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      Netflix Employee Who Criticized Dave Chapelle Is Among 3 Suspended

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      Netflix recently suspended three employees, including a transgender employee who posted a Twitter thread last week criticizing a new Dave Chappelle stand-up special on the streaming service as being transphobic.The employees were suspended after they attended a virtual business meeting among top executives at the company that they had not been invited to, a person familiar with the decision said on Monday, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter. Netflix said in a statement that the transgender employee, Terra Field, was not suspended because of the tweets critical of Mr. Chappelle’s show.“It is absolutely untrue to say that we have suspended any employees for tweeting about this show,” a Netflix spokesperson said in a statement. “Our employees are encouraged to disagree openly, and we support their right to do so.”Mr. Chappelle’s comedy special, “The Closer,” debuted on Netflix on Tuesday, and was quickly criticized by several organizations, including GLAAD, for “ridiculing trans people.” Jaclyn Moore, an executive producer for the Netflix series “Dear White People,” said last week that she would not work with Netflix “as long as they continue to put out and profit from blatantly and dangerously transphobic content.”Ms. Field, who is a software engineer at Netflix, tweeted last week that the special “attacks the trans community, and the very validity of transness.”On Monday, after news of her suspension went public following a report by The Verge, she tweeted: “I just want to say I appreciate everyone’s support. You’re all the best, especially when things are difficult.”As criticism of Mr. Chappelle’s special began last week, Netflix’s co-chief executive Ted Sarandos sent a memo to employees defending the comedian.“Several of you have also asked where we draw the line on hate,” Mr. Sarandos wrote in the memo. “We don’t allow titles on Netflix that are designed to incite hate or violence, and we don’t believe ‘The Closer’ crosses that line. I recognize, however, that distinguishing between commentary and harm is hard, especially with stand-up comedy which exists to push boundaries. Some people find the art of stand-up to be meanspirited, but our members enjoy it, and it’s an important part of our content offering.”Mr. Sarandos also cited Netflix’s “longstanding deal” with Mr. Chappelle and said the comedian’s 2019 special, “Sticks & Stones,” was also “controversial” and was “our most watched, stickiest and most award-winning stand-up special to date.”In 2019, Netflix was criticized when it blocked an episode of Hasan Minhaj’s topical show, “Patriot Act With Hasan Minhaj,” in Saudi Arabia after the kingdom’s government made a request for it to do so. In the episode, Mr. Minaj criticized the Saudi Arabian government and questioned the role of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.“We’re not in the news business,” Netflix’s co-chief executive Reed Hastings said in 2019, explaining the decision. “We’re not trying to do ‘truth to power.’ We’re trying to entertain.” More

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      Watch These 9 Movies and Shows Before They Leave Netflix in October

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      Titles leaving U.S. Netflix this month include a cult comedy hit, a hilarious game show and solid offerings from Steven Spielberg and Oliver Stone.This month, subscribers to Netflix in the United States will have one more chance to watch an uproariously funny game show, a beloved girl-power comedy, a family film that adults may love more than kids and two wild cult comedies.All of those, along with some good stuff from Steven Spielberg and Oliver Stone, are among the best films and TV shows leaving Netflix in October. Learn more about them below. (Dates reflect the final day a title is available.)‘Free Fire’ (Oct. 20)If you don’t like shootouts, then move along, nothing to see here. But if you do love shoot-outs, or if you love inventive gunplay and threatening gun-cocking and artful reloads and the films of John Woo, boy is this the movie for you. This action extravaganza from the writer and director Ben Wheatley (“Kill List”) is essentially a feature-length gunfight, in which various parties assemble in an isolated warehouse for a gun buy before turning on one another. Wheatley finds ingenious variations throughout, keeping the action energetic and fresh, while his first-rate cast (including Armie Hammer, Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy and Jack Reynor), resplendent in ’70s duds, squeeze in as much characterization as they can between shots.Stream it here.‘Rango’ (Oct. 27)Plenty of filmmakers have livened up family movies by sliding in winking gags and pop culture references for the grown-ups. But few have done it as unapologetically (and successfully) as the “Pirates of the Caribbean” director Gore Verbinski, who livens up this story of a desert lizard’s adventure in several surprising ways. First, he constructs it as a kiddie “Chinatown,” with our hero stumbling into a Western town where the battle over water rights is getting ugly. And he apparently instructed his leading man, Johnny Depp, to voice the role as a riff on his turn as Hunter S. Thompson in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” even throwing in visual and verbal nods to that very R-rated adaptation. But Verbinski also doesn’t alienate the target audience: Kids will likewise delight in this visually inventive and frequently funny treat.Stream it here.‘Zack and Miri Make a Porno’ (Oct. 30)Rarely has a title been so accurate in its description as it is here, and the writer and director Kevin Smith (“Clerks”) tells the tale of two longtime friends (Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks), desperate for cash, who turn to the seemingly lucrative world of adult entertainment. The leering title and premise don’t tell the entire story, however. This isn’t just some silly, gross-out sex comedy (though, to be sure, there’s plenty of that). As in his indie hit “Chasing Amy,” Smith knows that there’s no such thing as “just sex,” and, with the help of his charismatic leads, thoughtfully explores what happens when platonic pals decide to take that big leap.Stream it here.‘Billy on the Street’: Seasons 1-5 (Oct. 31)Few contemporary comedians have a persona as distinctive as Billy Eichner’s. A frenzied, impatient pop culture connoisseur, he is quick with a quip and so sly with his insults that they often fly past their targets. Eichner is an unabashedly 21st century personality, which makes it especially amusing that he is best known for the “man on the street” interview — a comedic device that stretches back to Steve Allen and the earliest days of television comedy. “Billy on the Street” is, on paper at least, a game show; he and his celebrity guests offer passers-by the opportunity to win cash and prizes for answering questions and participating in their reindeer games. But the stakes are low and the games are silly; the show exists primarily as a vehicle for his unique sensibility and wit.Stream it here.‘Catch Me if You Can’ (Oct. 31)Leonardo DiCaprio’s apparent agelessness is one of his most fascinating features — we all still think of him as a matinee heartthrob, even in middle age — and Steven Spielberg puts it to fine use in this dashing 2002 comedy-drama, based on the memoir of the con artist and fabulist Frank Abagnale Jr. (which may, itself, have been fabricated). DiCaprio’s Abagnale is a born swindler, masquerading as a doctor, lawyer and airline pilot while kiting checks across the country; the actor’s sensitive portrayal captures gee-whiz likability that made him so successful, while subtly conveying the pain underneath. Tom Hanks is in top form as the by-the-books treasury agent on his tail, but the M.V.P. is Christopher Walken, Oscar-nominated for an atypically understated turn as Abagnale’s absentee father.Stream it here.‘Legally Blonde’ (Oct. 31)When this Reese Witherspoon vehicle hit theaters in 2001, a fair number of critics dismissed it as lightweight, disposable fluff — a reaction strangely appropriate to this story of a young woman whose peers underestimate her based on looks and impressions. But just as Elle Woods thrived, against all odds, at Harvard Law School, this summer comedy has become a cultural touchstone thanks to its quotable dialogue, masterfully modulated lead performance and timeless message about self-determination in the face of adversity.Stream it here.‘Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You’ (Oct. 31)The term “living legend” has been bandied about so freely that it doesn’t seem a grand enough descriptor for Norman Lear, the now 99-year-old writer, producer and philanthropist behind some of the most popular (and groundbreaking) television programs of the 1970s, including “All in the Family,” “The Jeffersons” and “One Day at a Time.” This energetic bio-documentary from the directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady tells his story with the appropriate gusto and showmanship, taking a thematic rather than chronological approach that separates it from the standard biographical showcase.Stream it here.‘Snowden’ (Oct. 31)There’s a real “back to basics” feeling to this 2016 based-on-a-true-story drama, for which the director Oliver Stone returned to his wheelhouse with this story of government malfeasance, fear and paranoia, framed by one man’s dedication to what he believes is right. Here, that man is Edward Snowden (played with quiet dignity by Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the National Security Agency contractor who became the whistle-blower for one of the largest illegal surveillance operations in history. Stone tells the tale with his trademark bristling intelligence and righteous indignation, and he marshals an impressive supporting cast, including Nicolas Cage, Shailene Woodley, Melissa Leo, Zachary Quinto and Tom Wilkinson.Stream it here.‘Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny’ (Oct. 31)Casual moviegoers assumed Jack Black just fell out of the sky when he stole scenes by the handful in “High Fidelity” and became one of Hollywood’s most valuable comic supporting players. But fans of indie comedy had been watching him for years, primarily as one-half (alongside Kyle Gass) of the comical music duo Tenacious D, a kind of Smothers Brothers for former metal heads. In 2006, the duo made a play for mainstream popularity with this movie, which chronicles their epic quest for a magic guitar pick. It didn’t quite land (box office was middling and reviews were mostly negative), but that’s OK: Tenacious D was always a cult act, so it’s appropriate that they made what has become a cult movie — and a wickedly, weirdly funny one at that.Stream it here.Also leaving: “Beowulf,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “Inception” (all Oct. 31). More

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      in Television

      'Squid Game,' the Netflix Hit, Taps South Korean Fears

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      The dystopian Netflix hit taps South Korea’s worries about costly housing and scarce jobs, concerns familiar to its U.S. and international viewers.In “Squid Game,” the hit dystopian television show on Netflix, 456 people facing severe debt and financial despair play a series of deadly children’s games to win a $38 million cash prize in South Korea.Koo Yong-hyun, a 35-year-old office worker in Seoul, has never had to face down masked homicidal guards or competitors out to slit his throat, like the characters in the show do. But Mr. Koo, who binge-watched “Squid Game” in a single night, said he empathized with the characters and their struggle to survive in the country’s deeply unequal society.Mr. Koo, who got by on freelance gigs and government unemployment checks after he lost his steady job, said it is “almost impossible to live comfortably with a regular employee’s salary” in a city with runaway housing prices. Like many young people in South Korea and elsewhere, Mr. Koo sees a growing competition to grab a slice of a shrinking pie, just like the contestants in “Squid Game.”Those similarities have helped turn the nine-episode drama into an unlikely international sensation. “Squid Game” is now the top-ranked show in the United States on Netflix and is on its way to becoming one of the most-watched shows in the streaming service’s history. “There’s a very good chance it will be our biggest show ever,” Ted Sarandos, a co-chief executive at Netflix, said during a recent business conference.Culturally, the show has sparked an online embrace of its distinct visuals, especially the black masks decorated with simple squares and triangles worn by the anonymous guards, and a global curiosity for the Korean children’s games that underpin the deadly competitions. Recipes for dalgona, the sugary Korean treat at the center of one especially tense showdown, have gone viral.A shop in Seoul selling “Squid Game”-themed dalgona.Heo Ran/ReutersLike “The Hunger Games” books and movies, “Squid Game” holds its audience with its violent tone, cynical plot and — spoiler alert! — a willingness to kill off fan-favorite characters. But it has also tapped a sense familiar to people in the United States, Western Europe and other places, that prosperity in nominally rich countries has become increasingly difficult to achieve, as wealth disparities widen and home prices rise past affordable levels.“The stories and the problems of the characters are extremely personalized but also reflect the problems and realities of Korean society,” Hwang Dong-hyuk, the show’s creator, said in an email. He wrote the script in 2008 as a film, when many of these trends had become evident, but overhauled it to reflect new worries, including the impact of the coronavirus. (Minyoung Kim, the head of content for the Asia-Pacific region at Netflix, said the company was in talks with Mr. Hwang about producing a second season.)“Squid Game” is only the latest South Korean cultural export to win a global audience by tapping into the country’s deep feelings of inequality and ebbing opportunities. “Parasite,” the 2019 film that won best picture at the Oscars, paired a desperate family of grifters with the oblivious members of a rich Seoul household. “Burning,” a 2018 art-house hit, built tension by pitting a young deliveryman against a well-to-do rival for a woman’s attention.The masked guards in “Squid Game” mete out violence during the competitions.NetflixSouth Korea boomed in the postwar era, making it one of the richest countries in Asia and leading some economists to call its rise the “miracle on the Han River.” But wealth disparity has worsened as the economy has matured.“South Koreans used to have a collective community spirit,” says Yun Suk-jin, a drama critic and professor of modern literature at Chungnam National University. But the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s undermined the nation’s positive growth story and “made everyone fight for themselves.”The country now ranks No. 11 using the Gini coefficient, one measure of income inequality, among the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the research group for the world’s richest nations. (The United States is ranked No. 6.)As South Korean families have tried to keep up, household debt has mounted, prompting some economists to warn that the debt could hold back the economy. Home prices have surged to the point where housing affordability has become a hot-button political topic. Prices in Seoul have soared by over 50 percent during the tenure of the country’s president, Moon Jae-in, and led to a political scandal.“Squid Game” lays bare the irony between the social pressure to succeed in South Korea and the difficulty of doing just that, said Shin Yeeun, who graduated from college in January 2020, just before the pandemic hit. Now 27, she said she had spent over a year looking for steady work.“It’s really difficult for people in their 20s to find a full-time job these days,” she said.South Korea has also suffered a sharp drop in births, generated partly by a sense among young people that raising children is too expensive.“In South Korea, all parents want to send their kids to the best schools,” Ms. Shin said. “To do that you have to live in the best neighborhoods.” That would require saving enough money to buy a house, a goal so unrealistic “that I’ve never even bothered calculating how long it will take me,” Ms. Shin said.Characters in the show receive invitations to participate in the Squid Game.Netflix“Squid Game” revolves around Seong Gi-hun, a gambling addict in his 40s who doesn’t have the means to buy his daughter a proper birthday present or pay for his aging mother’s medical expenses. One day he is offered a chance to participate in the Squid Game, a private event run for the entertainment of wealthy individuals. To claim the $38 million prize, contestants must pass through six rounds of traditional Korean children’s games. Failure means death.The 456 contestants speak directly to many of the country’s anxieties. One is a graduate from Seoul National University, the nation’s top university, who is wanted for mishandling his clients’ funds. Another is a North Korean defector who needs to take care of her brother and help her mother escape from the North. Another character is an immigrant laborer whose boss refuses to pay his wages.The characters have resonated with South Korean youth who don’t see a chance to advance in society. Known locally as the “dirt spoon” generation, many are obsessed with ways to get rich quickly, like with cryptocurrencies and the lottery. South Korea has one of the largest markets for virtual currency in the world.Like the prize money in the show, cryptocurrencies give “people the chance to change their lives in a second,” said Mr. Koo, the office worker. Mr. Koo, whose previous employer went out of business during the pandemic, said the difficulty of earning money is one reason South Koreans are so obsessed with making a quick buck.“I wonder how many people would participate if ‘Squid Game’ was held in real life,” he said.Seong Gi-hun, the show’s protagonist, entering an arena for one of the games.Netflix More

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      in Television

      The Best Movies and TV Shows New to Netflix, Amazon and Stan in Australia in October

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      Our picks for October, including ‘Colin in Black & White,’ ‘Poltergeist’ and ‘Diana: The Musical’Every month, streaming services in Australia add a new batch of movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for October.New to NetflixOCT. 1‘Diana: The Musical’The writing and composing team of David Bryan and Joe DiPietro — who won four Tonys, including Best Musical, for their show “Memphis” — reunite for this high-energy, rock ’n’ roll fueled version of the Princess Diana saga. Jeanna de Waal plays the popular, scandal-plagued royal, in a story about her seemingly storybook romance with Prince Charles (Roe Hartrampf) and its unhappy ending. “Diana: The Musical” officially opens on Broadway later this year, but the cast and crew taped a performance over the summer, giving theater fans who can’t make it to New York a chance to see the show.‘The Guilty’In this taut mystery-thriller, Jake Gyllenhaal plays a dedicated but overzealous police officer, who is stuck working at a dispatch desk when he gets a call from a woman (Riley Keough) who claims to be in fear for her life. The director Antoine Fuqua and the screenwriter Nic Pizzolatto follow the lead of the intense 2018 Danish film on which “The Guilty” is based, telling the story mostly from inside the police station. The hero scrambles to use all the investigative resources available to him from his computer and his phone, to try to figure out how to stop what may or may not be a crime in progress.‘Maid’Netflix‘Maid’Based on Stephanie Land’s memoir, the mini-series “Maid” stars Margaret Qualley as a broke single mother named Alex, with very few viable options for work, child-care or safe housing. When she takes a job working for a cleaning service catering to wealthy families in the Pacific Northwest, Alex becomes acutely aware of how much her survival depends on a steady paycheck and a lot of good luck. Qualley gives an outstanding performance in this riveting drama, which turns something as simple as having gas money (or a functioning car) into a source of nail-biting tension.OCT. 6‘There’s Someone Inside Your House’The director Patrick Brice (best-known for the offbeat genre films “Creep” and “Corporate Animals”) and the screenwriter Henry Gayden (who co-wrote the lively superhero movie “Shazam!”) have adapted Stephanie Perkins’s young adult novel “There’s Someone Inside Your House” into a different kind of teen horror movie. Sydney Park plays Makani, the new girl at a Nebraska high school where students with dark secrets are being stalked by a serial killer who wears a mask that resembles the victims’ faces. While these kids try to dodge murder, they also hustle to avoid having their deepest regrets made public.‘The Baby-Sitters Club’ Season 2One of 2020s most delightful surprises returns for a second season of family-friendly television. Based on Ann M. Martin’s beloved book series, “The Baby-Sitters Club” is about a circle of industrious teenage friends who run a child-care business while also helping each other with their problems. The show uses the plots of the novels as a starting point for modern stories about school, parents, relationships and responsibility.‘Colin in Black & White’NetflixOCT. 29‘Colin in Black & White’The Colin in the title of “Colin in Black & White” is Colin Kaepernick, the former NFL quarterback and social activist who sparked controversy across the United States when he started kneeling before football games during the singing of the national anthem. Here, Kaepernick and the producer-director Ava DuVernay tell the athlete’s story by looking back at his childhood, revisiting moments when the biracial Colin (Jaden Michael) came into conflict with his coaches, his classmates and his adoptive white parents (played by Nick Offerman and Mary-Louise Parker) as he tried to embrace his cultural roots.Also arriving: “On My Block” (Oct. 4), “Backing Impossible” Season 1 (Oct. 6), “Pretty Smart” (Oct. 8), “Bright: Samurai Soul” (Oct. 12), “Convergence: Courage in a Crisis” (Oct. 12), “The Movies That Made Us” Season 3 (Oct. 12), “The Four of Us” (Oct. 15), “Karma’s World” (Oct. 15), “You” Season 3 (Oct. 15), “Found” (Oct. 20), “Night Teeth” (Oct. 20), “Stuck Together” (Oct. 20), “Sex, Love & goop” (Oct. 21), “Inside Job” (Oct. 22), “Locke & Key” Season 2 (Oct. 22), “Maya and the Three” (Oct. 22), “Hypnotic” (Oct. 27), “Army of Thieves” (Oct. 29).New to Stan‘Sort Of’StanOCT. 6‘Sort of’ Season 1This Canadian dramedy stars Bilal Baig as Sabi, a gender-fluid child of Pakistani immigrants. While working as a nanny by day and a bartender by night, Sabi tries to maintain meaningful relationships with both their traditionalist family and their L.G.B.T.Q. friends — two very different factions who are sometimes equally confounded by what it means to be nonbinary. This is a show about a person making a space for themselves, outside of the conventional categories.Oct. 8‘One of Us Is Lying’ Season 1Like the Karen M. McManus young adult mystery novel on which it’s based, the teen drama series “One of Us Is Lying” is part “The Breakfast Club,” part “Gossip Girl” and part Agatha Christie whodunit. When five students are framed by a troublemaking peer and stuck in after-school detention, four of them become murder suspects after one of their group — an incorrigible gossip named Simon (Mark McKenna) — drops dead under strange circumstances. To clear their names, the other kids work together, forming an “us against the world” bond as their secrets become public.OCT. 16‘Boogie Nights’The cinephile favorite writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson has a new movie coming out later this year: “Licorice Pizza,” a teen dramedy set in Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley in the 1970s. So now is the perfect time to revisit Anderson’s breakthrough film, 1997’s “Boogie Nights,” also set in the Valley in the ’70s (and ’80s). Ostensibly the story of a fast-living, sweet-natured porn star named Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg), “Boogie Nights” is really about L.A. misfits forming a makeshift family and then fighting to hold it together as drugs, money, fame and changing cultural attitudes start pulling everything apart.OCT. 21‘Poltergeist’Looking for some classic horror this October? You can’t go wrong with 1982’s “Poltergeist,” a witty and frightful tale about ancient spirits terrorizing a pristine new suburban subdivision. Directed by Tobe Hooper (best-known for “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre”) and produced and co-written by Steven Spielberg (riding high at the time from the success of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “E.T.”), “Poltergeist” starts out as a dryly funny portrait of a pleasant middle-class family. Then all hell breaks loose, turning an ordinary American neighborhood into a village of the damned.OCT. 28‘Love Life’ Season 2The romantic comedy anthology series “Love Life” returns for a second season with a new story, featuring a few of the first season’s characters in smaller roles (including last year’s protagonist Darby, played by the show’s co-producer Anna Kendrick). This time out, William Jackson Harper takes the lead as Marcus, a New Yorker still reeling from a recent divorce from the woman he thought would be his partner for life. As he re-enters the dating world, which has changed drastically since the last time tried to find a mate, Marcus takes the opportunity to re-evaluate what he really wants from a relationship.Also arriving: “A Good Man” Season 1 (Oct. 13), “Canada’s Drag Race” Season 2 (Oct. 15), “Hightown” Season 2 (Oct. 17), “All American” Season 4 (Oct. 26), “The Last O.G.” Season 4 (Oct. 27), “Sisterhood” Season 1 (Oct. 29), “Walker” Season 2 (Oct. 29).New to Amazon‘Welcome to the Blumhouse’ Season 2AmazonOCT. 1‘Welcome to the Blumhouse’ Season 2The second round of original feature-length horror films for Blumhouse Productions’ anthology series “Welcome to the Blumhouse” follows a slightly different formula from last year’s batch. The movies “Bingo Hell” (about senior citizens protecting their gentrifying neighborhood from a demonic villain), “Black as Night” (about a New Orleans teen hunting vampires who prey on the homeless), “Madres” (about Mexican American migrant workers plagued by terrifying premonitions), and “The Manor” (about a nursing home under siege from supernatural forces) put unique twists on conventional genre fare, telling stories about people on society’s margins who battle insidious evils.OCT. 15‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ Season 1Based on a 1973 Lois Duncan horror novel (and its hit 1997 movie adaptation) the teen slasher series “I Know What You Did Last Summer” follows a group of high school friends and acquaintances whose lives change after a terrible accident. As a serial killer targets the kids involved in a fatal car wreck, they realize they have to abandon their carefully crafted public personas so they can solve the mystery of who knows their terrible secret.OCT. 29‘Fairfax’ Season 1In this edgy animated satire, the voice actors Skyler Gisondo, Kiersey Clemons, Peter Kim and Jaboukie Young-White play a group of Los Angeles teens who dedicate most of their energy and talent to becoming social media influencers. “Fairfax” is partly a knowing look at plugged-in American youth in the 2020s, and partly an absurdist comedy in which the pursuit of clout frequently turns into surreal adventures.Also arriving: “All or Nothing: Toronto Maple Leafs” (Oct. 1), “My Name Is Pauli Murray” (Oct. 1), “Justin Bieber: Our World” (Oct. 8). More

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      in Music

      ‘Britney vs Spears’ Review: When the Intervention Is the Problem

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      A Netflix documentary directed by Erin Lee Carr offers a timely if vexing primer on the pop star’s legal battle, which may finally be coming to an end.If the makers of “Britney vs Spears” could add one more update to the end of the documentary’s already lengthy text crawl of developments following the film’s completion, they’d have fresh material. On Wednesday, a judge agreed to the suspension of the pop star’s father, James P. Spears, as her conservator.If you have managed to ignore the unfolding story of the conservatorship and the solidarity movement #freebritney, the director Erin Lee Carr’s documentary may serve as a timely if vexing primer. The conservatorship, a legal arrangement that gave the star’s father and others a kind of absolute guardianship over her, was put into place 13 years ago. At the time, it was temporary. The pop music phenom is now 39 years old. In the summer, the battle over the situation hit warp speed.“Britney vs Spears” quickly establishes the magnitude of the performer’s reach with images of packed concerts and rapt fans (so many screaming teenage girls), and clips from her music videos, including the one that put her on the map: “… Baby One More Time” (1998), in which she appeared famously in schoolgirl garb.Relying on a great deal of pickup footage — some from news coverage, some seemingly from hounding paparazzi — “Britney vs Spears” can be dizzying and dismaying. More often, the documentary provides an apt example of what it must be like to be a celebrity surrounded by intimates whose agendas appear murky at best. Throughout, the viewer must factor in a good measure of suspicion. Which declarations are accurate? Which are biased? When are they both? Why did this person agree to an interview?Among those who speak on Spears’s behalf but also have their own freighted relationship with her fame and wealth are her sometime manager and friend Sam Lutfi, who rates high on the ick-scale, and an ex-boyfriend Adnan Ghalib, who met Spears when he was part of the pack of paparazzi chasing her. Even the superfan Jordan Miller, who helped start the #freebritney movement, seems a little too pumped for his adjacent fame.A welcome exception to the iffier interviewees is Tony Chicotel, a lawyer and expert on long-term-care rights and California law. The filmmakers call on him to help navigate the ins and outs of the conservatorship. Like guardianship, the court-appointed conservator role exists to protect people who aren’t able — physically, mentally — to make decisions. (The recent comedy “I Care a Lot” made dark sport of the potential for abuse, with Rosamund Pike playing a court-appointed conservator who preyed on older people.)The journalist Jenny Eliscu, who wrote about Spears for Rolling Stone, plays a significant role in the film (she’s an executive producer). In 2020, the film’s makers received a load of leaked documents about the conservatorship. In a framing device that tries a little too hard to put some distance between “Britney vs Spears” and more exploitative celebrity coverage, Eliscu and the director sit in front of those documents, a Woodward and Bernstein for an Instagram age. (In February, “Framing Britney Spears,” a documentary produced by The New York Times, was released, which I haven’t seen. The same goes for a follow-up, “Controlling Britney Spears.”)To her credit, Carr is transparent about where her sympathies lie. Early on, the camera peruses a girl’s bedroom, focusing in on a pink boombox. The director confesses in voice-over that at 10, she was obsessed with Spears and “… Baby One More Time.” So much so her father, David Carr, asked, “Why are you listening to that song over and over?” Later in the film, Eliscu tears up as she tells the story of secreting a legal document to Spears at a hotel.“Britney vs Spears” underscores how tricky it is to make a credible documentary about a celebrity under duress without repeating many of the gestures that treat fame as the sine qua non of American culture. Even the Oscar-winning documentary “Amy,” a far more elegant dive into a tough pop-music story, could not elude fully the sense that the way it told Amy Winehouse’s story also replicated at times a suspect fascination.This documentary doesn’t dodge the fact that at the time the conservatorship was put in place, there was a great deal unspooling in Spears’s life that had her family concerned about her emotional — and financial — welfare. The year before the court granted James Spears control of his daughter, Britney had divorced Kevin Federline. The couple had two very young sons, who were the subject of custody skirmishes. Amid those tensions, Britney Spears’s behavior was erratic.But what happens when the intervention becomes the problem? The Britney Spears factory — and its myriad subsidiaries — remained robust, golden-goosed by her output. There was a cottage industry of lawyers employed by the conservatorship. The concert footage, the music videos and the clips of Spears rehearsing dance steps all appear to attest to a hard-working ethos and seem to challenge the notion that she could not conduct her affairs. The greatest lesson of “Britney vs Spears” might be how exploitable the role of conservator can become.Still, something remarkable happens at the end of the film. In a deft move, Carr uses excerpts from a recording made at a court hearing in June. After all those talking heads speaking about her, speaking for her, Britney speaks. And what she says has a sorrow and a fury, but also a clarity and defiance.Lisa Kennedy writes on popular culture, race and gender. She lives in Denver, Colo.Britney vs SpearsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      in Music

      Will the Court Address the New Britney Spears Documentaries?

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      Bugging. Restrictions on spending. Failed efforts to hire her own lawyer.In recent days, three new documentaries have come forward with revelations about the degree to which the conservatorship has exerted control over Britney Spears’s life for 13 years — and the extent to which she sought to regain that control early on, without success.On Friday, for example, The New York Times released “Controlling Britney Spears,” which detailed how Ms. Spears’s father and the security firm he hired to protect her ran an intense surveillance apparatus that monitored her communications and secretly captured audio recordings from her bedroom.Ms. Spears’s lawyer called for an investigation, writing in a court filing this week that her father had “crossed unfathomable lines,” further supporting the need to suspend him as her conservator immediately.Early on Tuesday, Netflix started streaming its own film, “Britney Vs Spears,” which used confidential documents and interviews with people who were close with Ms. Spears to detail the singer’s strong objections to the legal arrangement that went on to rule her life, as well as her attempts to escape it.A third documentary, CNN’s “Toxic: Britney Spears’ Battle For Freedom,” aired on Sunday, and included interviews with some of the singer’s friends and former employees. Dan George, who managed the promotional tour for Ms. Spears’s “Circus” album, says in the film that Ms. Spears “could only read Christian books” and “her phone was monitored.”The Times documentary includes an interview with Alex Vlasov, a former employee of a security firm, Black Box, that was hired by Mr. Spears to protect Ms. Spears. Mr. Vlasov, who worked as an executive assistant and operations and cybersecurity manager, said the firm would monitor Ms. Spears’s communications through other devices that were signed into her iCloud account and share them with her father.The surreptitious audio recording, he said, included her interactions and conversations with her boyfriend and children. (It was unclear whether the court had approved these strategies, and both Mr. Spears and the security firm said in statements that their actions were within the law.)The Netflix film, by the filmmaker Erin Lee Carr and featuring the journalist Jenny Eliscu, reported that, very early in the conservatorship, Ms. Spears had attempted to hire her own lawyer to help her escape the strict limitations of the conservatorship.Ms. Spears is heard on a 2009 voice mail addressing a lawyer, who is not identified, seeking reassurance that her effort to end the conservatorship would not jeopardize her right to time with her two sons. At the time, about a year into the conservatorship, Ms. Spears was represented by a court-appointed lawyer after a judge determined that she did not have the capacity to choose her own.Ms. Eliscu, who said that she knew Ms. Spears after profiling her twice for Rolling Stone, recounts a time when Sam Lufti, Ms. Spears’s friend and sometime manager, asked her to surreptitiously present court papers for the singer to sign; the papers stated that Ms. Spears’s court-appointed lawyer, Samuel D. Ingham III, was not “advocating adequately on her behalf.” Ms. Eliscu said she met Ms. Spears in the bathroom of a hotel and the singer signed the document, but her wishes were not granted.Ms. Spears was represented by Mr. Ingham until July, when a judge ruled that she could choose her own lawyer.Watch The New York Times documentary that highlighted the “Free Britney” movement, which supports the pop star Britney Spears’s efforts to get out of a 13-year court-sanctioned conservatorship.G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times More

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      A Specialist in Short and Lethal Movie Thrillers Jumps to TV

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      The French director Julien Leclercq’s action movies are known for their ruthless economy. His new Netflix thriller, “Ganglands,” tests his approach across six episodes.Mehdi, the cool, collected thief at the heart of the French Netflix series “Ganglands,” is haunted by his brother’s death. Guilt drives Mehdi’s decisions as he becomes embroiled in a violent dispute among rival drug traffickers.And yet we know nothing about that lost sibling. The show doesn’t dwell on how he died. There are no convenient explanations or evocative flashbacks.“We did write those scenes, but we thought we shouldn’t underestimate viewers,” said Julien Leclercq, the series’s director and co-creator, speaking in French on a recent video call from Paris. “It’s not a bad thing to leave a back story to the imagination, to not always explain.”And this is why his movies have one of the lowest B.M.I.s in the action business: He cuts the flab. Since his debut, the 2007 sci-fi thriller “Chrysalis” (running time: 1 hour 34 minutes), he has built a reputation as a director of efficient, no-nonsense rides. Even when he lands international names, like Jean-Claude Van Damme in the 2019 film “The Bouncer” (also 1:34) or Olga Kurylenko in the 2021 Netflix film “Sentinelle” (good to go at 1:20), Leclercq resists the temptation to give them more dialogue, more exposition or more fights.The question was, could Leclercq’s formula work across the four and a half hours of “Ganglands,” which premiered on Netflix last week?Sami Bouajila, whose turn as Mehdi in the series was his fourth outing with the director, didn’t need convincing.Sami Bouajila, who has worked with Leclerqc several times before, plays a cool, collected thief in “Ganglands.” Sofie Gheysens/Netflix “It was love at first sight — we were on the same wavelength, we had the same approach,” said Bouajila, a popular big-screen leading man in France whose performance in the film “A Son” earned him the 2021 César Award for best actor.“We both love these silent, upstanding characters, a little rough around the edges, and I love his aesthetics,” he added. “Julien’s trademark is his artistic direction — there’s a rhythm, there’s a sound, and there’s silence. There are moods and feelings but the characters have a hard time expressing them, so they act upon them.”This “show, don’t tell” approach may be one reason Leclercq’s austere style, somewhere between Jean-Pierre Melville and Clint Eastwood, needs little translation: There are few subtitles to discourage those allergic to them. His films have performed so well internationally for Netflix that the company, which had historically only licensed Leclercq’s movies for streaming, signed on as the primary distributor for his 2020 feature, “Earth and Blood” (1:20).Leclercq’s work can feel like a single locomotive speeding ahead on straight rails — the entire plot of “Earth and Blood” boils down to an extended showdown between a sawmill owner and dealers looking for a stolen stash. With its expanded parameters, however, the “Ganglands” engine can pull a few more cars.As usual, the core of the story is simple: Shaïnez (Sofia Lesaffre) is abducted after she and her girlfriend, Liana (Tracy Gotoas), impulsively steal drugs from the wrong guy, and only Shaïnez’s uncle, Mehdi, can help set her free. But now there is room for the human foibles and interpersonal dynamics — and even hints at back stories — that Leclercq usually dispenses with.Tracy Gotoas, left, and Sofia Lesaffre play lovers who get into deep trouble after stealing drugs from the wrong guy. Caroline Dubois/Netflix “We quickly latched on the idea of a family tragedy, very much in a Greek tragedy mold, which is what links all the characters,” said Hamid Hlioua the show’s co-creator and co-writer, adding that adding this angle was also a way to avoid simply diluting a movie. “We wanted to focus on tension, action and family.”“Ganglands” certainly operates on a larger scale than is typical for Leclercq. But Netflix trusted that he could be just as efficient over six episodes instead of tightly coiled in an hour and a half, and approached him with the idea. The director was interested in the challenge.“I think all filmmakers today have fantasies of tackling a series,” said Leclercq, 42, a burly, loquacious man sporting tattooed knuckles. “For viewers, they are really exciting. I’ve watched ‘True Detective’ five times, ‘Breaking Bad’ three times.”Still, Leclercq and Hlioua were conscious that bloat would be a constant threat. “Very often when there are eight episodes you feel that you could get rid of one or two,” Hlioua said. “So we wanted to grab the viewer from the start and not let go until the last episode.”In French, the series has the same title, “Braqueurs,” as a Leclercq movie from 2015, known in the United States as “The Crew” (1:21). In both, Bouajila, 55, plays the stone-faced, charismatic leader of a thieving ring, but they are not the same characters and the story lines are unrelated.“We tried to amplify every aspect,” Leclercq said. “‘The Crew’ was set in a Parisian suburb and involved kilos of coke. Now we’re in Brussels and in the port of Antwerp, which is a hub for drugs coming from South America, and we’re not dealing with kilos anymore, but with tons. The bad guys are more powerful.”“It’s not a bad thing to leave a back story to the imagination, to not always explain,” Leclercq said.Elliott Verdier for The New York TimesIn his feature work, keeping the productions lean has been a key to maintaining the crispness of his pacing and aesthetic. He recalled shuddering when Van Damme turned up with a whole team in tow for “The Bouncer.”“I said to myself — and he knows that, I told him — that he was going to be a pain in the butt, his world was going to be a pain in the butt, his entourage was going to be a pain in the butt, and I could mess up the movie if he doesn’t listen to me,” Leclercq said.He took Van Damme aside and asked him to let go of all those showbiz accouterments; it worked.“In the middle of the shoot he told me, ‘I’ve learned to love making movies again — I was a star, now I want to be an actor,’ ” Leclercq said. “That was the greatest compliment he could have given me.” (Van Damme is, indeed, extraordinary.)Leclercq’s attitude toward celebrity entourages hasn’t changed. But the fact that there was room for some occasional chitchat in the script allowed for some humor — absent from Leclercq’s features, perhaps because it eats up precious seconds. This is particularly obvious in the scenes between Mehdi and Liana, a rookie criminal who is three decades his junior and as chatty as he is taciturn.“I’m a big fan of the Luc Besson movie ‘Léon: The Professional,’ so we dreamed about a duo like that, with a generational clash, a culture clash,” Leclercq said.It helped that the real-life relationship between Bouajila and Gotoas reflected a similar dynamic, minus bullets.“I’m at the start of my career, he’s been around for 30 years or something,” Gotoas said. “Liana is learning, and I was, too: I’d be checking out how he’d position himself with respect to the camera, how he modulated his performance.”For his next project, Leclercq is stretching once more by leaving behind the shootouts that have served him so well. He is in preproduction on a biopic of the French Formula 1 champion Alain Prost, with a focus on his rivalry with Ayrton Senna in the 1980s and early ’90s.Cars are one of Leclercq’s great passions, he explained. If “Ganglands” is renewed, perhaps he can make room for a few chases. More

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      Mo Abudu Isn’t Waiting for Permission

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      LONDON — Mo Abudu has always understood the power of storytelling, and the impact of its absence. Growing up here as the daughter of Nigerian parents, she found herself being asked mind-boggling questions about the time she spent in Africa, including whether she danced around a fire or lived in a tree.“Never was I ever taught anything about African history,” she said during a recent video call. And, on the television screen at home, a lack of representation of anyone who looked like her also left its mark.“It affected me in such a way that I felt like I didn’t count,” said Abudu, 57, who has since gone on to become the kind of media mogul who can do something about it. “You therefore always felt a need to overcompensate by telling everybody who cared to listen who you were.”Decades later, Abudu is getting the entire world to listen. Her company, EbonyLife Media, has produced some of the biggest TV and box-office successes in Nigeria’s history. The Hollywood Reporter ranked her among the “25 Most Powerful Women in Global Television,” and she was invited this year to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.And last summer, EbonyLife became the first African media company to sign a multi-title film and TV deal with Netflix. The first of those TV titles to debut new episodes in the United States, the Nigerian legal procedural “Castle & Castle,” arrived last week. (Netflix picked it up beginning with Season 2; Season 1 debuted in 2018 on the now-defunct EbonyLife broadcast network.)In separate interviews — one by video last month from her home in Lagos, Nigeria, and the other last summer in person, at a park near her second home, in north London — Abudu talked about the whirlwind of recent years and the challenges of building a media empire. It was all part, she said, of her quest to “sell Africa to the world,” with productions that are high-quality — and locally made.“I think people are tired of storytelling, to a certain extent, from the West because you’re seeing the same stories time and time again — can I just have something new, something fresh?” she said. “And I think the likes of Netflix have understood this.”Born in London, Abudu was sent by her parents to Nigeria at age 7 to live with her grandmother in Ondo, a city about 140 miles northeast of Lagos. Returning to Britain at 11, she said, “I found that I became kind of like an unofficial ambassador.”Growing up, Black faces were next to nonexistent in the onscreen entertainment she had access to. Those she recalled were few, including in the 1980s TV series “Fame,” which led her briefly to dream of being a dancer; and in the landmark 1977 mini-series “Roots,” about the history of American slavery, which she said left her in tears after each episode.At 30, having enjoyed a brief modeling career, she moved back to Nigeria with the goal of seizing professional opportunities she saw opening up in her motherland. Eventually, she worked her way up to becoming the head of human resources for Exxon Mobil, but she couldn’t shake an ambition she had felt since childhood: to tell the modern story of Nigeria to itself, and ultimately to the rest of the globe.With no experience in the industry, she bought an Oprah Winfrey box set, enrolled in a TV-presenting course and drew up a business plan, going on to establish the first Pan-African syndicated daily talk-show, “Moments With Mo.” She soon earned herself the unofficial title of “Africa’s answer to Oprah.”Richard Mofe-Damijo and Ade Laoye in a scene from “Castle & Castle,” which Netflix picked up for Season 2 as part of its overall deal with Abudu. The series made its U.S. debut last week. Kelechi Amadi-Obi/NetflixAlong the way, certain obstacles proved stubborn. Abudu faced discrimination on three fronts, she said: “You face inequality and racism for being Black. You face it for being African. You face it for being a woman. It happens at every point in time.”At every point, she overcame. As Abudu was contemplating her growing role in a changing media landscape, a guest on her chat-show sofa had some particularly inspiring words, she said: Hillary Clinton, who at the time of the interview, in 2009, was the secretary of state.“I said to her, ‘The stereotypical Africa is disease, despair, destitution, deceit — why is that?’” Abudu said, paraphrasing the conversation. “And she said, ‘Mo, more and more voices like yours need to be speaking on behalf of Africa.’”Abudu’s takeaway? “If you don’t take the responsibility to change the narrative, when you leave your storytelling to someone else, then you can’t blame them,” she said.By 2013, “Moments” had made Abudu a household name in Nigeria. Seeing opportunities, Abudu went full Winfrey and started a Pan-African television network: EbonyLife TV. In 2020, Abudu’s umbrella company, EbonyLife Media, abandoned its TV channel to focus on a model based on partnerships with some of the world’s biggest streamers and studios.Today, along with what Abudu described as “over 30 deals” yet to be announced, EbonyLife Media has contracts with Sony Pictures Television, AMC and Westbrook Studios, the production company founded by Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith.“I’ve been knocking on these international doors from Day 1,” she said, “but you know, people weren’t ready to listen.”At the start of EbonyLife TV, in 2013, the mission centered on lifestyle programming that showcased the booming, cosmopolitan continent of the 21st century. But Abudu has been gradually flexing her muscles and broadening her creative palette.“Castle & Castle,” which Abudu co-created and executive produces, is about a Lagos law firm run by a husband and wife, whose respective cases threaten to destroy their marriage. With that series, Abudu wanted to focus on legal issues that were specific to Nigeria. In one episode, for example, “there’s a case around lesbianism,” she said. “It’s actually still illegal to be in a homosexual relationship in Nigeria.”Other projects include a TV drama from Sony Pictures Television about the historical all-female West African army known as the Dahomey Warriors; the dystopian series “Nigeria 2099,” set to debut on AMC; the Netflix Original film “Oloture,” released last year, which explores human trafficking and forced prostitution; and the 2022 film “Blood Sisters,” also for Netflix, which depicts drug addiction and domestic abuse across class boundaries in Nigeria.“What unites them,” Ben Amadasun, Netflix’s content director in Africa, said about some of the Netflix titles, “is Mo and her EbonyLife team’s unique ability to portray the realities of the everyday Nigerian and bring a unique perspective to each character.”Among the other productions underway with Netflix is an adaptation of “Death and the King’s Horseman,” the 1975 play by Wole Soyinka, the first African to win the Nobel Prize for literature; as well as an adaptation of the Nigerian author Lola Shoneyin’s novel “The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives.”Abudu entered show business in 2006, becoming first a successful talk-show host, with “Moments With Mo,” and later a bona fide media mogul. Her mission, as she put it, is to “sell Africa to the world.”Stephen Tayo for The New York Times“I’m a huge admirer,” Shoneyin said in a video call from her home in Lagos. Shoneyin had turned down several offers of adaptation since “Secret Lives” was published in 2010, she said, but Abudu “really kind of wooed me.”“It was very important to me that the story is told first by an African who I knew would understand the book and the characters almost instinctively,” Shoneyin added. “But also because I wanted the story to be told in the tradition of African storytelling.”Given Abudu’s attitude and ethic, she certainly fit the bill.“Gone are the days whereby you can force-feed me only American content,” Abudu said. “They don’t own all the stories to be told in this world. They’ve had their fair share of telling them.”Abudu has made Nigeria her base and her focus so far, but she is not constricting her horizons. (Already, she employs about 200 staff members across her Lagos organizations, which include the EbonyLife Creative Academy film school and EbonyLife Place, a hotel, cinema and restaurant complex.) She also wants to tell stories from South Africa, Kenya, Ghana and Ethiopia.That could be good news for the rest of the continent. Ultimately, she said, she would like her main contribution to be an “entire ecosystem of storytelling” — generating jobs for everyone from camera operators to costume designers — whose productions can showcase African brands and talent to continents beyond.She hasn’t ruled out a move to the United States. But if she does, it’s just a means to an end — in a field where she has already made great strides.“I will never be lost to my roots,” she said. “It’s not possible, even if I’m living and working and breathing in Hollywood; they cannot have me to a point whereby I’m ever going to forget where I came from.“I think it’s important, because by me making that transition, I am taking a whole bunch of people with me on that journey.” More