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Our picks for August, including ‘The Chair,’ ‘The L Word’ and ‘Annette’Every month, streaming services in Australia add a new batch of movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for August. More
The cracks are showing in Netflix’s worldwide dominance.Netflix is still king of streaming video, but audiences are slowly shifting toward new rivals, namely the Walt Disney Company’s Disney+, according to research from Parrot Analytics.Netflix’s share of worldwide demand interest — a measure, created by Parrot, of the popularity of shows and a key barometer of how many new subscribers a streaming service is likely to attract — fell below 50 percent for the first time in the second quarter of the year.The company’s “lack of new hit original programming and the increased competition from other streamers is going to ultimately have a negative impact on subscriber growth and retention,” Parrot said in a news release before Netflix announced its quarterly earnings on Tuesday.Netflix said it had attracted 1.5 million new subscribers in the second quarter of the year, beating the low bar it had set when it told Wall Street that it anticipated adding just one million.The company said it expected to add about 3.5 million new subscribers in the third quarter, lower than the approximately 5.5 million that investors were expecting. Netflix shares fell as much as 4 percent in after-hours trading on Tuesday before bouncing back a little.The company now has 209 million subscribers, but it lost 430,000 in the United States and Canada, its most lucrative region, over the period. It now has 73.9 million subscribers in that market, with about 66 million in the United States.In a letter to shareholders, Netflix said that “Covid-related production delays in 2020 have led to a lighter first-half-of-2021 slate.” Netflix relies on creating as many different shows and films for as many different audiences as possible, and the pandemic upset that formula, forcing the shutdown of productions around the world.Traditional media players have started to consolidate, again, potentially setting off another race for talent, studio space and production resources. In May, Discovery announced that it would buy WarnerMedia from AT&T, creating the second-largest media giant, behind Disney and ahead of Netflix. Less than two weeks later, Amazon announced that it would buy Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, home to the James Bond franchise, for $8.45 billion, a price many analysts considered rich.In the earnings call after the report, Reed Hastings, Netflix’s co-chief executive, said he didn’t think it made sense for Netflix to jump into the consolidation game. He even offered his own analysis of some of the industry’s biggest deals, including Disney’s acquisition of the bulk of Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox.“Certainly Disney buying Fox helps Disney become more of a general entertainment service rather than just a kids and family,” he said. “Time Warner-Discovery — if that goes through — that helps some, but it’s not as significant, I would say, as Disney-Fox.”Mr. Hastings’s co-chief executive, Ted Sarandos, offered a sharper critique of these megadeals. “When are they one and one equals three? Or one and one equals four?” he asked. “Versus what most of them tend to be, which is one and one equals two.”Netflix has downplayed competition concerns even as newer entrants have chipped away at its long-held grip. Disney+ more than doubled its share of demand interest in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, and Amazon Prime Video, AppleTV+ and HBO Max are also gaining, according to Parrot.In its letter to shareholders, Netflix said the industry overall was “still very much in the early days” of the transition from traditional pay television to streaming.“We are confident that we have a long runway for growth,” it said. “As we improve our service, our goal is to continue to increase our share of screen time in the U.S. and around the world.”Mr. Hastings said competition would further stoke streaming across all companies.“As you get new competition in, you get validation — more reasons to get a smart TV or unlimited broadband,” he said. “So for at least the next several years, the growth story of streaming as a whole is very intact.”But Netflix hasn’t seen any impact from the “secular competition,” Mr. Hastings said, referring to Disney or HBO. “So that gives us comfort,” he added.Netflix, he said, is really competing against traditional television, and the “shakeout” won’t happen until streaming makes up the majority of viewing. He cited the latest study from Nielsen, which showed that streaming accounts for about 26 percent of television viewing in the United States, with Netflix making up about 6 percent. Disney+ is far behind at 1 percent.In other words: If Disney+ is hurting us, we haven’t seen it.The argument that Netflix has been competing with regular television and other streamers for a long time overlooks the fact that new rivals like Disney+ and AppleTV+ are much cheaper than Netflix (and subscription television). And although those services produce far fewer originals than Netflix, they appear to be getting more bang for their buck.In the second quarter, Disney+ got a big boost of demand interest from “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” a series based on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has thoroughly dominated the box office in recent years. “Loki,” another Marvel spinoff, also helped, according to Parrot.Amazon Prime Video got a boost in the period with “Invincible,” an animated superhero series for adults. And AppleTV+ attracted new customers with three originals: “Mosquito Coast,” a drama based on the 1981 novel; “For All Mankind,” a sci-fi series; and “Mythic Quest,” a comedy series that takes place in a game developer studio.Speaking of, Netflix said this month that it planned to jump into video games. It has hired a gaming executive, Mike Verdu, formerly of Electronic Arts and Facebook, to oversee its development of new games. It’s a potentially significant move for the company, which hasn’t strayed far from its formula of television series and films.The company called gaming a “new content category” that will be a “multiyear effort” and said it would be included as part of a subscribers’ existing plans at no extra cost. Games will first appear on its mobile app, an environment that already allows for interactivity. The vast majority of Netflix’s customers watch on big-screen televisions.Gaming isn’t meant to be a stand-alone or a separate element within Netflix. “Think of it as making the core service better,” Mr. Hastings said. “Really, we’re a one-product company with a bunch of supporting elements.” More
The actor talks about his roles as a failed superhero in the new Marvel blockbuster and as a milquetoast accountant in Steven Soderbergh’s “No Sudden Move.”This article contains spoilers for the films “Black Widow” and “No Sudden Move.”It’s never a particularly good time to be a loser, but it’s an excellent moment to be David Harbour, who embodies misbegotten characters so fully in his latest movies.Harbour, who may be best known as the reluctantly heroic police chief Jim Hopper on Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” can currently be seen in “Black Widow,” the Marvel movie directed by Cate Shortland that opened over the weekend. In it, he plays Alexei, a Russian super-soldier who formerly led a thrilling life as the costumed champion Red Guardian. Now confined to a wintry prison where he has become feral and overweight, all he can do is reminisce about good old days that may not have happened as he remembers them. That is, until his rescue by Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), the spies he raised as his own daughters.Alexei is the latest in a series of strangely compelling deadbeats for Harbour. He also appears in Steven Soderbergh’s new HBO Max thriller, “No Sudden Move,” as Matt Wertz, a milquetoast accountant drawn into a criminal enterprise that’s well out of his league.And these are precisely the kinds of characters that Harbour loves to play. As he explained in an interview on Thursday: “Winners are great, and we like them, rah-rah. But to me, the beauty of human beings is in the flesh and the failures. We’re all frail.”Having performed over the years in Broadway productions of “Glengarry Glen Ross” and “The Coast of Utopia” as well as in films like “Brokeback Mountain” and “Revolutionary Road,” Harbour called his current renaissance “another step in a very even-keeled, slow trajectory, which I like.”Now 46 years old and married to the pop singer Lily Allen, Harbour said he was happier to have found success at this stage of his life. If he’d had this much attention as a younger man, Harbour said: “Oh God, that would be miserable. It took me so long to cultivate an artistic voice. If I had people judging me so early about whether or not they liked what I did, I wouldn’t be able to survive that.”Speaking via video from New Orleans, Harbour talked further about the making of “Black Widow” and “No Sudden Move,” his offbeat influences and the comfort of working with Soderbergh during a pandemic. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.Harbour with Scarlett Johansson, left, and Florence Pugh in “Black Widow.”Jay Maidment/Marvel/DisneyIs there a story behind how you were cast in “Black Widow”?It’s oddly pedestrian. I have friends who tested for “Guardians of the Galaxy,” who talked about a top-secret lair and getting sides [dialogue pages] and then they burn them. My agent said Cate Shortland wants to meet you for a movie she’s doing. He didn’t even know what it was about. I sat down with her, and she said, “I’m doing this ‘Black Widow’ movie for Marvel with Scarlett Johansson.” And then she proceeded to pitch my character as this dude who’s big and violent with tattoos and gold teeth and also needs you to like his jokes. She pitched me these incredible contradictions, and we talked about all these family dramedies with desperate people — movies like “The Savages” and Ricky Gervais on “The Office.” And I was like, hell yes, on so many levels.Please, elaborate on the Ricky Gervais connection.It’s just that he’s so desperately insecure, and that insecurity manifests itself in boastfulness. I love people like this. He now has such deep regret and emotional guilt, but he can’t feel any of those things. So all he does is exist on his sociopathic charm and his need for validation. Someone like Hopper [in “Stranger Things”] has guilt, but it’s so internal, whereas he’s loud in every way. Smelly and sweaty and big and hairy. So cringey, as the kids say.Is it flattering to be told by a director that she sees you as this person?I have such an odd ego. I am always flattered, and then I look back years later and I go, what were you flattered by? I’m sort of an outcast myself. Growing up, I was, certainly. And I’ve always wanted to act because I wanted people to feel less alone. Even when I’d play villains, people would say, “There was a way that you humanized the experience so that we understood someone, as opposed to judging them.” So that’s what flatters me — you’re using me as an artist to understand this deeply troubled and confusing individual that a less capable person would make a mockery of. I maybe proceed to do both. But I can hopefully give you some understanding of him.Had you ever worked with Johansson, Pugh or Rachel Weisz, who play the other members of your makeshift family?I had never even met them. But then we had rehearsals for about two weeks, which is rare on a movie this size, and we really did take on those family dynamics, right from the get-go. I did feel like Rachel was the woman I was meant to be with — no offense to Lily Allen, because she is the actual person I was meant to be with — but it did feel like Melina and Red Guardian had something beautiful. Scarlett felt like the oldest child; I started to see her as rigid in a certain way, and I started to poke fun at her rigidity. And Florence really felt like the baby of the family; I just wanted to coddle her and make her laugh.Which did you film first: the prologue scenes where your character is neat and trim, or the main sequences where he has gone to seed?I had grown the beard and the hair for “Stranger Things,” and I was like, “Let’s use the weight.” So I started eating even more. I got up to 280 pounds, and I loved it. I said to the first A.D. [assistant director], “Listen, we have to shoot the flashback stuff at the end, so that by the time we shoot the flashback, I’ll lose the weight and I’ll be thin.” And he was like, “You’ll never be thin.” [Laughs.] I was like, “Yes I will, man.” And I lost like 60 pounds through the shooting. The first stuff we shot was at the prison, so that belly that’s coming at you, that’s all real belly. And then as we shot, I started to lose weight. I was just hungry a lot of the shoot.”I’m the anti-Tom Cruise” when it comes to stunts, said Harbour, with his four-month-old puppy.Akasha Rabut for The New York TimesYou’re a recently married man — how was all of this physical transformation playing at home?[Dryly] It’s a true testament to my undeniable charisma when I say that my wife met me at 280 pounds with this beard and this hair. We went on a date at the Wolseley [restaurant] in London, and she really fell for me at my worst, physically and hair-wise. So as the thing went on, I started losing the weight and working out. And she honestly has some mixed feelings about it. Which is a good place to be in a relationship. It’s really good to start the relationship from that part, as opposed to being the young, handsome buck and watching yourself degenerate over the years.Did you get to do many of your own stunts on the film?They really want you to do it. They’re very encouraging. But I’m the anti-Tom Cruise when it comes to this stuff. I do not want to fly the helicopter. I want Alexei to be a production of eight different people. I’m the face. I’m very happy to put the stunt people in. But I do my own arm-wrestling. I wouldn’t let anyone else arm-wrestle for me.Your best-known characters now are men who, underneath their exterior shabbiness, possess at least the potential to redeem themselves. How did this come to be your particular turf?That’s what I love about Alexei and what I love about Hopper. It comes from my view of Walter Matthau. In “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three,” you have this schlubby leading man and you put him against Robert Shaw, who’s like the most bad-ass Brit in the world. You think he’s never going to take this guy. But there’s something about his American heart that we want to love, and I love embodying that. Once Hopper rolled around, it was like, swing for the fences. Give him the dad bod and let him smoke cigarettes, have him be a total mess.Just a few years ago, you were playing a lot of intimidating bruisers and flat-out villains. How did you pivot from that?It was very interesting to be perceived as a villain. There were heavies, but then I was cast as true, dangerous psychopaths, too. There’s something about the mental freedom of the psychopath that I can embrace in a certain way. It really was [the casting director] Carmen Cuba on “Stranger Things” who was like, “I know this guy’s been the villain and he’s been fifth and sixth on the call sheets for a long time, but I think he’s the Harrison Ford.” No one had seen that before. I always blamed it on the jawline or the brow, whatever it was. It really takes a sophisticated eye to go, it doesn’t matter whether he has a double chin. His heart is there.Harbour as a milquetoast accountant opposite Amy Seimetz in the new Steven Soderbergh crime drama, “No Sudden Move.”Claudette Barius/Warner Bros.How did you get your part in “No Sudden Move”?It got shut down during Covid, so they refashioned it and put that movie back together. A couple people couldn’t do it so a couple replaced them, and I was one of them. Steven Soderbergh’s process is very simple: He sent me the script. Would you like to do this? Yes, very much. And then I met him on the first day.Going by only the screenplay, what was your read on the character?Matt lives in a prison of his own making. The tragedy of Matt is that he can’t be who he is, and he’s been living this lie for a long time. There is a carrot that gets dangled in front of him, and as one of the characters says in the movie, he had the brass ring and he just let it go by. That’s the true tragedy of Matt Wertz. There’s some excitement that he may actually get to live a life, finally, after so much struggle. And he disappoints us. [Laughs.]Was this the first film you made during the pandemic?That was my first pandemic shoot. “Stranger Things” had come back for Season 4 in September, and they didn’t need me until January. And I freaked out. I love my wife and kids, but I also need to go to work, because I’ll lose my mind here, trying to home-school them. This job came to me, and I took it. We were in Detroit for two and a half, three months, sequestered in a hotel. But luckily it’s Soderbergh. He did “Contagion.” So all the C.D.C. guys that he worked with on that were there on set. We were talking about the vaccines. I would go to Soderbergh and be like, “When is this going to be over?” And he would be like, “Oh, sometime early next year, there’ll be vaccines.” I was like, “Which one?” He’s like, “Pfizer’s doing very well — two shots.” It was incredible. You’re making this movie and you’re finding out what’s actually happening at the C.D.C.Harbour on being asked to play losers: “I have such an odd ego. I am always flattered, and then I look back years later and I go, what were you flattered by?”Akasha Rabut for The New York TimesWhat are you permitted to say about the new season of “Stranger Things”?Ugh. I want to tell you something. I have my prepackaged answer, which is true, that it’s a super-exciting season. It’s gone to a whole other place. It started out, in Season 1, with this small-town police chief, and now it’s become this sprawling thing with a Russian prison and a monster. The brothers [series creators Matt and Ross Duffer] are big into video games, manga and anime, and we definitely play on that this season. We talked about “The Great Escape” and “Alien 3” as influences. In terms of Hopper, you get to see a lot of back story that you haven’t seen before, it’s only been hinted at. As opposed to this dad he’s become, eating chips and salsa and yelling at his teenage daughter, you’ll unearth some more of the warrior that he had been.Having now made a mega-budget Marvel movie, was there anything you could take from that experience into “Stranger Things”?I do a lot more stunts this season than I’ve ever done. And I — if I do say so myself — did some pretty impressive things. And that truly came from being humiliated on the set of “Black Widow,” being not able to do those things. There is an ego in me that’s growing. Hopefully by the time I’m 55, I’ll be hanging out of a helicopter as well, making my own version of “Mission: Impossible.” More
Our streaming picks for July, including ‘Fear Street,’ ‘The Comeback Trail’ and ‘The Tomorrow War’Every month, streaming services in Australia add a new batch of movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for July. More
The company known for measuring television ratings said Netflix and YouTube are far ahead of their digital rivals, but viewers still spend more time watching cable and network TV.Nielsen on Thursday announced that it had moved a step closer toward cracking one of the great questions of the modern entertainment world: How big, exactly, is streaming? More
John Cho, as Long the dragon, does his best Robin Williams impression in this film animation about a teenage boy who releases him from a magic teapot.In the engaging animated feature “Wish Dragon,” a teenage boy comes into possession of a magic teapot containing a world-weary dragon who’s obliged to grant him three wishes.The movie is geared toward children, but for anyone old enough to remember the Disney Renaissance, there should be a déjà vu warning: Netflix’s newest animation effort is essentially Disney’s “Aladdin” transposed to Shanghai. John Cho, who voices Long, the dragon, does his best impression of Robin Williams, who lent his voice to the fast-talking Genie in the 1992 Disney animation. But without the catchy songs and intergenerational appeal, this movie can only wish to measure up to that classic.When the story begins, Din (Jimmy Wong) is a genial, imaginative child who soon befriends Li Na (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), a fellow troublemaker in school. The pair is shown cavorting in a best-friend montage that screeches to a halt when Li Na’s father moves her out of their humble neighborhood, saying, “We’re off to a better life, and we have to leave this one behind.”Fast-forward by a decade: A chic Li Na appears on billboards around town, while Din lives in the same cramped apartment with his mother (Constance Wu), and works as a food delivery boy, all the while yearning to win back his partner in crime. If only a magical dragon could help Din bluff his way into Li Na’s moneyed circle.Here, the movie goes full folk tale. Some moments, such as when Long’s voice turns squeaky-high as he squeezes back into his itty-bitty teapot space, seem to explicitly quote “Aladdin,” not to mention the airborne date Din and Li Na have on a flying dragon.The biggest break from formula arrives through Long, the wish granter. Unlike the Genie, Long possesses a compelling human back story and follows a defined character arc. Absent a razzle-dazzle production number akin to “Friend Like Me,” endowing the dragon with some emotional depth is the least this movie, directed by Chris Appelhans, could do. “Wish Dragon” is a transporting experience, but it’s far from a whole new world.Wish DragonRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More
You streamed it. Now you can buy it at Netflix.shop, a new site that will offer everything from a “Lupin” side table to a “Yasuke” clock.There will be “Lupin” pillows and Netflix-branded boxer shorts.There will be caps, necklaces, charms and hoodies, all of it for sale at Netflix.shop, a site that goes live on Thursday, when the world’s biggest streaming company plants a flag in the territory of e-commerce. More
Netflix in the United States bids adieu to a ton of great movies and TV shows in June, including “Scarface” and “Twin Peaks.” Catch these while you can.This month, Netflix in the United States says goodbye to three cult favorite television series, so it might be time for one last binge. Plus, one of the most influential shows in history leaves the service, along with an assortment of family treats, indie dramas and quotable crime classics. (Dates reflect the final day a title is available.) More
