majors, proved to be a difficult sell because of its dark subject matter.Sundance InstituteThe “Justice” filmmakers say they have received new tips, since their film was announced, that they plan to follow up on. It’s just not clear that the film, which was self-funded by the director, Doug Liman, who is best known for glossy action movies, will find a distributor ready to back an incomplete project.Despite the challenges, people were thrilled to be back in person at Sundance.“I feel a deep sense of gratitude to be in this room watching a movie,” Davis Guggenheim said at the premiere of his documentary “Still,” about Michael J. Fox and his protracted battle with Parkinson’s disease.“Theater Camp” brought its actors onstage to perform. The documentary “Going Varsity in Mariachi” was supplemented by a live performance by Mariachi Juvenil de Utah, and the cast of “Flora & Son” rapped one of its songs. The screenings were often sold out, and a film’s reception could be judged on the spot by the number of standing ovations it received. Still, buyers were being much more selective.“I think it’s natural that we’re seeing things not happen overnight,” Mr. Singh of Archer Gray said. “I think that’s fine. I actually think it might be a sign of health, because there’s so much stuff in play.”Mr. Feig echoed that sentiment.“It’s definitely a challenging market,” he said. “For each of these movies that has landed buyers, there probably weren’t 25 different offers for each one of these. There may be more of a handful. You just have to kind of build them sensibly knowing what your potential options are.”He also noted the festival’s combination of established names and rising talent, adding with more than a dash of optimism: “This is why Sundance is so amazing — it’s a discovery of fresh new voices. You saw that with ‘Fair Play.’ You see it with ‘Talk to Me.’ You saw that with ‘Theater Camp.’ All brand-new filmmakers, with their very first movie, and they broke through, they made noise, and they found studio partners.” More

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      ‘RRR’ Picks Up Oscar Nomination for Best Song

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      Pop quiz: What are the three R’s?They aren’t reduce, reuse, recycle — this awards season, one of the hottest topics of conversation has quickly become the Telugu-language Indian action spectacular “RRR,” or “Rise, Roar, Revolt,” which picked up an Oscar nomination for best song on Tuesday.The movie, which stars two of India’s most popular actors — Ram Charan and N.T. Rama Rao Jr. — is set in Delhi during the early 1920s and follows two patriotic but philosophically opposed men who team up to rescue a kidnapped girl (Twinkle Sharma) from British colonial officials (Alison Doody and Ray Stevenson).The film was already a worldwide box office success when it was released in March — it was directed by one of India’s most successful filmmakers, S.S. Rajamouli, with a whopping $72 million budget — and grossed $65 million during its opening weekend.But now, it has become the rare Indian hit to catch on with American viewers outside the Indian diaspora, thanks to word-of-mouth social media buzz and an unusual theatrical rerelease strategy.After the film, originally distributed by Sarigama Cinemas, initially played at 1,200 screens across the country in March — and began streaming on Netflix in late May — Dylan Marchetti, the president of the distributor Variance Films, saw its potential crossover appeal when he watched it repeatedly with enthusiastic audiences.So Variance got in touch with Sarigama, and they took the rare step of relaunching the film — sold to moviegoers as an “encoRRRe” — which led to its breakthrough in the United States.Speaking to The Times in August, Cristina Cacioppo, who programmed “RRR” at the Nitehawk Prospect Park in Brooklyn, said it drew moviegoers in the 20-to-30 age range, most from outside the Indian diaspora.“There was an overall wave of joy throughout,” Cacioppo told The Times. “You could feel the room smiling, the jaws dropping.” (More than three hours of Charan and Rao wrestling tigers; pulling off a daring bridge rescue involving a motorcycle, a horse and a flaming train car; and schooling British partygoers as they dance in perfect synchronization in matching suspenders will do that.)Josh Hurtado, a consultant at the independently run Potentate Films who collaborated with Sarigama and Marchetti on a one-night-only theatrical revival of “RRR” in June, told The Times that many attendees praised the film for the same reasons that had previously discouraged them from watching new Indian movies: “long run times, song and dance numbers, and ridiculous action” he said. “People come out saying they wish that this three-hour movie were longer.”The film also gained a robust afterlife on TikTok, with its earwormy syncopated dance number “Naatu Naatu” (Telugu for “Native Native”), becoming a viral hit thanks to Charan and Rama Rao’s playful syncopated dance moves and infectious singing. (The lyrics are by Chandrabose, while M.M. Keeravani composed the music.)After winning a Golden Globe for best original song earlier this month, as well as a Critics Choice Award for best foreign language film and a New York Film Critics Circle award for best director for Rajamouli, the film has its sights squarely trained on the big one: a best song Oscar for Charan and NTR Jr.’s joyous extravaganza of shoulder rolls, arm pumps and hook steps. More

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      A Wednesday Addams Contest Brings the Fans

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      At a Brooklyn club, fans of the Netflix series “Wednesday” showed off their takes on the pigtailed heroine’s signature moves in a midnight competition.On a Brooklyn street dotted with auto repair garages, a line of young women wearing black ruffled dresses, black chokers, little black backpacks and Doc Martens waited in the cold outside a club called Quantum on Friday night. They were united in their fandom for the Netflix series “Wednesday” and their adoration for the show’s macabre protagonist, Wednesday Addams.The club, which is beside the Gowanus Expressway, was hosting an Addams Family-themed party dedicated to the dance that Wednesday performs in the show’s fourth episode at a prom-like event at Nevermore Academy, a boarding school for outcasts, vampires and werewolves. The angular dance is characterized by unpredictable arm flails and head jerks, and executed to the 1981 psychobilly classic “Goo Goo Muck,” by the Cramps. It has inspired endless fans to post bedroom tributes on TikTok.Jenna Ortega, the 20-year-old former Disney star who plays Wednesday, choreographed the moves herself by studying footage of goths dancing at clubs in the 1980s and borrowing ideas from performers like Bob Fosse, Siouxsie Sioux, Lene Lovich and Denis Lavant.She has also cited the gyrations of Lisa Loring, who played Wednesday in the 1960s TV series “The Addams Family.” The New York Times dance critic Gia Kourlas has written of Ortega’s performance: “It’s the defiant dance of a nonconformist. It’s a celebration of weird.”The crowd at Quantum Brooklyn watches the Addams Family-themed dance competition.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesA cardboard cutout of the night’s role model has a moment in the spotlight.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesAs the club filled up with Wednesdays, there was a sense of anticipation in the crowd: At midnight, on an elevated runway, there would be a contest to determine which Wednesday had mastered the dance best.Wednesday Addams, High School SleuthJenna Ortega stars as the Addams Family’s death-obsessed young daughter in Netflix’s new series “Wednesday.”Review: “Perhaps for the first time, an Addams Family story pushes Wednesday toward being more like everyone else,” our critic writes.Inhabiting Wednesday: Ortega, a former Disney star, plays a teenage version of the character, who is sent to a boarding school for outcasts. This is what she said about taking on the role.Iconic Moves: Ortega’s Wednesday dance is a viral sensation, but why? Disarming and defiant, it’s the dance of a nonconformist.Along for the Ride: Joy Sunday, who plays a siren and popular girl who clashes with Wednesday, shares glimpses of her life in 2022 through seven photos in her camera roll.A big screen behind the D.J. booth showed clips of the old black-and-white TV series, the Addams Family movies from the 1990s and the Netflix show. The event’s organizer (an outfit called Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger Presents) had promoted the party with a program that promised a playlist of “sad girl bops,” which ended up meaning songs by Lana Del Rey and My Chemical Romance. On the stage, the hip-hop artist Sl!ck performed a Wednesday-inspired rap.The Quantum dance floor became a fashion runway for all manner of Wednesday Addams costume interpretations: outfits featured black-and-white socks, polka dot shirts, leather coats, metal skull earrings, thick-soled boots with silver spider buckles and brothel creepers. But there were a few spots of color in the crowd, in the form of fans dressed as Enid Sinclair, Wednesday’s jovial roommate, who wears floral skirts, pink sweaters and berets.Between dances, fans reflected on Ms. Ortega’s performance, as well as why a character conceived in the 1930s by the New Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams is now thriving as a mascot for the weird almost 90 years later.“What Wednesday’s dance represents is that it’s not about trying to prove you’re different,” said Melanie Allen-Harrison, 32, who wore a dark baggy coat and a silver pendant necklace. “It’s about knowing that you are and owning that.”Melanie Allen-Harrison, left, and Rosalinda Rodriguez were among the revelers.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesAriella Van Cooten, 31, a middle-school teacher who had dyed her hair pink and green, said: “Now it’s cool to be goth because of the show. People used to look at me funny because I shopped at Hot Topic.” She added, “I think Wednesday has endured as a character because she’s not afraid to be bold, even if that means drinking poison.”The D.J., Cip Cipriano, who wore a Wednesday Addams muscle shirt, said: “I was a gay guido from Yonkers who had to move to San Francisco. We’re drawn to Wednesday because so many of us know what it feels like to be an outcast. And not only is Wednesday a black sheep, she’s the black sheep of the Addams Family.”Finally, midnight arrived, and the Wednesday dance contest was at hand.In homage to a pivotal “Wednesday” scene, a clubgoer squirted fake blood at dance-off competitors.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesPetra Hyde does the Wednesday dance.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesSix contestants climbed onto the stage. The reverb guitar twang of “Goo Goo Muck” began to thunder through the club’s loudspeakers. As the crowd cheered, the contestants mimicked Ms. Ortega’s moves while imitating her character’s signature cold stare.In the final round, water guns were given to audience members so that they could douse the contestants in red paint — a homage to the scene following Ms. Ortega’s dance, in which some local teenagers stage a cruel prank on the Nevermore students by pumping a blood-like liquid into the school’s sprinkler system.The winner was picked democratically: whoever received the loudest applause. It was Jeffrey Pelayo, a 23-year-old fashion stylist who had dressed up as Wednesday’s father, Gomez Addams. He was wearing a blazer and tie, and his smudged pencil mustache was drawn in mascara. He was given a tiara and a drink ticket as his prize.And the winner is … Gomez? Jeffrey Pelayo drew the biggest cheers at Quantum.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesAs night waned into early morning at the club, the Wednesday crowd began to thin out and the staff diverted its attention to customers who wanted to slam shots and party to hits by Kesha and Katy Perry. The dance floor, in other words, turned into the kind of scene that Wednesday Addams would despise. Bombarding the stage, a gang of college girls screamed along to the lyrics of Rihanna’s “We Found Love” while a couple of guys loitered at the bar building up their liquid courage.And yet, as the club devolved into a fratty spectacle, a pair of last-call Wednesdays were dancing hard in a dark corner of the floor, stomping their boots and moshing around in circles, their little black backpacks bobbing up and down. They moved with defiance, dancing strangely without a care. More

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      ‘Emily in Paris’ Star Would Like Your Paris Tips

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      Lily Collins explores the city, and the world, with the help of Monocle, word searches and Norwegian coffee.Lily Collins has been “Emily in Paris” for so long that she’s expected to be a Parisian authority. Three seasons into her run as Emily Cooper, an American marketing executive on assignment in the City of Light, she spends large portions of the year in France and is constantly asked for recommendations. But she’s there to work.“I don’t have as much free time as I wish that I had to explore,” she said in a phone interview, which she conducted from her car, parked next to the road in Los Angeles before an appointment. “I’m constantly discovering new places and asking for people’s lists because I like the non-tourist spots.”Collins, 33, has been building her own list by scootering along the Seine, making regular visits to Canal Saint-Martin, and getting to know the side streets around the Clignancourt flea market. But, she admits, one of the best sights in the city is still its most famous.“Whenever I’m in the city and I look up and I see the Eiffel Tower, it doesn’t matter how many times I’ve seen it, I still get giddy,” she says. “It’s such a feat.”Season 3 of “Emily in Paris” began streaming on Netflix last month. Collins spoke with us about Five Minute Journals, the concept of hygge and other things she gravitates to at home, in Paris and beyond. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Greeting Cards I have a box where I keep cards that I’m saving for people. Some are over 10 years old. I have people in mind and I’ll get them cards knowing that one day they’re going to have a 25th birthday and they will need this card. I love the idea that a single piece of paper can say so much about how you’ve been thinking of someone.2. Self-Portraits It’s so interesting when an artist or a photographer paints, draws or takes a self-portrait because it’s such an inside look into how someone views themselves. The late photographer Vivian Maier is a really beautiful example.3. The Five Minute Journal It gives you easy prompts to answer and helps you be aware of how you can view things in multiple different ways. Instead of saying the crap that happened to you that day and how you were so upset about something, you get to look at how you could have handled certain things throughout the day better, what you were grateful for, what you’re excited about and what’s good in your life. You also write daily affirmations and things that you would like to accomplish. It’s beautiful to look back to previous journals and see how far you’ve grown.4. Treehotel One of the bucket-list places that I’d been wanting to stay in was the Treehotel in Swedish Lapland, which is basically a collection of beautiful tree houses. Each tree house looks like something different — a bird’s nest, a U.F.O., a steel dragonfly. My husband booked us one during our honeymoon that’s high in the trees. Staying there, you get to feel like an adventurer and you get that little kid feeling that I’ve always loved.5. Word Searches I have always carried a word search book with me on flights. It’s a way to turn my mind off. They put me in a kind of meditative trance. Also, I get a weird sense of accomplishment when I complete one.6. Dried Flowers When we go to farmers’ markets, I always end up finding amazing dried flowers. I sometimes keep them for years so I can look at different flowers and remember where I got them. If I get them from a farmers’ market in a different city or in a different country, I push them in books and bring them back. They’re such romantic mementos.7. “Van Go” On the Magnolia Network show “Van Go,” Brett Lewis converts things like vans and sprinters into homes, stores, food trucks — whatever people want. It’s an interesting way to see what people need, what they want and what their aesthetics are. It’s also a look at what the core necessities are when you pare things down and what can be done in such a small space.8. Hygge I’ve always been someone who loves being cozy: cozy socks, my grandma’s cozy sweater, a fire going, playing a game with friends or family — being cozy in an environment is so important to me. When I learned about the Danish concept, hygge, I felt seen, like, oh my God, someone gets me.9. Coffee I look for coffee shops everywhere I go. In a foreign city, they can provide a sense of home and a sense of comfort. There’s a Norwegian coffee brand called Tim Wendelboe that I’ve discovered on our many trips to Denmark. It’s probably the most incredible coffee I’ve ever had.10. Monocle When we’re traveling, we sometimes schedule our trips around things we read about in Monocle magazine. Art, fashion, you name it, they have the places where residents go and that celebrate local artisans. It also can help dictate where we go next. If there’s a place that is so cool and has all these amazing places to visit that we didn’t know about, maybe that’s the next destination. More

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      Netflix's ‘The Lying Life of Adults’ Depicts Ferrante’s Naples

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      A new adaptation of the novel “The Lying Life of Adults” features formidable female protagonists and an Italy with distinct social classes.Like the novel by Elena Ferrante on which it is based, the opening line of Netflix’s “The Lying Life of Adults” is spoken by the precocious teenage protagonist, Giovanna, who is listening at the door while her parents talk about her.“Before leaving home, my father told my mother that I was ugly,” Giovanna says, adding forlornly that he had compared her to his estranged sister Vittoria, an insult so vile that it prompted Giovanna’s mother to counter: “Don’t say that. She is a monster.”Thus the viewer is introduced to Giovanna (Giordana Marengo) and Vittoria (Valeria Golino), fitting new entries in the pseudonymous Italian author’s rich stable of formidable female protagonists. Brought to life onscreen in a recent six-episode adaptation of Ferrante’s 2019 novel, they are as complex and contradictory as Lila and Lenù, the protagonists of Ferrante’s four best-selling novels chronicling their friendship, a version of which appeared in HBO’s “My Brilliant Friend.”In “The Lying Life of Adults,” too, Naples provides a socially textured setting for this coming-of-age story, which propels Giovanna from the innocence of childhood into the world of adults’ complex and contradictory compromises. Set in the mid-1990s, the series underscores the slippery social standing of Italian girls, and women, seeking to find a footing in a world where men call the shots.The show is “rightly” Ferrante’s world, according to Domenico Procacci, the chief executive of Fandango, an Italian entertainment company that produced “Lying Life” for Netflix, who spoke at a news conference presenting the series in Rome last month. Fandango also co-produced “My Brilliant Friend” with HBO, RAI, the Italian national broadcaster, and others.From left, Giovanna (Marengo), Angela (Rossella Gamba) and Beniamino (Antonio Corvino) in the series. The girls begin experimenting with the freedoms offered by Naples.Eduardo Castaldo/NetflixIn “Lying Life,” Giovanna navigates two distinct Neapolitan neighborhoods so drastically diverse that it is hard to believe they belong to the same city. She lives in the Rione Alto, an upper-middle-class neighborhood mostly developed in the 1960s and ’70s capping the Vomero hill with breathtaking views of the Gulf of Naples. “Outside of the Vomero, the city scarcely belonged to me,” Giovanna says in the novel.Inside the World of Elena FerranteThe mysterious Italian writer has won international attention with her intimate representations of Neapolitan life, womanhood and friendship. Beginner’s Guide: New to Elena Ferrante’s work? Here’s a breakdown of her most important writing.English-Language Translator: The work of Ann Goldstein has helped catapult Ferrante to global fame. Humility is a hallmark of her approach.‘My Brilliant Friend’: The HBO series based on Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels is a testament to the elusive writer’s ability to create inscrutable characters.‘The Lying Life of Adults’: The novel, which was published in English in 2020 and is now being adapted into a TV series by Netflix, is “a more vulnerable performance, less tightly woven and deliberately plotted,” our critic writes.But in her determination to meet her aunt, Giovanna opens her world to the lower city neighborhood that her father, Andrea (Alessandro Preziosi) escaped, but that Vittoria still inhabits: a run-down district called Pascone in the novel, which was shot in the formerly industrial rough-and-tumble Poggioreale neighborhood.“I don’t think there is any city in Italy where the differences between social classes are as evident as Naples, and at times where this difference counts so little,” Francesco Piccolo, one of the show’s four screenwriters, said at the news conference. In the series, viewers who do not speak Italian might miss the fact that the contrast is underscored by the difference in the Neapolitan dialect spoken between the two neighborhoods. In the wealthy Vomero, the dialect is spoken “for pleasure, for fun,” Piccolo said, while in the other, it is “a totally emotional dialect.”Getting Vittoria right, her movements as well as her dialect, weighed on Golino, who may be best remembered by American audiences for her star turn in the films “Rain Man” and “Hot Shots!” She, too, grew up in the Vomero neighborhood, on “the good side of the tracks,” she said in a telephone interview, and confessed to never having seen the “Naples of Vittoria,” to the point that she “had to go find it, understand it.”A voice coach taught what was to her essentially a new language. “Even though I am Neapolitan, I had never spoken in that way,” Golino said. “It was a sound that I had heard in the city, but it was never part of my world.” To embody the earthy bawdiness of Vittoria “was difficult,” the actress said. “I had to study the words, a way of moving, a way of inhabiting space,” which was foreign to her. “So I spent a lot of time in Naples, which is my city, but Naples is made of many layers,” she said.Golino, center, was nervous about getting the character of Vittoria right. “I had to study the words, a way of moving, a way of inhabiting space,” the actor said.Eduardo Castaldo/NetflixIn turn, Marengo, 19, who made her screen debut as Giovanna after being selected from among 3,000 girls auditioning for the role, said Golino had nurtured her throughout the series. “She gave me a lot of advice,” Marengo said, and the two created a strong bond that Marengo thought was apparent on screen, she said in a telephone interview.“We really helped each other,” Golino said. “We were both in the same state of mind. She because it was her first time, I because I was constantly afraid of making a mistake.”Marengo said she had felt the responsibility of portraying the protagonist of a story that evolves entirely from Giovanna’s perspective. “At first, I was anxious that I wouldn’t be able to make it,” she said. But the director and the crew made sure she did not feel that responsibility, “and that really calmed me down,” she said.In the novel, Giovanna’s inward gaze is even more pronounced. But Edoardo De Angelis, the show’s director, said transposing that inner rumination into visual form was a natural extension of Ferrante’s writing.“Every single word contains an evocation that suggests and invokes a multitude of images,” De Angelis said in a telephone interview. “The words always suggested the path to take because Ferrante’s evocations are always very concrete, even if they begin with an interior thought.”De Angelis’s Naples involves a cacophony of colors and sounds, the underground music scene in the city’s avant-garde community centers and the nostalgia of summer festivals hosted by Italy’s once-powerful Communist Party.Ferrante, the famously elusive author who has never officially made her identity public, has a screenwriting credit, and De Angelis, who is also credited with writing the script with Piccolo and Laura Paolucci, said that correspondence with Ferrante had involved “many letters to find a common language.”In transposing the novel to television, the story also took an unexpected turn, a plot twist that is not in the novel but that Ferrante signed off on, De Angelis said: She was well aware that moving from the pages to the screen “was an occasion to express elements that were only suggested and left to the imagination in the novel,” while on the screen, “the imagination becomes image,” offering the possibility of “more radical choices.”These radical choices open new avenues, and the episodes end with a series of unresolved questions to be answered, perhaps, in a possible sequel. (To this reader, the ending of the novel also suggested that a second book could follow.)Just as Golino worried about doing the character of Vittoria justice, “our series aims to show the authenticity of Italy, even outside of stereotypes,” Eleonora Andreatta, affectionately known as “Tinny,” the vice president of Italian originals at Netflix, said at the news conference. She also worked on the “My Brilliant Friend” series in her previous job at RAI.“Portraying a character that is not edifying, in which you draw out the human, the real human that makes mistakes,” and who was “disobedient” was one of the reasons that she had accepted the role, “even though it frightened me,” Golino said in the telephone interview.“A good actor doesn’t have to be a good liar, but usually they are,” she said at the news conference, eliciting laughs. “If they have to tell a lie, a good actor tells it very well.” More

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      Stream These 7 Movies and Shows Before They Leave Netflix in January

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      Among the gems leaving for U.S. subscribers next month are two irreverent TV adaptations and the last movie from one of the most successful filmmakers of the 1970s.Streaming services typically clear the deck at the end of the calendar year, changing out significant chunks of their movie and television libraries for new titles, and December 2022 was no exception — not leaving a whole lot for Netflix in the United States to lose in January. But there are a handful of worthwhile items to stream while you can, including an unconventional biopic, two irreverent TV adaptations, two sleeper series and the last movie from one of the most successful filmmakers of the 1970s. (Dates reflect the final day a title is available.)‘CHIPS’ (Jan. 12)This R-rated buddy comedy from the actor-turned-filmmaker Dax Shepard doesn’t quite replicate the shaggy charm of his amiable 2012 crime drama “Hit and Run,” but thankfully, “CHIPS” (2017) pays limited reverence to the long-running cop show on which it is based. In this version, Shepard plays a former motocross racer and rookie cop who is paired with an undercover F.B.I. agent (Michael Peña) assigned to sniff out corruption in the California Highway Patrol. Some of the gags fall flat, and Shepard’s real-life wife, Kristen Bell, is wasted in a small, one-note role. But Shepard and Peña make a dynamic odd couple, Vincent D’Onofrio makes for a formidable villain, and the action sequences are executed with skill and panache.Stream it here.‘Steve Jobs’ (Jan. 15)Aaron Sorkin’s spiritual sequel to “The Social Network” finds the Oscar-winning screenwriter again profiling a Silicon Valley innovator with offhand wit and dramatic flair, as directed with ferocity and intelligence by Danny Boyle. Sorkin resists the urge to tell the story of the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs (Michael Fassbender) in the cradle-to-grave fashion of the Walter Isaacson biography it’s based on, instead dramatizing three important product debuts (in 1984, 1986 and 1998). It’s an ingenious approach, directed with ferocity and intelligence by Danny Boyle; Fassbender, meanwhile, is marvelous, showcasing Jobs’s enigmatic aloofness and occasionally revealing the furious impatience underneath.Stream it here.‘Z Nation’: Seasons 1-5 (Jan. 26)This post-apocalyptic action-horror series wrapped up its five-season run in 2018; it was produced for Syfy by the Asylum, the direct-to-disc-and-streaming company known for its “mockbuster” rip-offs, films designed to fool consumers with titles and stories similar to those of major studio blockbusters. At first glance, “Z Nation” seems like a similar attempt to capitalize on the success of “The Walking Dead” (and its many spinoffs), with its ragtag group of zombie apocalypse survivors. But this is a looser, funkier show than its inspiration, puncturing the occasionally stifling solemnity of “The Walking Dead” with good old-fashioned B-movie gags and thrills.Stream it here.‘She’s Funny That Way’ (Jan. 29)The director Peter Bogdanovich’s final narrative film is a deliberate throwback to his previous screwball comedies, replicating the dazzling energy of his 1972 smash “What’s Up, Doc,” the New York setting of his delightful 1981 rom-com “They All Laughed” and the quicksilver pacing of his underrated 1992 adaptation of “Noises Off.” Owen Wilson stars as a Broadway director with a soft spot for call girls, to whom he occasionally offers financial support to help out of “the life”; Imogen Poots is delightfully dizzy as the recipient of his latest endowment. It’s not quite up to the heights of Bogdanovich’s early efforts, but it’s hard to resist a movie this charming, and his ensemble cast (which includes Jennifer Aniston, Will Forte, Kathryn Hahn and Rhys Ifans) is stellar.Stream it here.‘Addams Family Values’ (Jan. 31)One can’t help but question the timing of this particular exit, as Netflix enjoys the buzz of its original series “Wednesday” — a show that takes its inspiration from the Charles Addams cartoons and the old “Addams Family” television sitcom but especially from Barry Sonnenfeld’s darkly funny ’90s film adaptations. And when assembling this 1993 sequel, Sonnenfeld and the screenwriter Paul Rudnick clearly realized Christina Ricci’s Wednesday was the scene-stealer, building much of the story around her bone-dry wit (including an unforgettable summer camp section). The result is a “Godfather Part II” of black comedy, a rare sequel that surpasses its predecessor.Stream it here.‘Rambo’/‘Rambo: Last Blood’ (Jan. 31)The first two sequels to “First Blood,” starring Sylvester Stallone as the Vietnam veteran John Rambo, were quintessential Reagan-era cinema, a heady brew of the ’60s backlash, social conservatism and nuance-free foreign policy typical of the time. Stallone waited 20 years to make the fourth film, titled simply “Rambo” (2008), which he also co-wrote and directed, presenting his character as a man outside of his time, brought back into action by the tentativeness of his government. The series’s final film, “Last Blood” (2019), was firmly rooted in the Trump era, capitalizing on the fears and paranoia surrounding the border crisis. Both films have brutal but effective action scenes with a seemingly ageless Stallone still doing what he does well. But they’re most fascinating as snapshots of their cultural moments, and reminders of the political potency of mass entertainment.Stream ‘Rambo’ here, and ‘Rambo: Last Blood’ here.‘The Borgias: Seasons 1-3’ (Jan. 31)This well-pedigreed historical Showtime drama — created by the Oscar-winning writer and director Neil Jordan and starring Jeremy Irons as Pope Alexander VI — had the misfortune of premiering in April 2011, the same month HBO debuted “Game of Thrones.” But now, with over a month to binge its 29 episodes, “Thrones” fans might find in it a new source of upscale action and sex, of sneering drama and ruthless political gamesmanship. Irons is on fire as the driven clergyman who ascends to papal power, and the show’s intelligent, well-researched scripts draw effective parallels between the Borgias and later families that sought and wielded political power.Stream it here. More

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      in Television

      Emily Is Still in Paris. Why Are We Still Watching?

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      The Netflix hit has been widely mocked from the beginning. But despite its flaws — or perhaps because of them — it’s a pop-culture phenomenon.Here is one inviolable rule that I have learned governs American screens: If ever I see a young woman standing before a mirror holding a pair of scissors, it is almost always a harbinger of some unspeakable doom. Whether in comedy or in horror, this image is cinematic shorthand for when the writers want us to know that whatever this woman’s inner torment may have been in that moment, it won, obliterating her sanity and driving her to this act of assured self-destruction.That is how we find the titular heroine of “Emily in Paris,” in the third season’s premiere: still in Paris, standing before a mirror in the middle of the night, muttering to herself before snipping off a jagged, uneven chunk of hair across her forehead. She has been jolted awake from a nightmare in which she saw herself forced to confront her deepest fear: having to make a decision on her own.This is an existential crisis for Emily Cooper, who, before her French sojourn, was happily shilling tag lines for I.B.S. drugs in Chicago. As laid out in the series’s first season, by way of a mystifying fluke, Emily finds herself at a luxury marketing firm in Paris, going in place of her pregnant boss. (In this universe, we are to assume that this enormous company has only two employees and that corporations simply love to give unasked-for promotions to junior underlings.) She is there in Paris to provide an “American point of view,” despite not possessing much of one, beyond lovingly declaring that “the entire city looks like ‘Ratatouille.’” By the end of the first two seasons, she has conducted sanitized love affairs with a rotating cast of forgettable men and embodied a portrait of American middle-managerial insufferability specifically calculated to drive her Parisian co-workers and watchers of the show equally apoplectic.The show’s second season ends on a low-stakes cliffhanger that kept unwilling “Emily in Paris” hostages like me (I cannot in all honesty call us “fans”) on begrudging tenterhooks for a year: Will Emily choose the safety of a big corporation and stick with Madeline, her mentor from Chicago, an ur-girlboss of corporate marketing who is obnoxiously secure in her American basicness and a cartoonish portrait of who Emily might become two decades from now? Or will she defect and join the marketing coup being staged by Sylvie, the abrasive yet terrifyingly magnetic Frenchwoman whose approval Emily has spent the past two seasons trying to win with an almost-feral desperation?Beneath the Bambi-like visage and the sweet ebullience lies a stark void of nothingness.For the pugnaciously good-humored Emily, whose sole defining characteristic so far has been her geniality (even being called an “illiterate sociopath” by her former friend barely made a dent in her sunniness), this outer turbulence has forced her to exhibit signs of an inner life for the first time in the show’s run. For once, Emily is visibly shaken. And in the time-honored tradition of one-dimensional screen heroines who came before her, Emily has commenced yet another season-long course of causing unintentional catastrophes with the only act of intention seen from her so far: the guillotining of her own bangs.When the first season of “Emily in Paris” debuted on Netflix in October 2020, it was widely mocked and near-universally reviled in both nations for an abundance of reasons. There was the literalism of its construct. (There is truly nothing more to it than here is Emily, who is in Paris.) There was the egregiously loud costuming. (What sort of corporate culture in France allows for bucket hats to be worn at an office, and why is Emily in possession of so many of them?) Then there were the characters, a buffoonish assemblage of dated stereotypes that managed to offend both the Americans and the French.But despite its utter frictionlessness or perhaps because of it, the compulsively hate-​watchable show became a phenomenon.I began watching this show out of the crudest form of identitarian loyalty, because I harbor an unshakable sympathy for any youngish woman (even fictional; even if she wears bucket hats) whose profession (like mine) requires using the word “social” as a noun with a straight face. Far be it from me to demand interiority from rom-com ingénues experiencing character development for the first time, but watching Emily utter marketing argot like “corporate commandments” and breezily brush off every cruel joke about her dimwittedness left me wondering: Does this show want me to laugh at Emily for the particular brand of sincere, millennial smarm she represents? Or am I meant to cheer at her (very American) refusal to change, no matter what her travails in Paris put her through?To say Emily is chasing anything would be ascribing too much agency, with which even her creators have not dignified her.In both literature and cinema, Paris has long been the milieu in which to place a certain class of mordantly restless, cosmopolitan and upwardly mobile white American woman, who finds herself in the city (often fruitlessly) chasing things her homeland has denied her: a renewed sense of self after heartbreak; liberation (both sexual and intellectual); sometimes adventure; occasionally adultery. Paris harbored Edith Wharton’s Countess Olenska when the insipid society gentleman she fell in love with hadn’t the spine or the stomach to claim their life together. In her memoir, “My Life in France,” Julia Child recalls arriving in Paris still a “rather loud and unserious Californian,” and how it was the city, along with her beloved husband, Paul, that molded her into the woman the world got to know. Paris was where Carrie Bradshaw, perpetually in love with the idea of love, finally realized that maybe all it did was make her more miserable. Emily Cooper, however, is not one of these women. To say she is chasing anything (except perhaps a steady stream of head pats of approval from her bosses) would be ascribing too much agency, with which even her creators have not dignified her.In 1919, when Wharton, herself an expatriate in Paris, wrote that “compared with the women of France, the average American woman is still in the kindergarten,” she might as well have been talking about Emily, whose stock-in-trade is a unique brand of empty infantilism. Nowhere is this more evident than in the way the millennial Emily Cooper seems engineered from a boomer’s nightmare of what young people today are like: indolent, addicted to their phones and obsessed with being rewarded for doing the bare minimum. The show’s architects have endowed her with what has come to be known as her generation’s worst trait: a compulsive devotion to online oversharing and the cult of manufactured relatability. But what sets Emily apart is that beneath the Bambi-like visage and the sweet ebullience lies a stark void of nothingness.The Chekhov’s Bangs incident turns out to have only the most minor payoff later on, when for once, Emily makes a life-altering choice that of course fosters zero introspection. For a show that managed to make even the complexity and angst of infidelity as saccharine as the pain au chocolat that Emily posts on Instagram with the caption “butter+chocolate = 💓,” watching her give herself what her friend calls “trauma bangs” was about as abrupt an upping of the stakes in the Emilyverse as can be. But for those of us who’ve continued to watch, we do it despite our bewilderment — like Emily butchering her hair — even though we know it’s a mess.Iva Dixit is a staff editor for the magazine. She last wrote a Letter of Recommendation about raw onions.Source photographs: Stéphanie Branchu/Netflix More

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      in Movies

      How Well Do You Know Your Holiday Movies?

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      Between a murderous Santa wielding a sledgehammer and an elf throwing a rave in a corporate mailroom, Christmas movies seem to get more outlandish every year. How well do you know your festive films?
      Image credits: Hallmark Channel (“A Royal Corgi Christmas”); Bettmann/Getty Images (Queen Elizabeth II); Michael Reynolds/EPA, via Shutterstock (the Bidens); Pool photo by Jonathan Buckmaster (Muick and Sandy mourning the Queen’s death); Netflix (“The Princess Switch”); Universal Pictures (“Violent Night”); Hallmark Movies & Mysteries (“Christmas in Montana”); Hulu (“Happiest Season”); Netflix (“Falling for Christmas”); Paramount Pictures (“Mean Girls”); Disney (“The Parent Trap”); Paramount Pictures (“Once Upon a Christmas”); Disney (“Noelle”); Hallmark Channel (“Hanukkah on Rye”); Universal Pictures (“Last Christmas”).
      Produced by Tala Safie and Josephine Sedgwick. More