Wish you were in France? (Us neither). But just in case you want to keep up, here's a list of local pubs who have sent bloggers over for a vie en film:

The Hollywood Reporter: Steven Zeitchik is live blogging Cannes.

Los Angeles Times: Kenneth Turan brings his cranky old man schtick to France. We bet the French eat it up.

Los Angeles Times: And Sheigh Crabtree is there, too.

Perez Hilton: No, he's not really there. But that's never stopped him.

Variety: Anne Thompson gets all the good gigs.

Unlike some of the other prizes recently, SoCal newspapers are better represented in this morning's announcement of Loeb finalists (the award is based out of Los Angeles, so we'd better be!).

Some of the local points of pride:

Finalists in the Breaking News category include Claudia Eller, Richard Verrier, Maria Elena Fernandez, Jay A. Fernandez, Meg James, John Horn and Joseph Menn for their LAT writers' strike coverage.

In the Best Writing category, Lisa Girion is up for her story "Coverage Denied."

Congratulations!

(photo of 2001 winners from the OC Register)

Have A Food Fight With Tom Hanks: To benefit Shakespeare Festival/LA, you can bid on a speaking role - including an onstage food fight - in a staged reading of Taming of the Shrew with Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson Annette Bening, William Shatner, Christina Applegate, Sean Astin, Zach Braff and others. Bidding on EBay closes Thursday.

Elizabeth Snead Got To Go London And Hang Out with Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis, Kim Cattrall and Cynthia Nixon (and Chippendale dancers) for the world premiere of Sex and the City: And we're kinda jealous.

Make Shows Good: There. We just saved Disney millions of dollars. Of course, if the company still wants to blow wads of cash on the obvious, it should just go ahead and continue to develop its "emerging media and advertising research lab" to find out what makes viewers tune into different shows. But in the end, they'll find we are right.

In today's Morning Call Time podcast, Michael Moore heats up Paramount Vantage and Overture Films, Disney buys an increment of David Ignatius and Jerry Bruckheimer, and Chris Hauty, Jeff Wadlow, and Craig Baumgarten get eternal with CBS Films.

Click here to subscribe to mediabistro.com's Morning Call Time... or check us out on iTunes!

For sponsorship opportunities, please contact Brie O'Reilly or Anthony Ferrara.

Per Deadline Hollywood Daily: "MGM today announced Bedi A. Singh, most recently the exec VP/CFO of Gemstar-TV Guide International Inc, has been named President, Finance and Administration & Chief Financial Officer of MGM, reporting directly to chairman/CEO Harry Sloan."

Perhaps you've noticed the banner ads we've been running for the last month or so: FBLA is going to New York this weekend for MediaBistro.com's two-day summit to learn all about media trends and drink network.

Some of the speakers include Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired magazine and Jim Roberts, Editor of Digital News for the New York Times.

Wanna come with? We pack light and have a splitter on our iPod, so we make for great travel companions. See you there!

All Things Considered -- Except This One Thing: Margaret Wappler has a funny post on The Guide about the Grateful Dead refusing to grant NPR permission to use one of their songs unless they promised to do a piece on the band on All Things Considered.

Drew Barrymore Victim of Hit and Run: The actress wasn't hurt -- and she got the license plate of the person who rear-ended her car on the corner of Santa Monica and Gardener today. How much you wanna bet the perp was a pap?

And For His Last Trick: Jay A. Fernandez's final Scriptland column will run tomorrow with a kicker that calls for a "moratorium on some industry tropes that have grown mealy and stale." Jay, you're going to the Hollywood Reporter, a mere hair's breath from Variety. Think you don't like H'wood tropes now? You ain't seen nothing yet.

935 Lies. Trust him, he counted. (If you can't get the video to play on this site, check it out here).

The blog, Mouse Words' creator Amanda Marcotte's book It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments. Is getting some rave..er...rant reviews.

Apparently a book illustrated with a busty blond cartoon beating up hostile dark people has created some controversy.

Of course, this is because it's about feminism. Ann Coulter does the same shtick but she knows her audience.

The Hollywood Reporter has lured Scriptland columnist (and former FBLA fishie) Jay Fernandez to the fold as a full-time senior film reporter, concentrating on breaking news.

Congratulations, Jay!

In today's Morning Call Time podcast, Cory Edwards fraggle rocks with The Weinstein Company, HBO goes day-and-date with iTunes, and Cablevision breaks a $650 million piece of news to NewsCorp.

Click here to subscribe to mediabistro.com's Morning Call Time... or check us out on iTunes!

For sponsorship opportunities, please contact Brie O'Reilly or Anthony Ferrara.

Our sister site FBNY called our attention to this NYT piece about Craig Newmark, the "Craig" of Craigslist who is dismissing the accusation that he single-handedly destroyed newspapers but is -- funny enough -- financing investigative journalism.

In the face of this expansion, Mr. Newmark is becoming more of a public figure, capitalizing on his success to promote causes that include supporting the Barack Obama campaign and financing investigative journalism -- not, he insists, to compensate for any damage Craigslist has done to the newspaper business, which he calls "an urban myth."

Newmark has donated up to $20,000 to various journo organizations including factcheck.org, sunlightfoundation.com and publicintegrity.org. In case you're looking. And let's face it, you are.

San Diego Union-Tribune ombudsman/media columnist Carol Goodhue answers readers' grammar questions with a few questions of her own -- in the form of a multiple choice. If you're itching to waste a few minutes (and can't get that damn Sodoku site to load), take a look.

Dennis Farina Arrested: The former Chicago police officer-turned actor spent most of yesterday in jail before getting sprung on $35,000 bail for allegedly trying to board a plane with a .22-caliber handgun in his briefcase. Don't worry, Dennis, with the state of air travel these days, you'll probably still make your connecting flight.

Getting A Hed: Josh Friedman has a piece today about the importance of a movie's title to its box office success. Think the copy desk sweated the headline? We like the one they came up with: Some movie are entitled to do well. Got a better one? Leave a comment and tell us.

And The Weird Goes On: Michael Jackson gets to keep Neverland Ranch, thanks to Colony Capital LLC, which bought Jacko's loan.

From our tips box:

A number of journalists have asked our editorial folks if The Times would be forced to endorse Prop. 98 because of Sam Zell's financial stake in the outcome. As you can see from today's lede opinion piece we did not (and in fact specifically mention that we're going against Zell's interests).