The pandas have been euthanized and Sean Penn is still lighting up despite you on the first full day of the Cannes Film Festival, which we continue to study from our vantage point in the salt mines. We continue to wince at the reaction to the opening-night film Blindness, whose bad buzz we were nervous about back when the festival waited forever to announce its selection. Variety's Justin Chang piled on this morning — "Blindness emerges onscreen both overdressed and undermotivated, scrupulously hitting the novel's beats yet barely approximating, so to speak, its vision" — with an only slightly happier James Rocchi following suit at Cinematical.

Then there's the anticipation for Indiana Jones and Whatever the Fuck, whose anxious makers are taking precautions to dodge the lynch-mob on their own tail:

Top Five Classic Celebrity Paparazzi Attacks (As Inspired By Sienna Miller's LAX Handbag Assault)

Sean Penn Thrills Crowd With Incoherent Spoken-Word Jam And Other Tales Of Coachella Celebrity

As you attend to last-minute arrangements and packing for this weekend's Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival (Off! brand Andy Dick Repellent? Check...Sarah Jessica Parker inflatable love doll? Check...), we guide you to these handy timetables of set times, paying particular attention to an artist scheduled to appear shortly after 2 p.m. Sunday.

OMG! I Don't Know Why He Did It!

Party Roundup: It Was No 'VF' Extravaganza, But Elton John Knows How To Throw A Party

Sean Penn As Harvey Milk: First Set-Gawking YouTube Video

Thanks to some intrepid, DV-equipped pedestrians in San Francisco's Castro district, the YouTubes now provide some tantalizing glimpses of what Sean Penn looks and sounds like as Harvey Milk in Gus Van Sant's biopic. (His face is obstructed in the clip above, but you can get a better look at him here.)

This year's Oscar nominations produced an equally noteworthy list of omissions who'll be quietly turned away at the Kodak Theater doors, should a ceremony ever materialize. (Tazering to follow if they get insistent.) Our analysis of the 2008 Snubees:

Angelina Jolie
Category: Best Actress, for A Mighty Heart's Mariane Pearl
Snub-O-Meter: 6 Nose-Thumbings (out of a possible 10)
Why They Deserved It: Jolie's widely heralded turn in the harrowing role of wife to real-life journalist Daniel Pearl had all the earmarks of an Oscar-worthy performance, including an accent and makeup-assisted physical transformation.
What Might Have Happened: Like the general public, voters dismissed Heart with the rest of this year's post-9-11 downer crop.
Unspoken Factor: Persisting Academy fears that she'd blow creepy kisses to her brother from the podium.

Jake Gyllenhaal Even Makes Losing His Parking Ticket At The Arclight Dreamy And Adorable

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week, so send them in often! Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line so we don't lose them) and tell everyone about the time you saw Frodo Baggins overwhelmed with pre-Christmas shopping bags on the 3rd St. Promenade.

In today's star-studded holiday spectacular episode: Jake Gyllenhaal and Reese Witherspoon; Sean Penn; Jack Black; Antonio Banderas; Dustin Hoffman; Elijah Wood; James Spader and Michael Rapaport; Leonard Cohen; Malcolm Gladwell; Benjamin Bratt and Talisa Soto; Dylan Walsh; Amy Brenneman; Giovanni Ribisi; Chris Noth; Jeremy Sisto; Dave Annable; Christopher MacDonald; Vincent Gallo; Rachel Dratch and Chris Parnell; Eve; Catherine Bach; Brandon Davis; Sean Hayes; John O'Hurley; Monica Lewinsky; Gene Simmons and Shannon Tweed; John Lydon; Paul F. Tompkins; Randy Spelling; and Trevor Penick.

Sean Penn Recognized By Fellow Bush-Hating Chain-Smokers With Appointment To Head Up Cannes Jury

In a prestigious delegation sure to keep his newly single nose out of trouble as he recovers from his failed marriage, Sean Penn has been dispatched to the topless-French-whore-filled beaches of Cannes to head up the awards jury of that French resort city's annual film festival:

Penn said in a statement "that a new generation of filmmaking may have begun," citing "increasingly thoughtful, provocative, moving, and imaginative films by talented filmmakers" in what appeared to be "a rejuvenation of cinema building worldwide."

Defamer Exclusive: Possible Footage Of The Sean Penn/Robin Wright Penn Fight That Ended It All

In a surprise Defamer World Exclusive! (must credit Defamer's World's First Surprise Super Exclusive!) videographer Molly McAleer, who spent last evening in the Hollywood Hills working on choreography with her Satanist friends as she always does, captured this altercation between Sean and Robin Wright Penn—possibly the final blow-up that led to today's divorce announcement. Sean clearly seems to be the more conciliatory of the two, sweetly offering up small fondnesses, such as the way Robin reads her script dialogue out loud before bed every night—but we'll leave it to you to decide where, if anywhere at all, the fault lies.

• WATCH VIDEO

Sean Penn And Robin Wright Penn To Reenter Hollywood Dating Pool

In a disastrous Hollywood disunion tantamount to a massive, tectonic fissure erupting at Nichols Canyon, splitting our fair city in half and sending the two distinctive, autonomous land masses, rechristened Los and Angeles, their separate ways, divided by a blocks-long body of water that will eventually come to be known as the MidWilshire Ocean, Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn have announced that their love, it is no more:

Sean Penn and wife Robin Wright Penn are divorcing, their rep, Mara Buxbaum, confirms to PEOPLE exclusively.

Penn, Pitt Basking In The Year-End Love Of Film Critics

· Sean Penn's Into the Wild leads the Broadcast Critics Association awards nominations with seven nods, including best picture, director, actor, and writer. Meanwhile, the contrarian critics of San Francisco name Brad Pitt's little-seen outlaw-tone-poem The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford their best of the year. [Variety, Variety · ABC pulls last three episodes of Big Shots from the air despite its rapidly expiring supply of fresh scripted programming, handing its cushy, post-Grey's Anatomy timeslot to repeats of Private Practice. [THR]

The Strike Silences Sean Penn

Over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, Deadline Hollywood Daily is debuting a series of "Speechless" videos, in which an impressive roster SAG actors (Holly Hunter! Harvey Keitel! David Schwimmer?) , take to these revenue-deficient internets to silently express their solidarity with their WGA peers. Especially mesmerizing is yesterday's clip of the always-outspoken Sean Penn, who, forced into a rare silence by the ongoing strike, seems to calmly mouth a threat to unseen AMPTP negotiators, warning them that he'll be waiting outside Monday's revived contract talks ready to beat some sense into anyone who refuses to bargain in good faith.

• "Speechless" #3: Sean Penn [DHD]