One of the most respected film festivals in the US, the American Film Institute’s AFI Fest announced on Wednesday its eight red carpet gala screenings for the upcoming 24th annual event in Los Angeles, November 4-11.

The opening night selection is the world premiere of Love and Other Drugs, directed by Edward Zwick (Blood Diamond) and starring Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal as mismatched lovers. Black Swan starring Natalie Portman and directed by Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler) will close the eight-day event.

For the Tribute Selection, Toronto festival winner The King’s Speech will honor director Tom Hooper (The Damned United, John Adams) and star Colin Firth as the stuttering King George VI and Geoffrey Rush as the Australian speech therapist. The film will be released in theaters November 26. Firth is considered an early candidate for an Oscar for this role.

The premier film festival attracts film industry players and actors with the American Film Market occuring concurrently in nearby Santa Monica and is attended by 7,000 people from 70 countries. AFI Fest is the only US film festival with a FIAPF (Fédération Internationale des Associations de Producteurs de Films) accreditation.

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With only two months to go until he turns 30, Jake Gyllenhaal has mixed emotions about the milestone.

“Look guys, I’m not 30 yet!” Gyllenhaal cracked at Saturday’s New Yorker Festival in Manhattan. “Can you cut it with the 30 comments?”

Deflecting – humorously – any questions about leaving his 20s behind, the Love and Other Drugs star may feel wistful, but he also says he is comfortable with the person he has become.

“I feel more like myself. I feel like now, it’s just the beginning,” he says. “I guess you get to a point at 30 or somewhere and you say, ‘What I am, is what I am and that’s what I’m going to be and that’s all good. I don’t need to be anything else.’ And that’s kind of how I feel.”

One major influence is big sister Maggie Gyllenhaal, 32, who initially sparked Jake’s love of acting. Growing up, the two did a lot of performing when their parents held dinner parties.

“Some of my earliest memories are of my sister coming back from doing a rehearsal for some musical during elementary school,” he says. “I would watch her, and I realized that she got attention that way. I joined her and we would put on shows together and she would always boss me around.”

Typically, Maggie would pull the big-sister card. Recalls Jake, “She would put on a stage performance of Cats, and I would be a lone, poor cat sitting in the corner while my sister performed. I never got to be the star. I did everything wrong according to her.”

Now that both are Oscar-nominated headliners, what would it take for them team on the big screen again, as they did in 2001’s Donnie Darko?

“I love her a lot,” Jake tells PEOPLE, but “we don’t go around looking for something to work on together. I would rather spend time with my niece, [Maggie’s daughter Ramona, 4] and spend time as brother and sister.”

Not that the door is completely closed. “It would take something that I love so much … that I would need her to be a part of, and vice versa,” he says.

Sex and drugs were underlying themes at the New Yorker Festival over the weekend. Speaking to a mostly female audience Saturday night, Jake Gyllenhaal noted that he’d “masturbated four or five times in four or five different movies.”

Self-professed former drug user James Taylor revealed he once thought about becoming a chemist, adding with a chuckle, “I guess you could say I dab bled in that.” On Sunday, Kris ten Wiig — at a panel with her “Saturday Night Live” castmates — described her au dition for the show: “Lorne [Michaels] and I made love. For three days.”

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He’s alive! It’s not much we see of Jake Gyllenhaal these days, so it’s absolute wonderful to see him again. He still got the beard and I don’t know about all of you but I’m totally digging it! Anyway Jake appeared at the 2010 New Yorker Festival yesterday to talk about his upcoming movie Love and Other Drugs.

Gallery Links:
Appearances from 2010 > The 2010 New Yorker Festival In Conversation with Jake Gyllenhaal and Ed Zwick