In 2011, director Tate Taylor adapted Kathryn Stockett’s novel “The Help,” a story about the relationship between the wealthy whites and the poor blacks who raised their children of 60s-era Mississippi, into a feature film. When all was said and done, Taylor’s film made nearly ten times its production budget, was nominated for a truckload of awards (including 8 NAACP Image Awards and 4 Academy Awards), and had everyone’s aunts and grandmas talking their ears off about how much they wanted to go see it. To say that it ended up being a success would be something of an understatement. The Landlord is the debut of director Hal Ashby, one of the great ’70s filmmakers who, for some reason, doesn’t get the same recognition as many of his contemporaries. It earned Lee Grant a nomination for Best Supporting Actress back in the day, but it’s a film (like most of Ashby’s work not named Harold and Maude) that’s been generally forgotten over time. This is strange, because not only is it a great film that pushes some racial hot-buttons, but it also features a couple of actors who went on to do big things in Beau Bridges and Lou Gossett Jr.

Jonathan Levine‘s 50/50 bares many similarities to a Hal Ashby film. Many writers/directors have attempted to emulate the Harold and Maude director’s style, capturing both the tragedies and odd humor of life, and most of the time they all come off as lazy homage. Like a bad film student trying to ape a filmmaker he or she loves, it’s embarrassing and clumsy. However, writer Will Reiser, co-star/producer Seth Rogen, and director Jonathan Levine managed to make a film inspired by the legend, and yet make their own personal and heartfelt story. A part of that heart comes from the honesty that the filmmakers captured. 50/50 had to jump over some big tonal obstacles, which, as our own review points out, it did so without a hitch. Here’s what Will Reiser and Seth Rogen had to say in our brief chat about Hal Ashby, real life not working on the page, and finding Jonathan Levine:

Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) has a pretty good life. He works in Seattle as a producer for a public radio station, his best friend Kyle (Seth Rogen) is always good for a laugh, he lives happily with his girlfriend Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard), and best of all, he’s exceptionally healthy. An odd back pain sends Adam to the doctor where he discovers he’s suffering from a late stage tumor. The diagnosis shocks him at first as he’s spent considerable time exercising, eating healthy, and avoiding alcohol and drugs, but he quickly moves to anger…because he’s spent considerable time exercising, eating healthy, and avoiding alcohol and drugs. His tumor is a rare type, and while he weighs his options including chemotherapy and surgery he discovers the unofficial odds on his survival over the next few months are fifty-fifty. There’s a one in two chance he’ll be dead before his next birthday. That pretty good life soon collapses around him as he’s forced to face the reality of both his life and death. His journey will expose certain truths about himself, his family and friends, and even a few strangers, and it might even give him a new pick-up line for the ladies… Imagine if Funny People was a comedy. Then imagine it was filled with wit, heart, and an honesty about the relationships we form throughout our lives. Now stop imagining, because that movie you’re picturing is 50/50.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr is all giddy because apparently Joseph Gordon-Levitt has decided to copy his signature hairstyle. Undeterred by folks telling him Gordon-Levitt shaved his head to play the role in 50/50, Kevin tries to lobby other Hollywood actors to copy his image. Unfortunately, What’s Your Number? star Chris Evans refuses to grow a huge belly and Dream House star Daniel Craig just won’t latch onto Kevin’s charming American accent.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr makes big plans to publish a best-selling book that women across the nation will read in hoity-toity book clubs. Step one: Move to the deep south and get raised by an African American maid. While Kevin tries to figure out how to move past that step, he gets a job delivering pizzas and lives in constant fear he’ll be used in a bank heist. Then he cheats death by avoiding the Glee concert movie, but lives in even more constant fear that the flick will hunt him down and make him watch it.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr puts on his ghostbusting gear to take on the two big spiritual flicks in the theaters. He suffers through a tsunami in Hereafter and struggles even more to get through Clint Eastwood’s latest Oscar-bait flick. Then he sets up a stationary video camera to capture any strange goings-on while he sleeps. He plans to sell the film to Paramount as Paranormal Activity 3: More Shots of Nothing Happening.

The sort of movie for which the critical cliché “tone poem” was invented, Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter evokes an eerie serenity in the face of death. With three interlocking storylines centered on our awareness, perceptions and ultimate acceptance of the afterlife, on what the notion that you start dying the moment you’re born really means, the picture ought to cast a particular, carefully controlled spell. Yet Eastwood, an adept handler of “meat-and-potatoes” narratives and more naked emotions, fails to transform the precise, melancholic sensibility at the heart of Peter Morgan’s screenplay into an affecting cinematic experience. Long-winded, ponderous and without much in the way of compelling drama, Hereafter sputters across three countries, filled with haunting imagery but never offering the visceral, subtle transcendence of a film by a more adept chronicler of spiritual sensations.

Bryce Dallas Howard has joined Clint Eastwood’s next movie, the supernatural drama Hereafter…

Twitards assemble! Summit Entertainment is trying to replace another one of our beloved actors/actresses for an upcoming Twilight sequel.

Neil and Kevin wage war on the machines… and McG with some scathing analysis of Terminator: Salvation. Then they move onto the movies that Neil hasn’t seen.

Warner Bros. has released the final press kit for their upcoming actioner Terminator Salvation, which includes over 50 images — some old, but many of which are very new and very cool.

Warner Bros. has released three brand new TV spots for their upcoming actioner Terminator Salvation, from director McG. All three spots include explosions, for those of you wondering.

For those of you that think humanity will survive the upcoming robot uprising, here is video evidence that we are all going to die. Even Christian Bale, master of all things badass — a man who has saved Gotham City twice from disaster — cannot stop the elimination in McG’s soon to be awesome Terminator Salvation.

A new poster for McG’s franchise reboot Terminator Salvation has shown up on the web along with some of the footage from the Comic-Con panel. No, not that footage…

I freely admit that my interest in the upcoming Terminator Salvation was idling at nil ever since McG was announced to direct. I believe I said he sucks, his movies suck, and now he was going to fuck up the Terminator. They just premiered new footage from the film, and I’m eating my words. Happily.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the role that was originally given to Charlotte Gainsbourg (I’m Not There) could in fact be filled by Lady in the Water and Spider-man 3 star Bryce Dallas Howard.