Film Flam
Austinites get Emmy nominations and David Gordon Green's new project
By Josh Kupecki, 10:00AM, Mon. Jul. 20, 2015
The Austin angle on last week's Emmy nominations highlights this edition of Film Flam, plus sad news for Hellboy fans.
First up, part-time Austinite and multiple hyphenate Mike Judge scored a nom for his trenchant and hilarious HBO show Silicon Valley for Outstanding Comedy Series (along with executive producer Alex Berg), as well as competing in Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series. The former is a tough category, as Judge's show is up against Amazon's Transparent, as well as Tina Fey's Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
Another project with local ties, Margaret Brown's documentary The Great Invisible, was nominated in the Exceptional Merit in Documentary category. Our own Louis Black, editor and co-founder of the Chronicle, was one of the producers on the film. The doc details the aftermath of the 2010 Deep Water Horizon oil spill. The film premiered at the 2014 South by Southwest Film Festival, where it won the Documentary Competition's Grand Jury Prize. For an interview with Brown, see here.
Also of note is John Ridley's American Crime, a limited series shot in Austin last year, which garnered 10 nominations, including Outstanding Mini-Series. The ABC drama will return for a second season next year with some of the same cast (there's an open casting call, Tuesday, July 21) and crew – said crew keeping busy wrapping up shooting the second season of HBO's The Leftovers, premiering this fall. Check out the teaser (replete with the iconic Texas desert) below.
Also of note:
• Last week the Hollywood Reporter reported that David Gordon Green has committed to directing Stronger, a film about the Boston Marathon Bombings. The film focuses on Jeff Bauman, who lost both his legs in the attack while waiting for his girlfriend at the finish line. Green just wrapped Our Brand Is Crisis, starring Sandra Bullock, and currently, you can see Manglehorn in theatres and on VOD.
• Athina Rachel Tsangari, UT alum and and former artistic director of the Cinematexas International Short Film Festival, has become the latest filmmaker-in-residence for the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Tsangari, a producer on Richard Linklater's Before Midnight, will premiere her latest film, Chevalier, at the Locarno Film Festival next month.
• Those hoping for the completion of Guillermo Del Toro's Hellboy trilogy got the wind taken out of their sails when Del Toro confirmed that the final film probably wouldn't happen. The problem: $120 million, a price Del Toro stated was "beyond Kickstarter." Del Toro is currently prepping Pacific Rim 2; his Gothic romance Crimson Peak opens in early fall.
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