This week, Hollywood soldiers on.

Yesterday, I was doing a live radio segment about LA design events: all the TVs in the studio were tuned in to the cable news networks and for a brief, irrational moment I found myself half-hoping that war would breakout while I was on air. Then I would have to interrupt myself with something like, "Yes, well, before you go check out these Pucci-inspired slipcovers it might interest you to know that we’re bombing Baghdad." Frivolous as I felt, announcing photo exhibits and discussing cool furniture while expecting war, it somehow can’t compare to the actresses who are having not-one-but-TWO dresses made for the Oscars. One bright and shiny and over-the-top, the other sombre and respectful. As I write, the American military has just begun "surgical" air strikes, so it looks like fashion designers and glamour whores everywhere will weep, and black will predominate on the red carpet.

A friend of mine who works in script development at one of the big studios tells me that execs there are fascinated by Saddam Hussein’s use of body-doubles, both as decoys and as stand-ins. According to her, "It’s the best kind of evil dictator plot." And they’re hard at work developing a barely-fictional script that employs some of Mr Hussein’s best tactics. The only debate is whether to set the film in the Middle East, or to strike out and make baddies out of some new area – possibly a certain small Asian country or, of all places, Australia.

And in the very silliest of Hollywood pre-Oscar talk, the snide aside of the week goes something like this: "Couldn’t Bush have waited until the day after the Oscars? Clinton would have." Jade Chang 21 March 03