Latest news with #1HappyFamilyUSA
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How ‘American Primeval,' ‘Daredevil' and ‘The Last of Us' Pulled Off Some of the Year's Biggest Stunt-Filled Action Set Pieces
The year is 1857. A woman is sitting in a meadow in southern Utah Territory, casually explaining her plans to settle in the Salt Lake Valley, when she's cut off mid-sentence by a pointed object that bursts from her forehead with a bone-cracking crunch. She remains upright for a moment — silent, eyes open and blood oozing from her wound — then falls over dead, revealing the long shaft of an arrow lodged in the back of her skull. The next two-plus-minutes of Netflix's 'American Primeval' are a dizzying display of nonstop mayhem. The sky is instantly filled with flying arrows, falling victims right and left, as attackers on horseback and on foot zoom in and out frame, shooting, stabbing, scalping and engaging in hand-to-hand combat. The camera snakes through the action, capturing a succession of brutal deaths (including the shooting of a minor character played by director Peter Berg), always circling back to Sara Rowell (Betty Gilpin) and her pre-teen son Devin's (Preston Mota) desperate efforts to stay alive. More from Variety How Meghann Fahy Created a Rebellious Character Whose 'Disdain' for Flowery Dresses Disrupted the Wealthy World of 'Sirens' Ramy Youssef on Juggling 'Mountainhead,' '#1 Happy Family USA,' 'Mo,' 'The Studio' and Perhaps - Eventually - a Baby 'Bridget Jones' Director Michael Morris on the Emmy Longform Conundrum: What's The Difference Between a Film and a TV Movie? 'The script read for 100 people on each side, and we got 15 [stunt people] on each side,' says second unit director and stunt coordinator J.J. Dashnaw, who worked on the show alongside his father, fellow stunt coordinator Jeff Dashnaw. 'We had guys running around dying, and when the camera tilted one way, [they'd] get up and play other people.' There were several other Dashnaws on the stunt team, including J.J.'s son Jaxon, who plays a boy taken down by a bullet to the head, causing his guilt-wracked killer to vomit. 'I actually walked away, because I got emotional as a proud father,' says J.J. 'It was a cool moment for me.' 'American Primeval' is one of many examples of Emmy-eligible shows that have upped TV's action game, from Amazon's 'The Boys' and 'Reacher' to HBO Max's 'House of the Dragon' and 'The Penguin,' putting themselves in contention in the stunt coordination and stunt performer categories. The raid in 'American Primeval,' based on a real-life incident known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre, was done as a 'oner,' a term used to describe a scene shot — or seemingly shot — in a single take. In recent years, it has become an increasingly common attention-grabbing aesthetic device employed across genres. The raid scene was filmed in New Mexico at dusk over the course of three days, then seamlessly stitched together digitally in post. Aside from CG flying arrows and a CG charging bull, everything else was done practically, from the fires burning the wagons to the gunshots, the bullet hits and the fake blood. In the first episode of Disney+'s 'Daredevil: Born Again,' the big 'oner' starts with the stunt doubles for the titular blind superhero (Charlie Cox) and the villain Bullseye (Wilson Bethel) smashing through the front window of Josie's Bar. As patrons scatter, Daredevil and Bullseye trade punches and kicks, eventually moving out of frame. The camera travels outside, where Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) lays on the ground, mortally wounded, then back into the bar, following Daredevil and Bullseye's fight up the back staircase and on to the roof. '[Showrunner] Dario Scardapane really knows how to flesh out and write a sequence that leaves it open for you to creatively jump into it and design characters, but he's also very specific at the same time,' says second unit director and stunt coordinator Philip Silvera. And directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead 'had a very specific camera language to which they wanted to shoot the sequence. So it's my job to kind of figure out how to make that flow within the camera language and the character design.' The 'oner' was assembled from several shots taken over the course of two and a half days. The bar and the staircase were filmed on location at the Capri Social Club in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, while the rooftop portion was done on a soundstage at Silvercup Studios East in Long Island City, N.Y. The shots bookending the sequence are equally spectacular. For the lead-in, which has Daredevil doing a rope swing from a rooftop, Silvera and Daredevil stunt double Jason Mello were raised on a lift three-and-a-half stories in the air outside the bar. Mello was flown down on a winch line using a device called a descender, and Silvera followed on a separate line, holding a camera to capture the shot from a subjective perspective. In the scene's climax, Bullseye stunt double Brian Jansa falls from the rooftop on a descender and is blended into a CG version of the character that hits the concrete below with a wet smack. When they shot the attack of the zombie-like fungus-infected humans on the town of Jackson Hole in the second episode of HBO's 'The Last of Us' Season 2, the stunt falls from rooftops weren't done on wires or into airbags, but on to stacks of cardboard boxes. 'The problem with an air bag, when there's a two-person entry into it, if one hits first, the other one potentially doesn't get any air,' explains stunt coordinator Marny Eng. Cardboard boxes notwithstanding, the sequence was a highly complex, high-tech undertaking. Shot over the course of four weeks on a set built in a gravel pit in Minaty Bay, British Columbia, it mixes practical effects (including fire and snow), makeups and stunts (both human and canine) with an array of CG elements, which, unlike in 'American Primeval,' included digitally animated characters. 'The plan that I had with Marny is that if we have 50 stunt performers that day, where do we put them that is most advantageous for visual effects, understanding that we had to add more to that number?' says visual effects supervisor Alex Wang. 'Fifty had to turn into 200, for example, for some shots.' When the infected horde is running down Main Street to attack the town, the first unit (under the direction of Mark Mylod) and the second unit team worked in tandem, with the former on the rooftops with lead actors and the latter on the ground with the 'infected' stunt performers. 'That really happened in real time with everybody, where you see Maria [Rutina Wesley] up on the roof and Tommy [Gabriel Luna] down below, and the guys with the flamethrowers,' says cinematographer Catherine Goldschmidt. Camera operator Robin A. Smith got into the act as a stunt performer of sorts to capture the subjective perspective of a seven-foot-tall 'bloater' — a human with a late-stage fungal infection that has turned them into a mushroom-scaled monstrosity — in a one-on-one showdown with a flamethrower-wielding Tommy. Wearing the fire suit he uses for his off-hours Formula Vee auto racing hobby, Smith was placed inside an enclosure described as a 'fireproof rickshaw' and pushed into a stream of real fire shot at him by Luna. 'It was extremely, extremely hot,' laughs Smith. 'Luckily, the day outside wasn't so hot,so between setups, I could just peel back the curtain [of the enclosure], take my mask off and get some fresh air.' Best of Variety Emmy Predictions: Documentary Programs — Nonfiction Races Spotlight Pee-wee Herman, Simone Biles and YouTube Creators Emmy Predictions: With One Week Until Voting Opens, Declining Submissions Create Tight Acting and Series Races Emmy Predictions: Animated Program — Can Netflix Score Big With 'Arcane,' 'Devil May Cry' and the Final Season of 'Big Mouth?'
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How Ramy Youssef and Pam Brady Took ‘Fearless' Swings with ‘#1 Happy Family USA'
On June 5, the IndieWire Honors Spring 2025 ceremony will celebrate the creators and stars responsible for some of the most impressive and engaging work of this TV season. Curated and selected by IndieWire's editorial team, IndieWire Honors is a celebration of the creators, artisans, and performers behind television well worth toasting. We're showcasing their work with new interviews leading up to the Los Angeles event. Ramy Youssef and Pam Brady were big fans of each other who had never met — and as soon as they did, they started to work together on a television show. The duo teamed up for A24 and Prime Video's '#1 Happy Family USA,' an animated series about a Muslim family in post-9/11 America that 'has no business being as funny as its first season proves to be.' More episodes are on their way, thanks to a two-season order from the streamer, and Youssef and Brady will receive this year's Spark Award for animation at this season's IndieWire Honors. More from IndieWire Sheryl Lee Ralph Remembers Sidney Poitier's Early Support: 'I Expect Great Things from You' 'Squid Game' Creator Teases Potential Spinoff: 'I Want to Show What They Did' Between Seasons 1 and 2 As a millennial stand-up and creator of his own show, Youssef was (of course) influenced by 'South Park,' which he describes as an ''Oh shit' moment' breakthrough about the possibilities of animation and 'the crazy things that you could say when it's just coming out of like little animated children's mouths.' Brady had been impressed by Youssef's work and begged her manager to set up a meeting, just to 'understand how [his] mind worked.' She played it cool when he asked her about working together, while inside she was freaking out. She wasn't alone. As the show went into pre-production — and production and post-production — Youssef said that at the studio, 'everyone, at every time' was nervous about how it would go ('including right now'). 'It's so interesting, because the show is in a lot of ways about fear, but working with Ramy, the creative process was pretty fearless,' Brady told IndieWire. 'It didn't feel like we were being provocative for no reason, just to be provocative. We were just telling the story. We're exploring a 12-year-old boy's mentality at a really tough time, and the fact that it felt true gave us the confidence to push it.' 'In a lot of ways, making an animated show was less daunting than making a live-action show that was not only dealing with things that were sensitive to me, but also using my face and my name and all that stuff,' Youssef said, referencing Hulu's award-winning 'Ramy.' 'To go into something that's like, 'He's just a cartoon' actually felt way more liberating, and felt like let's just fucking throw it at the wall.' Early on, the show brought Youssef back to his stand-up roots, riffing on a joke with an audience — the writers room — for immediate feedback and finessing. The comprehensive process of animation allowed them to be what Brady calls 'joke maximalists' in terms of fine tuning something for as long as possible. 'In live action, we do so much iterating, but at a certain point you go home with the footage, and that's just what it is,' said Youssef. 'Here, as long as you don't need to move a background, that mouth is yapping and moving. You could have it say whatever the hell you want it to say, pretty much up until the last day.' Each episode of '#1 Happy Family USA' opens with a cheeky disclaimer. They're rated H for haram, and not intended to serve as cultural representation. It started as just that — a humorous insurance policy for Youssef, whose work is often tasked with speaking for large swathes of the Arab and Muslim community — and grew into a reliable running joke. 'It started from the sincere place, and then became this really funny runner where every episode we list off the things we're not representing,' he said. 'So immediately there's a joke as the episode starts, but then you also kind of know what we're about to satirize, and you go, 'Oh, well, how's that going to happen?'' '#1 Happy Family USA' goes to some pretty surreal places — the code switching, the talking lamb, the musical interludes, and, of course, George W. Bush — but that's not unusual for animation, or indeed for those familiar with Youssef's work. The series grew from the same seed that informed Episode 104 of 'Ramy,' a 9/11 flashback with a strawberry-loving Osama Bin Laden hallucination. Breaking that particular story, Youssef said, showed him that 'there's this whole era here. The best parts of the live-action episode were very surreal, and then I got really inspired by pushing it even further and taking it into something that was animated.' In the show, Youssef also voices the young Rumi Hussein, and his father Hussein — a deliriously entertaining track that Brady pushed for. 'If I look back, probably my favorite thing about making this show is finding that character of Hussein Hussein. I think he's the heartbeat of the show,' Youssef said. 'There's a depth to the idea that that Ramy as a kid lived through 9/11 as a 12 -year-old, and now he's playing it as a 12-year-old but also seeing the experience through a father's eyes,' said Brady. The show excels because it sees the world through Rumi's eyes, or Hussein's, or sister Mona (Alia Shawkat) or mother Sharia (Salma Hindy). Consider Rumi's dalliance with illegally downloading music, which puts him on the radar of a not-so-mysterious pen pal known as Curious_George_Bush43! By the end of the season, President George W. Bush arrives at the family's doorstep, masquerading as Rumi's friend while barely concealing his sinister intentions. 'What's so great about getting to know his character through Rumi is that he just gets to be a mischievous adult, who at first is like, 'Hey, I'm your pal,' until the other shoe drops,' said Youssef. 'I think kids have that experience of adults: 'Hey, you're a really good kid. You get to do this, but first you got to do your homework,' or whatever the kid doesn't want to do. But in this case it's the President of the United States, and he wants to implicate this kid in his global fight on terror.' 'We also wanted to make sure we didn't present him in the way that he's just this boob and this puppet, because we all felt pretty clearly that he knew exactly what he was doing,' said Brady. 'We just wanted to show him being a bastard to Rumi, and show this guy is not your friend.' As for the central family, Brady said, 'The thing that's funny about 'South Park' that people don't talk about that much is it's a story about four best friend boys. At its core, it's very sentimental — not in the bad way, but it's about friendship. That's why you can get crazy, because you buy their relationship. [This show,] at its core, it's showing the the bonds of the family.' Youssef likes to start broad with his humor and then add layers of specificity. He gives a perfect example: in the show's pilot, there is a crisis over where to bury Rumi's grandfather (Azhar Usman), a crisis which culminate in Uncle Ahmed (Elia) being arrested at the airport on the morning of September 11, 2001. 'You have this family that is so loving they really care where their dead relative is about to be buried, but then there's so much dysfunction that the body has to be stolen,' he explained. 'That is its own can of worms, before you even add on the layer that they're Arab and Muslim and add on what happens at the airport. What would it look like for this family to have a dead body at the airport on 9/11? That is a very wild thread to connect, and is emblematic of the kind of things we try to pull off on the show.' It's clear that Youssef and Brady take pride in the show, as much as the artist's impulse often leans toward self-criticism. They've also got the second season coming, and were thrilled to draw on a well of ideas that supplied both installments. Brady is happy with with the audience response, and hopeful that a show like this one won't always feel so radical. For Youssef, it's a welcome addition to a diverse body of work. 'I'm finding that this animated show is sitting with different fans in different ways, and that's really cool,' he said. 'There are people who love 'Ramy,' and then there are other people who go, 'Yeah, 'Ramy' was OK, but I really like 'Mo,'' and then there's people who are like, 'Hey, this is my favorite thing you've done.' I find all of that really exciting. You just get to learn more about different things that that can connect in different ways.' '#1 Happy Family USA' is now streaming on Prime Video. Best of IndieWire The Best Thrillers Streaming on Netflix in June, from 'Vertigo' and 'Rear Window' to 'Emily the Criminal' All 12 Wes Anderson Movies, Ranked, from 'Bottle Rocket' to 'The Phoenician Scheme' Nightmare Film Shoots: The 38 Most Grueling Films Ever Made, from 'Deliverance' to 'The Wages of Fear'
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.
