The year-end demolition derby that is Oscar season is ramping up, and among the next big films to face the gauntlet is Gus Van Sant's Harvey Milk biopic, Milk. Already the recipient of oodles of pre-release buzz (so there, says Focus Features), its US release Wednesday will cap a period of real-world gay activism that has unmistakable parallels to the events in the film. Senior editor S.T. VanAirsdale and associate editor Kyle Buchanan have already seen the movie and are ready to share their thoughts; so which editor wanted to see more James Franco, and which wanted to see more of James Franco's stunt phallus? Read on to find out!

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Here's a warning to anyone who voted to strip gay Californians of their rights to wed, and 18,000 already-married same-sex couples of their licenses: You don't want to see a ticked-off Mr. Defamer. His eyebrow arches even higher than usual, and he's been known to accidentally fumble that intern-monitored mug of 140 degree chai latte into a nearby face. We, meanwhile, are busily polishing our pitchforks and stocking up on 99 Cents Only-brand torches for tonight's Hollywood Prop 8 protest rally.

After the jump: Could an earlier Milk release have made the difference?

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For a movie that the religious right hasn't even gotten around to touching yet, Milk certainly has caused its fair share of controversy this week. First, a questionable THR column on the movie's marketing earned the ire of Focus Features, and now that the film had its first public screenings last night, the reactions range from rapturous to...fight-inducing? Let's take a look!

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An angry Focus Features is doing a bit of air-clearing this morning, the day after it premiered its Oscar-chasing biopic Milk to an adoring hometown crowd in San Francisco and offered its first screenings to press in L.A. and New York. But there's a few people who haven't seen the film who are of particular interest to Focus president James Schamus, who all but firebombed Hollywood Reporter headquarters Tuesday in a letter to the editor denouncing its coverage of his film — a screed conveniently CC'd to the rest of the Internet as well.

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· None other than Museum of Hollywood Jerks inductee Brian Grazer stopped by The Simpsons again last night. We can hardly wait for his take on Everyone Poops. We smell Oscar!
· Sean Penn was so jazzed about getting in James Franco's pants, he just had to text his ex-wife about it.
· It's your 2008 O.J. Simpson Conviction Keepsake Mugshot.
· Ah, that's better: Recession Blocker allows you to read your favourite online news sources free of all those downer-inducing economic-apocalypse buzzwords.
· Unfortunately, it does little to repel vampire hamsters and their similarly lethal friends.

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Here it is: The trailer for Milk, Gus Van Sant's retelling of the swift rise and violent and untimely fall of America's first openly gay elected official, set against a backdrop of the swinging San Francisco of the late '70s. Everything here seems note-perfect, from Sean Penn's Horshackian (with base notes of I Am Sam) vocal inflections, to the meticulously executed period gayfros, to the Anita Bryant file footage (here's some more of Bryant getting a banana cream pie in the face; ah—that never gets old), to the portentous-but-not-too-portentous tagline: "His life changed history. His courage changed lives." You thought a pair of lovelorn cowboys shot in silhouette were enough to nudge the Oscar envelope? Just wait until Sean Penn's Best Actor clip—featuring the actor entwined in James Franco's naked folds and delivering a stirring monologue on answering one's higher calling—shows the Academy how one really gays their way to the gold.

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We apologise for being a little behind the gun on this clip from Friday's Jimmy Kimmel Live!, but we'd hate for the week to go by without acquainting you with It-Boy Ascendant James Franco, and his lovely stories from the set of Gus Van Sant's Milk. With a rough-sex outline Scotch-taped between the third and fourth pages of the shooting script, Franco quickly realised he was in for the Crisco-assisted ride of a lifetime—but it's this born raconteur's rubber-member reminiscences that really won us over. Enjoy, with someone you love.

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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:

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Casual nudity enthusiast Sienna Miller became an official card-carrying member of that elite group of celebrities who unleash their hate of paparazzi by way of physical assault. As the Daily Mail reports, Miller swung her pricey purse at one pap's face yesterday at LAX, possibly because he was a resident of Pittsburgh, or maybe she simply mistook him for Jude Law (as the pictures show, there is a resemblance to the nanny-loving baldie). But Sienna's moment of outrage prompted us to recall our all-time favourite When Celebrities Attack moments in time, from Woody Harrelson's caught-on-tape choke-hold to Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz's romantically executed freakout years ago. Our five top picks after the jump:

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What would any Coachella festival be without stars of every letter-caste wandering the VIP sections, and perhaps getting mouthy with a security guard who "doesn't care if you're the Queen of England, Mr. Hasselhoff, you're not on Prince's backstage guest list!" A round-up of the celebrity goings on:
· We finally have an answer to the burning question of last week: Hey—what's Sean Penn doing on the Coachella bill? As it turns out, he was not there to shoot some low-budget crowd scenes for Milk, nor was he there, as he joked from the Main Stage yesterday, for an "a cappella cover act of Celine Dion." [Sound of polite audience laughter.] No, he was there for something called the Dirty Hands Caravan, a "biodiesel cross-country bus trip" starting from the concert site and ending in New Orleans on Sunday. The speech, in its entirety, is above—make sure to stick around for the YouTube documentarians' pithy assessment of Penn's oratorical skills. [YouTube, AP]

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