Latest news with #1HappyFamilyUSA
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
As Joel returns to ‘The Last of Us,' cinematographer Catherine Goldschmidt explains what went into killing him off
During the first season of The Last of Us in 2023, cinematographer Catherine Goldschmidt was merely one of the show's fans. 'I definitely felt really invested in the characters, and I was very curious about where the story could go next,' she tells Gold Derby. It didn't take long for Goldschmidt to find out after she was approached to join the series for Season 2 alongside returning cinematographer Ksenia Sereda. 'I'm not a game player, so I hadn't played The Last of Us Part II. However, I watched as much as I could on YouTube, and I read what everybody thought of it,' she says. 'For the for the game to take its two main characters, and essentially kill one of them in the early stages of the game, thus making it the story be about these sort of two sworn enemies — and that, as you play the game, and you play each of them, it gets confusing for the game player to see who's in the right and who's in the wrong — that really fascinated me.' More from GoldDerby TV Animation roundtable panel: '#1 Happy Family USA,' 'Secret Level,' and 'Arcane' 'Secret Level' creator Tim Miller explains how he gets writers to create short stories based on video and role-playing games '#1 Happy Family USA' co-creator Ramy Youssef reveals how animation was the perfect way to capture the middle school experience Based on the video-game franchise, The Last of Us stars Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey as, respectively, Joel and Ellie, two broken-hearted loners who form a surrogate father-daughter bond against the backdrop of a fungal apocalypse that has left the human race in tatters. In Season 1, Joel and Ellie (who is immune) travel across the country to find a group of rebel fighters known as the Fireflies, who may have figured out how to stop the Cordyceps outbreak that has turned those infected with the fungus into mutated creatures. However, once it becomes apparent that the cure will result in Ellie's death, Joel kills several Fireflies, including the doctor who would perform surgery on Ellie. He then lies to Ellie about what he's done. Season 2 picks up five years later, with the doctor's daughter, Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), out for revenge. She gets it in the season's second episode, 'Through the Valley,' where Abby and her cohort capture Joel by happenstance during a massive snowstorm, and she beats him to death in front of Ellie. The shocking twist left viewers stunned, and its reverberations have been felt for the remainder of the season, as Ellie and her girlfriend Dina (Isabela Merced) traveled to Seattle to find Abby to get their revenge. Goldschmidt shot multiple episodes in Season 2, including Joel's death in 'Through the Valley.' An Emmy nominee previously for HBO's House of the Dragon, the acclaimed cinematographer was given little time before jumping into the deep end of the series. 'One thing that I like to tell people about Joe's death scene is that that was in our first week of shooting,' she tells Gold Derby. Directed by Emmy winner Mark Mylod (Succession), 'Through the Valley' was immediately flagged by critics as one of the most ambitious television episodes on HBO since the heyday of Game of Thrones. In addition to Joel's death, the episode also features a massive attack on Joel and Ellie's home city of Jackson, Wyo., by a horde of infected. The scale of the episode has been compared to the Game of Thrones classic 'Battle of the Bastards,' which won multiple Emmys in 2016, including for its writing and directing. 'Not only did we have this episode with this crazy moment of Joel's death, but this crazy moment was right at the start of the shoot, right before we could really get into a good rhythm with the crew and the cast as well,' she says. 'So, that was very daunting. However, Mark is obviously an incredibly experienced director and really in-tune with the actors, and he prioritizes their performances over everything else. I wanted that as well.' For Goldschmidt, one of the biggest challenges was immediately apparent. The ski chalet where Abby kills Joel was a real location in Vancouver. 'The location had two-story high windows that are all south facing, which means the sun is just constantly coming into that room from a different angle every second of the day,' she explains. 'But it's not supposed to be sunny because there's a massive snowstorm outside during the show events. We got maybe one day of clouds. So it wasn't the right weather at all. But I wanted to create this protected scenario for Mark and the actors so that we didn't have to shoot in any particular order for the daylight and could do turnarounds quickly. To do that, I basically treated this interior space like an exterior space because these massive windows made it so open to the elements.' Goldschmidt says she convinced producers and co-creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann to place massive blackout curtains on construction cranes outside – a request typically made for day exteriors that she needed to apply to the interiors. They happily obliged. 'So then we could move much more quickly,' she adds. 'Because I turned it into a studio.' Joel's brutal murder plays out mainly in the same fashion as it does in the video game, with Ellie coming into the space just before Abby deals the show's complicated hero a death blow. Unlike the video game, however, which cuts to black as Ellie is knocked unconscious following Joel's death, the show allows the audience to experience the tragic aftermath. An injured Ellie crawls over to Joel's dead body and cuddles up next to him; the camera perspective shifts to a God's eye perspective from above to survey the trauma. 'We were in this real space that actually did have this incredible height to it,' Goldschmidt says. 'As we were going through the scenes and the shots and the way the coverage would work, I knew we weren't going to be taking in that space ever, and I knew we were just going to be with the characters and crawling on the floor and feeling what they were feeling. So Mark and I were sitting around wondering if we ever wanted to show off this space, and what would be the right emotional moment to do it.' Goldschmidt suggested the shot above Joel and Ellie to give the audience a breather after the intensity of the scene. 'We realized not only did that feel emotionally right, but it also was a great segue into the montage that was basically going to close out the episode,' she says. 'So the montage was scripted, but it was just one of those things where we were inspired by the real location and looking to take advantage of that. I'm really proud and happy of that shot, and happy to see all of our intentions with that shot work.' While Joel is dead on the show, viewers will see him again on Sunday's episode, a flashback to the five years between the end of Season 1 and the start of Season 2. Goldschmidt, who also shot episodes four and the upcoming Season 2 finale, will likely be watching. 'Visually speaking, it's such a rich, wonderful post-apocalyptic world,' she says of the show. 'So I was really excited about that and really excited to work with the team.' Best of GoldDerby Making of 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power' panel: Bringing the Balrog to life was 'like doing a slight of hand card trick' TV Animation roundtable panel: '#1 Happy Family USA,' 'Secret Level,' and 'Arcane' 'Secret Level' creator Tim Miller explains how he gets writers to create short stories based on video and role-playing games Click here to read the full article.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
TV Animation roundtable panel: ‘#1 Happy Family USA,' ‘Secret Level,' and ‘Arcane'
The films of Disney, Pixar, and a cult-classic anthology film were brought up as defining pieces of animation when Gold Derby assembled artists behind three animated programs that are eyeing to score Emmy nominations next month. The types of stories they want to see told through animation and what episodes they might want to submit for Emmy consideration were also topics of discussion for our Meet the Experts: TV Animation panel. The panelists were #1 Happy Family USA cocreator and star Ramy Youssef, Secret Level creator Tim Miller, and Arcane writer Amanda Overton. Watch the full roundtable panel above. Click each person's name to watch an individual interview. More from GoldDerby As Joel returns to 'The Last of Us,' cinematographer Catherine Goldschmidt explains what went into killing him off 'Secret Level' creator Tim Miller explains how he gets writers to create short stories based on video and role-playing games '#1 Happy Family USA' co-creator Ramy Youssef reveals how animation was the perfect way to capture the middle school experience Overton remembers loving The Little Mermaid when that came out but had a huge revelation when she saw Beauty and the Beast and how the film added 3D elements to its 2D animation style. 'When they started doing those, they just felt so immersive to me and I felt like I was being sucked into the world. And then when I saw Toy Story for the first time, I was like, oh my God, this is gonna change everything.' Miller remembers watching Speed Racer and Ultraman as a kid but it was an infamous sci-fi/fantasy cult classic that made him see a path for himself in the medium. 'I guess Heavy Metal really made probably the biggest single effect because I would go with my friends at midnight movies and for the first time I wanted to be an animator and I realized I didn't have to do things that were for kids. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just that I felt like maybe that wasn't my specialty.' He adds that he feels like he's seeing game-changing animation all the time now and specifically cited Arcane and joked that he was 'so sick of hearing people in pitches go, 'So, can you do something like Arcane?'' For Youssef, Disney and Pixar were highlights for him but the thing that really wowed him with animation was watching South Park (which he had to secretly watch since it was forbidden in his house) and being absolutely floored at what the show's characters would say. 'I can't believe they just said that! I mean, this is like the stuff that my uncle says at dinner and everyone tells him to be quiet and now you're watching these characters on Comedy Central saying it … and they're saying these things that are so loaded and I love the power of that and the subversiveness of that and just how insane it was.' This caused Miller to remember when someone first showed him a VHS tape of Trey Parker's short film The Spirit of Christmas. This article and video are presented by Prime Video and Netflix. Best of GoldDerby Making of 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power' panel: Bringing the Balrog to life was 'like doing a slight of hand card trick' 'Secret Level' creator Tim Miller explains how he gets writers to create short stories based on video and role-playing games '#1 Happy Family USA' cocreator Ramy Youssef reveals how animation was the perfect way to capture the middle school experience Click here to read the full article.
The Hindu
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
‘Kesari 2' and more: Revisionism, representation and appropriation
Welcome back to FOMO Fix, your weekly dose of what to watch — and what to dodge — across film and television. This week, we take a hard look at revisionism in storytelling: the kind that reimagines history with purpose and perspective, and the kind that distorts it to fit an agenda. From the jingoistic inventions of Kesari 2 to the smarter narrative choices of Quentin Tarantino and Aaron Sorkin, we unpack the essentials of revisionism. Also this week, we applaud a sharp animated satire from Ramy Youssef, a surprisingly effective thriller with a terrible name — Crazxy — and a take an honest look at representation and appropriation in Superboys of Malegaon. HYPE CHECK: Kesari 2 'Beep off.' 'Beep right off.' 'Go beep yourself.' 'Get the beep out of my country.' Yes, that's the complete collection of Akshay Kumar's punchlines and 'winning arguments' in Kesari 2, a film that takes a nugget of history and revises it into jingoistic mythology. Despite criticism for historical distortion — and plagiarism accusations over a Yahya Bootwala poem — the film has collected over ₹70 crore in its second week. But this courtroom drama is no The Trial of the Chicago 7 or A Few Good Men. Those films made the war of ideas compelling with well-crafted arguments and ideological nuance — not just one-sided F-bombs thrown around like confetti. Tarantino rewrote history too — by killing Hitler in Inglourious Basterds and saving Sharon Tate in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. But if you're presenting an alternate timeline, the least you can do is not market it as The Untold Story of Jallianwala Bagh. It's not just dishonest — it's straight-up pretentious to end the film with names of real-life victims followed by an asterisk: 'Names from public domain.' Translation: 'No attempt was made to verify these names, but Aaron Sorkin did it too, so… vibes?' Representation? Akshay Kumar plays Sankaran Nair — which now apparently makes him an expert on all things starting with K: Kerala, Kathakali, Kalaripayattu. Meanwhile, R. Madhavan is fantastic in the film — making you wonder: why isn't he Sankaran Nair? Why not stay true to the book it's based on — The Case That Shook the Empire? Maybe because real history doesn't stir up the nationalism quota enough to provoke? The only history lesson Kesari 2 teaches is that Bollywood doesn't care about representation, sensitivity, or even basic screenwriting — even when dealing with one of the most haunting tragedies in Indian history. TV GOLD: #1 Happy Family USA In the wake of the Pahalgam tragedy and the surge of hate Muslims across India have endured lately, the show to watch is Ramy Youssef's animated series #1 Happy Family USA on Prime Video. Set in the aftermath of 9/11, the show follows the cultural fallout faced by the Husseins — now under the scanner for being Arab.. Ramy leans into absurdity, throwing in nosy neighbors, shady FBI agents, and even the American President. Yes, George W. Bush shows up for a sleepover. The lead, a teenager named Rumi, joins a punk rock band. 'We need Satanic Verses — Rushdie, not Rumi.' (That line alone deserves a standing ovation.) If you liked Ramy or Mo, this one belongs on your watchlist. If you haven't seen either, it's time. HEADS UP: Crazxy You know those titles that are trying too hard and turn you off instantly? Crazxy — yes, that's 'crazy' with an X — is one of them. Surprisingly, it's actually good. Sohum Shah stars in this real-time thriller about a bag of money, two parties waiting for it, and escalating stakes. He can either use the money to save his career — or ransom it to rescue his kidnapped daughter with Down syndrome. What would you do? The thriller rarely slows down — except for one surprisingly tense tyre change mid-surgery. By the end, you've had so much fun, the slightly predictable climax barely matters. If it had just been titled 'Crazy', more people would've watched it. STREAM THIS FIRST: Superboys of Malegaon Zoya Akhtar's Superboys of Malegaon, on Prime Video, is a fictional adaptation of Supermen of Malegaon, Faiza Ahmed Khan's beloved documentary. It's a classic case of cultural appropriation. Not only does it fail to credit the original as 'based on' or 'adapted from,' it gives it a shoutout — like tagging it in a meme. To be fair, the film — written by Varun Grover — is entertaining and lovingly captures the spirit of Malegaon's mumblecore parody-makers. But the documentary already did that — with authenticity and humility. The appropriation here is twofold: A privileged member from the Javed Akhtar family tree — Sholay lineage and all — gets her writing partner Reema Kagti to direct instead of empowering someone from Malegaon to tell the story. And it mines a marginalised, low-income community while sidelining a documentary filmmaker — one of the most undervalued voices in the industry. So how do you celebrate without appropriating? Take notes from Netflix. When they acquired One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez's sons insisted it be made in Spanish, shot in Colombia, using local talent. That's called platforming the people who lived the story. Want to celebrate the filmmakers of Malegaon? Start by watching Faiza Ahmed Khan's Supermen of Malegaon on YouTube — before streaming the fictional take. JUST SAY NO: You (Netflix) This is not a recommendation. This is your cue to skip. The stalker series You has ended after five seasons. While the show had its guilty-pleasure highs, the final season offers nothing new. The thrills are limp, the ending is predictable. and the Joe Goldberg is too tame for a psycho we've watched get away with murder for five years. Landing a show is an art form. This one crash-lands into clichés. Skip the FOMO. Embrace the JOMO: Joy of Missing Out. Watch Jewel Thief instead. The Vijay Anand one.
Time Magazine
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
The Best New TV Shows of April 2025
The natural world is finally blooming, and spring TV is starting to look pretty vibrant, too. If there's one thing that unites the best new shows of April 2025, it is an irrepressible liveliness. We've got a relatively hot-blooded Agatha Christie adaptation, a high-spirited sitcom set in the northernmost reaches of Canada, a madcap animated comedy about a Muslim family negotiating their Americanness after 9/11, and a fast-talking ballet epic that pings back and forth across the Atlantic. Even the series that's about a woman dying of cancer is fun, sexy, and bursting with life. #1 Happy Family USA (Amazon) On Sept. 10, 2001, Rumi Hussein is just a regular Egyptian American kid—living in the suburbs, grieving his grandfather, making horny mix CDs for the teacher he's hoping to woo into becoming the next Mary Kay Letourneau. Then comes 9/11. Suddenly, neighbors urged to 'say something' when they 'see something' are treating the Husseins like terrorists. Rumi's dad responds with a frantic performance of patriotism to prove they're the safest, most secular family in town. His mom veers in the opposite direction, embracing her given name, Sharia; donning a hijab; and trying to connect with fellow Muslims at a local mosque. Meanwhile, Rumi's older sister Mona is struggling to come out as queer. Then an FBI agent moves in across the street. This is some heavy material for adult animation. But if anyone can be trusted to make a light but not glib show about post-9/11 Islamophobia work, it's Ramy Youssef, the creator behind two great dramedies that capture the experience of being Muslim in 21st century America: Hulu's Ramy and Netflix's Mo. A collaboration with South Park vet Pam Brady, #1 Happy Family USA is a funny and insightful kid's eye view of growing up in a society that forces you to choose between constantly code-switching to appease bigots and being openly hated for who you are. Led by Youssef, who plays Rumi as well as his dad, the voice cast also features Alia Shawkat, Mandy Moore, Chris Redd, Kieran Culkin, and Timothy Olyphant. The lively animation was designed by Pulitzer-winning illustrator and journalist Mona Chalabi, also an executive producer. Agatha Christie's Towards Zero (BritBox) Sometimes a project adds up to precisely the sum of its parts—and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that if those parts are all solid. Here we've got a three-episode BBC miniseries adapted from an undersung Agatha Christie novel, set in 1930s England, at the seaside mansion of the imperious, housebound Lady Tressilian (Anjelica Huston). Her beloved nephew Nevile Strange (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), a dashing tennis player, and his gorgeous new wife, Kay (Mimi Keene), are visiting the estate on their honeymoon. Also there for an extended stay: Nevile's first wife, Audrey (Ella Lily Hyland), with whom he's obviously not yet finished, even after a messy public divorce. The holiday household is rounded out by a fractious assemblage of relatives, employees, and lovers played by great actors like Clarke Peters, Jack Farthing, and Anjana Vasan. So there's plenty of interpersonal friction happening long before the murder takes place. About that murder: the conceit of Towards Zero is that it doesn't happen until more than halfway through the series, allowing us to get to know the cast of characters before they're split into victims and suspects. The premiere opens with Peters' Mr. Treves, a lawyer, giving a dinner-table speech about how a murder is the end of a story that begins much earlier. This isn't as groundbreaking as it might've been in Christie's time; the result is just a more chronological version of the archetypal whodunit, with less need for flashbacks. The show's real draw is its cast, which expands to include Matthew Rhys as a troubled detective, and a skillful adaptation that highlights the glossiest, cleverest elements of classic Christie—and adds a pinch of eros. Dying for Sex (FX) The title Dying for Sex evokes trashy reality series like Sex Sent Me to the ER, but the show takes its name from the acclaimed podcast that the real Molly Kochan recorded with her best friend, Nikki Boyer (an executive producer of the adaptation), about Kochan's radical response to her Stage IV diagnosis. Rather than resign herself to a chaste marriage with a husband who treated her as a patient more than a lover, she left him and embarked upon a sexual odyssey. By the time she died, in 2019, she had explored her desires with more partners than most people would rack up in 10 lifetimes. [ Read the full review.] Étoile (Amazon) You know you're living in tumultuous times when even the biggest names in comfort TV feel compelled to get topical. Étoile is the latest project from Gilmore Girls and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel creator Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband and frequent collaborator, Daniel Palladino. Sherman-Palladino is known for making chatty, witty, compulsively referential, female-focused shows that take a special interest in the arts; she previously spotlighted ballet in her short-lived but beloved series Bunheads. The voice behind all of the above titles is certainly recognizable in Étoile. But the show also represents a novel attempt to marry escapism with engagement. It's just one of the many ambitious juxtapositions that make this vindication of high art in a world on fire as fascinating—and fun—as it is messy. [ Read the full review.] North of North (Netflix) What is it about Canadian comedies? From Schitt's Creek to Sort Of, the CBC never stops cranking out funny shows that feel gentle, wholesome, and family-oriented but also contemporary. Fans of those imports—and, really, anyone who could use a pick-me-up—should add another title from the public broadcaster to their Netflix queue: North of North. Created by Stacey Aglok-MacDonald and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, both Arctic locals and members of the Inuit community, the sitcom is set among the mostly Indigenous residents of a fictional town in the country's extreme north. Anna Lambe gives a wonderfully charismatic performance as Siaja, a 26-year-old Inuk wife and mother who has come to realize she doesn't want to spend her life with Ting (Kelly William), the self-absorbed heartthrob she married after high school. The rest of the cast is delightful as well, from Maika Harper as Siaja's spitfire mom to comedy stalwart Mary Lynn Rajskub (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Larry Sanders Show) as Siaja's exacting boss, the town manager. Bonus: the region's sunlit snowscapes make a gorgeous backdrop.
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'#1 Happy Family USA' Doesn't Overexplain The Muslim American Experience — And I Love That
Growingupas recognizably Muslim in America, it would have been comforting to see myself reflected on screen. It's better late than never, I suppose. Amazon Prime Video's new animated sitcom from Ramy Youssef and Pam Brady, '#1 Happy Family USA' features the Husseins, a family navigating the immediate aftermath of 9/11 in their town. Watching them is an exploration of a turning point in the everyday lives of Muslim families trying to adapt to a new reality. On the show, which dropped on April 17, Ramy Youssef voices a young Muslim boy, Rumi Hussein, whose character feels very familiar to me — not just because of our shared last name, but because of his nuanced interactions with people from within and outside his community after 9/11. Through humor, satire and some wonderfully bizarre storytelling, the show captures the same hurdles so many of us faced back then: What does it mean to fit in? How much of our identity do we need to hide or shed to be 'normal'? And what does survival look like when the world around us is conditioned to see us as suspicious first, human second? The most engaging and unique part of the show is that it doesn't try to explain itself — nor does it try to be palatable for a non-Muslim audience. There's no token non-Muslim character for the audience to latch on to. No clunky monologues designed to overexplain our traditions. Religious and cultural references are portrayed unapologetically and without translation. This might leave some viewers confused, but for many of us, it feels like home. Some details in the show might feel triggering to those of who lived it firsthand: the cloud of anxiety hovering over Muslim families fearing whether they can continue to live peacefully in this country, the desire to be accepted at school, navigating non-Muslim neighbors, the potential for hate crimes and the complexity of immigrant family dynamics. But seeing it all out there — our experiences, our pain and joy — is important. Amid a growing wave of identity-driven content and diversity-focused programming, '#1 Happy Family USA' lets Muslims be complicated, contradictory and sometimes messy. The show also explores generational trauma with substance and intention. We see some characters lean deeper into their faith post-9/11, while others run from it entirely. That range feels real — it reflects a truth many of us lived. The father in the show tries to protect his family by making them appear less visibly Muslim — a mindset rooted in an older generation's instinct to assimilate for safety, even if it meant erasing identity. It's a perspective that's vastly different from the way many younger Muslims today embrace visibility and authenticity, even when it comes at a cost. Meanwhile, the rest of the Hussein family is caught between guilt and survival, wondering whether to preserve their culture or assimilate to stay safe. The show doesn't pick a side — it simply reveals the tension. The cultural punchlines are expertly tailored. Only immigrant American families from the early 2000s would understand the stress of calling-card minutes expiring or the ordeal of being forced to help work the family food cart. Or watching your best friend slowly drift away from you as your 'Muslim-ness' becomes a liability. The moments are small but cut deep — in the show and just as much in our own lives. The reality is that this kind of storytelling couldn't exist without the shift in Muslim representation brought about by earlier series such as 'Ramy,' also created by Youssef. In fact, much of '#1 Happy Family USA' feels like an animated, serialized version of the 'Strawberries' episode from Season 1, which zooms in on a Muslim child processing the aftermath of 9/11. Throughout the season, there's heartbreak but also biting, absurdist humor, courtesy of Youssef, Brady (of 'South Park' fame) and their team of writers. And the laughter is crucial. It's what got us through it and continues to get us through it today. As I watched the series, there was something cathartic about seeing feelings I've carried for decades finally play out on screen without being filtered through a lens of pity or condescension. And while the show does struggle a bit to maintain a cohesive storyline and oscillate between satirical and somber themes, I can appreciate that the characters felt human. And it reminded me that stories don't have to capture the entire human experience in a poetic way to be powerful; they just need to be honest. For many Muslims, this series is more than a coming-of-age dramedy, it's a cultural self-portrait. The quiet rebellions, the unspoken code-switching, the guilt, the pride, the joy: We rarely see these elements on-screen. By not reducing my community to vessels for trauma, our actual voices are heard. And the show is still enjoyable for non-Muslims — not because it's purposely been made palatable for them, but because everyone appreciates authenticity.
