Sean Penn has blasted the organizers of the Oscars of being cowards who, in effect, limit the kind of films that can be funded and made.

Five years after “Joker” won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, filmmaker Todd Phillips is returning with the sequel.

The uniquely enduring literary agent who worked for years to find a publisher for Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” and over the following decades arranged deals for everyone from true crime writer Joe McGinniss to the creators of the Berenstain Bears has died.