• Comedy shorts get some respect at the second annual LOL JAX Film Festival, this weekend (Aug. 4-5) at the Sun-Ray Cinema in Jacksonville. Each of the fest’s 15 short films will be screened both days, with awards nominees announced tonight (Saturday) and an awards ceremony Sunday night. 
• Popcorn Frights, Florida’s biggest horror film festival, unleashes a full slate of the scary stuff Aug. 10-16 at Savor Cinema in Fort Lauderdale. Check out a guide to the fest’s hits and misses by Miami New Times critics Hans Morgenstern and Juan Antonio Barquin.
• Filmmaker Lauren Miller Rogen: From FSU film school to directing and writing “For a Good Time, Call …” and Netflix’s “Like Father.” (IndieWire).
• Silverspot Cinema, an upscale, dine-in movie theater, has opened in Miami’s Met Square; 70,000-square-foot theater has nine auditoriums, each with 30 to 130 reclining seats. (South Florida Business Journal).
• The Sun Screens series of Florida-related films at the Orange County Regional History Center in Orlando continues Sunday, Aug. 26 with a 2 p.m. screening of Ron Howard’s “Apollo 13”) (Orlando Sentinel).

Got Florida film news? Email me at jphilipbooth@hotmail.com