Another Oscar is soon coming up. At the end of this month, the movie stars will glitter and step out with long-term spouses and short-term arm candy. This year's awards will be hosted by Chris Rock, who is amazing at comedy roles and should be able to make the evening fun for those who attend and those who are watching it at home.

He also has another advantage that poor Billy Crystal didn't have last year, which is that the Iraq war is no longer on anyone's minds. So, there isn't likely to be any awkward moments, when someone comes on stage and slams into US President George W Bush. That's what happened last year, when both Sean Penn and Michael Moore came up and made their acceptance speeches.

Sean Penn, considered Hollywood's rebel child, was expected to make himself heard about his opposition to the President's Iraq policy. He was at his vocal best – he mumbled something to himself rather than the audience and was careful not to jeopardize his moment in front of the mike – after all, he had just been given his first Oscar.

On the other hand, Michael Moore was the 'man' at the awards. He also was there for his first award, but he spoke his mind and loudly at that. When the cameras panned away to the audience, most of the stars looked like they wished the floor had fallen through and they had disappeared. They didn't know whether to applaud the man or just wish him away as nuisance pedagogue.

Michael Moore's 9/11 is a gutsy move to collar an administration hell bent on using muscle power, at all costs. I saw the awards where Michael Moore came on to the stage to accept his prize and made that famous "fictitious president" remark and I applauded. But there was silence in the auditorium itself.

What's gotten into Hollywood? The stars have never been known to be circumspect about things they should be discreet about - like their sex life or private life in general. They have so-called "friends" and publicists gabbing all the time about stuff that the rest of the world doesn't even care about.

All of a sudden, they are given an opportunity to prove that they are more than pretty mannequins and they chicken out! Shame on you for not standing neck to neck with one of your own colleagues. It just goes to show, that the war doesn't affect people like George W Bush or Dick Cheney or any of the Hollywood stars - its not their children dying on foreign soil. They are too busy getting arrested for illegally procuring alcohol (Jenna Bush), dabbling in drugs (Noele Bush, Cameron Douglas, Robert Downey Jr etc) and of course divorcing and philandering.

There is material here for another documentary, Michael. I wish someone gets him to watch Page 3, the movie that parodies the Page 3 people in India, maybe it will inspire him to do something similar for Hollywood – to show how vacuous and hollow Sunset Boulevard really is – no courage and probably no convictions to speak of.

BY MANALI ROHINESH