Lena Dunham’s ‘Sharp Stick’ Sells to Utopia – Film News In Brief

Jazz Tangcay Artisans EditorThe Advanced Imaging Society announced today that  Guillermo del Toro will be honored with the first-ever Gene Kelly Visionary Award at the 2022 AIS Lumiere Awards.In addition, The Sir Charles Wheatstone Award will be presented to the Epic Games for Unreal Engine for their real-time engine technology and support for filmmakers.Del Toro and Epic Games will join fellow previously announced honorees Denis Villeneuve (Harold Lloyd Award) and Adam McKay (Voices For the Earth Award) at the 12th annual awards ceremony.“Many of us think of Gene Kelly as the legendary actor and dancer,” said Jim Chabin, president of AIS. “But he was as powerful a creative force behind the camera as he was in front.

Storm Eunice has blown down a large street at Stacey Solomon and Joe Swash’s £1.2 million Essex home. A red weather warning was issued across the UK on Friday 18 February as Storm Eunice threatened to bring winds of up to 90mph.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans EditorThe Visual Effects Society will present Guillermo del Toro with VES Award for Creative Excellence on March 8.del Toro will be honored for his consummate artistry and expansive storytelling that blends iconic visual effects and unforgettable narrative. Harnessing his intuitive vision, del Toro has created a distinctive cinematic style mixing the world of monster movies, comic books and exuberant visuals straight from his imagination.“Guillermo is a fiercely inventive storyteller, who has pushed the boundaries of filmmaking,” said VES Board Chair Lisa Cooke.

Utopia has taken U.S. rights to writer-director-producer Lena Dunham’s latest directorial Sharp Stick which made its world premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. A theatrical release is planned for later this year.

Utopia has acquired the U.S. rights to writer-director-producer Lena Dunham’s Sundance comedy “Sharp Stick,” which follows a young woman’s unexpected quest of sexual exploration and self-discovery, Utopia announced on Monday.Utopia will release the film theatrically in the U.S.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans EditorThe Makeup and Hairstylist Guild will be honoring Jon Favreau with their Distinguished Artisan Award at the 9th Annual MUAHS Awards on Feb. 29.“Jon Favreau’s list of creative, exotic, and memorable characters lives on in his plethora of films, television movies and series.

Lena Dunham got a little help from her friends! For her new movie,, the star tells  that she asked Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn for their help, which is why they are given a Thank You credit at the end of the film.«They are just really great friends of mine who watched a really early cut of the film and gave me notes,» Dunham says of Swift, who was a bridesmaid in her wedding, and her actor boyfriend. «They’re both just really interesting, perceptive people. Taylor’s been one of my close friends for a really long time and Joe is an actor who I actually ended up working with on a project that I shot just a few months after this.», directed and written by Dunham and starring Kristine Froseth, Jon Bernthal and Luka Sabbat, follows Sarah Jo, a naive 26-year-old living on the fringes of Hollywood with her mother and sister.

Elizabeth Wagmeister Senior CorrespondentAfter Lena Dunham’s new movie “Sharp Stick” was criticized on Twitter by an autism activist who claimed she was approached to be a consultant on the project, the filmmaking team behind the Sundance film says that the central character, Sarah Jo, was never written to be on the spectrum. Producers say the drama about a young woman’s sexual awakening was inspired entirely by creator Lena Dunham’s personal journey, dealing with severe endometriosis which resulted in a hysterectomy.“Sarah Jo was never written nor imagined as a neurodivergent woman,” a spokesperson for the film says, in part, in a statement to Variety.

Lena Dunham is giving fans some insight into her new movie Sharp Stick!

Lena Dunham is sharing her thanks for Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn.

The Janes,” “Call Jane” and “Aftershock“). It’s a complex topic to be sure, which Dunham and her cast enthusiastically embraced.

in a post-screening Q&A, Dunham ran down its many high-minded inspirations. She said she wanted to “give porn its due as something that can be really healing.” And, as a woman who can’t have biological children due to a hysterectomy, Dunham, 35, wished to tell a story about “what it means to make your own family and design your own family and how that’s just as meaningful.” Yes, it is. But does that beautiful message come during the scene when the 26-year-old main character Sarah Jo (Kristine Froseth) scrawls an A-to-Z list of sex acts on colorful construction paper that she’d like to try out with randos? Or when her mom (Jennifer Jason Leigh) gives a vocab lesson on a crude nickname for the male anatomy? Sarah Jo’s sister Treina (Taylour Paige) is adopted, true, but the world is already in universal agreement that adoption is a great thing to do.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans EditorThe Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the launch of the new interview series, “Seen.” Nick Barili, an Argentinean-American journalist, director, writer and producer, sits down for one-on-one conversations with some of the most influential artists and filmmakers with Latin-American and Spanish roots. The first season of the web series will include Academy members John Leguizamo, Eva Longoria and Oscar-nominee Edward James Olmos (“Stand and Deliver”), as they discuss their personal journeys, culture and breaking down barriers in filmmaking.Leguizamo will lead the first episode as he explores his beloved New York City and maneuvering through the industry over his long career, also covering the topics of colorism and tokenism.

Playing in the Premieres section of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, “Sharp Stick,” produced during lockdown, was conceived by Lena Dunham and the film’s director of photography, Ashley Connor, starting from the base elements that were already available to them — namely a set of actors and locations. But while many quarantine-made films have appeared to embrace a “will this do?” aesthetic, implicitly relying on the audience’s sympathy and compassionate understanding to fill gaps and forgive compromises in production value, Dunham has instead created a work of art that comfortably fits within and plays with the limitations imposed by the pandemic.

Lena Dunham hasn’t made a feature film since Tiny Furniture 12 years ago, but she has some plausible excuses—running Girls for six seasons, conceiving another series, writing two books, acting here and there. It took the pandemic to get her behind the camera again and, low and behold, the resulting film is about people living in very close quarters, not going out much and, at least for some, having a lot of sex. Sharp Stick brims over with the energy of young people who wanted to make something, quickly and down and dirty. The result is an invigorating film about a beautiful woman who, in her mid-20s, sheds her lifelong avoidance of sex to dive into the deep end. The FilmNation production is making its world premiere in the Premieres section of this year’s festival.