[Photo Credit: Bauer-Griffin]

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:

The anonymous jerk who blasted Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on Ain't It Cool News "is a theater executive who saw the film at an exhibitors' screening this week. He spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid reprisal from the studio." Problem? "Theater executives may have an incentive to play down a movie's prospects after such a screening, to get better terms." You see? This movie is going to be awesome! [NYT]

Early buzz over Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is kind of pooh. First, co-star John Hurt bad-mouthed the flick and executive producer George Lucas to the Times of London, saying, "It's cops-and-robbers stuff. And it's all to make Mr. Lucas an extra billion, as if he needs it." Now the basement-dwelling fanboys at Ain't It Cool News are crying like a bunch of YouTube commenters.

After only three days, the teaser trailer for Twilight — that highly anticipated franchise initially classified as the "new Harry Potter" — racked up more than two million views on the film's MySpace page. As industry insiders have noted, the vampire flick may break the record of 4.1 million first week views set by Indy 4 earlier this year. But after viewing Twilight's trailer for ourselves, we couldn't care less about records or the fate of Indiana What's His Name. Why? The folks at Summit Entertainment managed to create excitement (and widespread teen titillation) not by appealing to HP dorks or Narnia obsessives, but rather by going the Gossip Girl route and putting together an ensemble cast comprised of barely known and ridiculously hot actors. Take a gander at what appears to be a fantastical and surprisingly romantic Tim Burton-esque world after the jump.

Happy May Day. Why? Aside from May flowers, this month will finally bring some answers regarding all those conflicting box office predictions made in the trades weeks ago: will the upcoming back-to-back openings of Iron Man, Speed Racer, Prince Caspian and Indy 4 crush recession worries as Variety predicted? Or is the 19% decline in spring grosses only going to continue, as THR suggested mid-April? Well, the folks at Moviefone have provided us with a bit of guidance in the form of a poll measuring audience anticipation. And despite early rave reviews for Downey Jr.'s performance in Iron Man, the scores of kids aching for more Narnia adventures and testosterone-invigorating posters for Indy 4, it seems the majority of audience-goers only want to talk about Sex, baby.

· We continue with today's theme of leaked, bootlegged trailers of the summer's most anticipated blockbusters with the new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, set to premiere before screenings of Iron Man this Friday. Dare we say, it's a vast improvement over the first. Indy's back, everyone! No, seriously. Indy's back—it just gave out on him. Medic! [indianajones.com]
· Is "closet chef" Jake Gyllenhaal planning on opening his own restaurant before he turns 30? Sign us up for one Dreamy-Eyed Tasting Menu with Naggy Girlfriend Wine Flight! [Big Hospitality]
· Good news: Roger Waters's pig has been found! Bad news: In pieces. Good news: Bacon for everyone! Bad news: It tastes like polyurethane. [MyDesert.com]
· Is Transformers 2 about to get a much-needed injection of menstrual-blood humor? One can only hope. [Cinematical]
· Hey—dogs into unicorns! [Archie McPhee]
· Oops...We almost forgot to salute our man Will Leitch over at Deadspin, who on HBO's Costas Now last night withstood a spittle-storm of invective from Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights and owner of a rocking set of he-breasts. [Deadspin]

As if to say to the world, "You think Indy's too old? Well, how do you like these rippling, 8-pack apples?" as well as, "I'm smiling on the outside, but on the inside, my chest feels like it's being gnawed upon by 10,000 hungry rats," Harrison Ford took to the depilatory chair recently. It had nothing to do with Crystal Skull, but rather some pet cause that involves deforestation and a Spice Girl. Still, we'd hope his co-star and protégé Greaser LaBeouf will follow suit, with an Earth Day season pledge to submit himself to a Brazilian as a means of encouraging better sorting of compostables. [Access Hollywood]

Hard as it is to believe, after what seems like 19 endless years of false-starts and "Slowly Veering Lincoln Continental of Doom" jokes, we are less than one month away from seeing the fourth chapter of the Indiana Jones saga. The adventuresome archaeologist enters a far different Hollywood from the days when he first planted sunbeam-focusing scepters in secret map rooms, however; studio sash-tightening has required its makers to defer their fees in exchange for that venerable Hollywood trade-off, a piece (and in this case, a gigantic piece) of the back-end. The LAT breaks down Crystal Skull's financial model:

Sean Connery might have reprised his role as Indy's dad in the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but Harrison Ford put the kibosh on that noise real quick. "I said no, no no no. I'm old enough to play my own father in this one. Sean's only 12 years older than I am. [In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade] I had to play so much younger than I am in order to make it work for him. It was really a strain." More on Ford's rapidly olding oldness after the jump.

It's been a rough week for you, the Internet-Enabled Movie Fan with Something to Say. Just a day after noted haimishe Luddite Barry Sonnenfeld's semi-hysterical vision of a Facebook-infiltrated culture in which Big Brother will monitor our every Twittered activity, comes a similarly technophobic EW.com conversation with the creative duo behind the Indiana Jones series (and possessors of 68.2% of all the world's wealth), Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Playing a sort of good cop/bad cop routine, Spielberg bemoans the eroding of the moviegoing experience by keyboard-tapping chatterboxes, while Lucas tempers all the grumpy-old-man talk by pointing out that the internet is also capable of producing some good things (e.g. an audience who actually cares what Indy has been up to after his 19-year sabbatical). We quietly slip in mid-conversation:

As if George Lucas' forewarning that Indy 4 just won't be all that great weren't enough to lower our expectations, now we learn that heir to the throne Shia LaBeouf filmed most of his scenes while injured. As the star told MTV News, "I pulled a rotator cuff in my hip...because the injury got worse and worse while filming, I pulled my groin also." And not only did Shia gimp his way through scenes, recent reports suggest that he may have been high as a kite while filming. A recent blind item suggests Harrison Ford and his Mini-Me made a habit out of puffing the green dragon in Shia's trailer and even had code names for being stoned.

When it comes to celebrity endorsements, Harrison Ford isn't exactly known for splashing his chiseled face across billboards shilling for shower gels and cell phones (Japanese beer, as you'll see after the jump, is whole 'nother story). But according to Mediabistro, Ford recently agreed to partner with powerhouse advertising agency BBDO to develop a series of environmentally angled ads. And, apparently, Ford's developed a case of the Nortons:

George Lucas is still traumatized by the sullen faces of Star Wars fans who filed out of the first preview screenings of The Phantom Menace, and, spotting its jittery director standing by the exit, spit, "You ruined Christmas, my childhood, and Life Day!" before whipping their crumpled comments cards at his head. So it's not terribly surprising to learn that the producer of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is taking a far more tempered, "Hey, Indy fans: Let's just try to remember this is just a movie...and the originals weren't even that great to begin with!"-approach to his latest revisiting of a devoutly worshiped franchise:

After being subjected to a tribunal of fanboy elders, the accompanying poster has been verified as royal Lucas portraitist Drew Struzan's official one sheet for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Bearing all the hallmarks of a great Indy poster, our only quibble was that it left us wondering how a Latino version of the most dynamic member of the What's Happening!! cast figures into the action of Crystal Skull, as we have no recollection of a Mexican Rerun having appeared in the film's trailer.

Got an extra six grand lying around with nothing to consume? Well, the folks at Guernsey's Auction House will be happy to solve your fiscal problem. What could possibly be more fulfilling than spending those benjamins on a previously worn wife-beater with holes in it, coupled with silk purple and maroon pants? Not buying it? Well, what if we told you said ensemble was worn by Jim Carrey in the legendary bird-calling scene from Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. And if you roll higher than that, say with 100 grand taking up space in your wife's shoe closet, get your ass to Vegas on March 15th because Michael Keaton's likely-sweat-drenched Batman Returns costume awaits. What else will the Pugliese Pop Culture Collection feature? More offerings, prices and images follow after the jump.

With anticipation-levels for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull hovering somewhere around those of that other long-awaited sequel, Jesus Christ and the Second Coming, Paramount has arranged for the latest chapter of Steven Spielberg's adventure serial to get a suitably overblown premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on May 18. Reports Variety:

Yesterday afternoon, while I was not watching Be Kind Rewind, I wondered, why don't they just make an entire film that's a homemade version of a real one? That seems easier. In fact, that was done to Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark in the magical pre-YouTube age of 1982-88 by three 12-18 year olds — that is, the kids started shooting the film in sequence at age 12, and by the last scenes they were several years older, so they age during the movie, which apparently is not the only reason this feature-length shot-for-shot remake of Raiders is entirely watchable, by complete strangers, for more than art/camp value. That's what every news report (one came out every few months since Spielberg discovered the film in 2002) says. CLIPS GALORE, and a link to the entire remake, below.

We have a vivid memory of attending opening day of The Phantom Menace back in 1999: As the lights dimmed, one Darth Maul groupie—who appeared to achieve his ornate facial markings through the liberal application of drugstore lipstick and black shoe polish—shouted "16 years!!!" to appreciative cheers. What followed, of course, was not just unworthy of the 16 year wait since the previous Star Wars installment, but probably not even worth the two hours it took to sit through the movie itself. You could read it on the disappointed faces of each and every man, woman, and Ewok filing out of the theater that night, some of whom are to this day traumatized by the patois-spouting duck-ape called Jar Jar Binks.

Traversing the globe to bring you the latest Indy 4 photo leaks, we now head to Italian magazine L'espresso, for what we believe is the first known image of latter-day Jones in the presence of his single phobia, the dreaded snake. While our Italian is virtually nonexistent, a quick consultation with Google Translate tells us the headline "Poker d'assi per Indiana," in fact means, "Poker of axles for Indiana," suggesting that while he may be a little grayer, and run a little bit slower, everyone's favorite archaeological adventurer is still doing just fine in the Nazi-cargo-truck-dominating arena. [L'espresso via Slash Film]