Latest in 50/50

Opening the 75th Venice Film Festival this afternoon, artistic director Alberto Barbara appeared to reference to any number of issues surrounding this year's event — from a lack of female filmmakers to an abundance of Netflix movies — noting he was present to introduce the juries and quipping, “We have already said…

EXCLUSIVE: Writer Will Reiser used his own experiences with cancer to create the screenplay for Summit’s 50/50 starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen and Anjelica Huston. Described as a “cancer comedy,” it is also full of gripping drama. The result has been early awards-season success — trophies for Best Original…

Dying is easy, comedy is hard. Someone said that, right? Judging by the paltry number of “pure” comedies that have won Best Picture Oscars in the past, apparently the Academy doesn’t think it’s hard at all. But could this actually be the year comedy will once again get its due in the Best Picture race? Will we ever…

SUNDAY AM, 6TH UPDATE: Still on vacation in a different time zone. That’s why I’m overdue on some autopsy reports I promised and haven’t yet delivered. I’ll release them Sunday. My sincerest apologies. (Unfortunately, I can’t get used to a definition of ‘time off’ that still makes me toil almost 24/7.) That said, the…

Harvey Weinstein just set a new air, land and sea world record for attending movie premieres. The Weinstein Company mogul managed to show up at three, count ’em, three different premiere events in two different countries all on Monday night. “Yeah, this was some fun wasn’t it?” he deadpanned when I asked him about…

Mandate Pictures is moving fast on the feature comedy Jamaica, which will reunite the studio with the team behind the comedic drama 50/50, which stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen and Anna Kendrick and is due out in September. Like that movie, Will Reiser is writing the screenplay based on his real-life…