For most of us humble plebes the festive season is the highlight of the year: goodwill is expressed to all, joy is shared, and gifts are given and received. But in Hollywood Christmas is a mere warm-up for the annual industry love-in that begins in earnest on January 11th with the naming of the Golden Globe winners - the American motion picture industry's second most prestigious prize.

The biggest prize of course is Oscar. One of these precious statuettes can add hundreds of millions of dollars to a picture's bottom line and hoist a star into the history books. An Oscar is the Olympic Gold of entertainment: once given it can never be taken away.

As ever, one of the most interesting categories at this year's biggest shindig will be Best Actor. While Arm Pitt, Frank Langella and little Leo DiCapuccino  all look like they've got their nominations tied up (for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Visitor and Revolutionary Road) - their presence at the party could be cursory with it looking increasingly like the real rumble for votes will be between to Mickey Rourke's performance as a washed-up brawler in The Wrestler and Sean Penn's homosexual politician in Milk.

While the self-congratulatory back-slapping, the studio adverts and the lobbying might get a little much for the more genuine amongst us, it's great to see Mickey - clearly hungry for prizes and secure in the knowledge that an opportunity like this may not arise for him again - foregoing the usual butt-sucking and coming out of the blocks with all his guns blazing and his target in sight.

And so it is that David Posner of The Daily Beast has got his gossip-hungry hands on a text message sent by Rourke to a 'Los Angeles entertainment honcho':

Look seans an old friend of mine and i didnt buy his performance at all - thought he did an average pretend acting like he was gay besides hes one of the most homophobic people i kno (sic)

Now, balanced dramatic criticism this 'aint, but a comment like this can spark up a firestorm at this time of year. Hollywood prefers to keep its dirty laundry to itself while displaying only false smiles and forced congeniality. The attack on Penn's performance would have been enough but to brand him as a gay-hater in front of the oh-so-fashionably-liberal grandees of one of America's most exclusive clubs look set to tread a fine line between being woefully impolitic and sowing an all important seed that many Academy members will find it hard not to remember come the day they sit down to vote.

I happen to think that a little bit more honesty in the awards season would give the whole rigamole some refreshingly bitter top-notes to balance out the overwhelmingly saccharine theme,  but then I am often wrong. It could be that this tight race, once tainted by personal and professional slights, might become iredeemably tipped in favour of a less-deserving performance by Pitt or Langella and the entire process rendered as farce. What do you think?

SL