But Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee's cowboy love story, has unmistakably seeped into pop culture as it stands poised to be feted as the belle of the annual Oscars ball tonight.

As Hollywood's glitterati have made the rounds of parties, dress fittings and media photo-ops over the past week, Los Angeles has filled with Brokeback Mountain-inspired mugs, stickers, mouse pads, Tshirts and other assorted articles of clothing, many of them adorned with the film's signature line, 'I wish I knew how to quit you'.

Nieman Marcus, the clothing shop, is reporting a surge of interest in western styles.

Willie Nelson, who sings one of the songs on the film soundtrack, has just re-released an old number of his entitled 'Cowboys Are Secretly, Frequently (Fond Of Each Other)'.

Valentino recently sent a couple of gay cowboys down the catwalk at a men's fashion show. Two cowboy shirts that take on a special significance in the film have just been auctioned on Ebay for charity, fetching a stunning $100,000 from a noted gay activist.

All of this frenzy is likely to come to a halt, of course, if the 5,000 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences subvert expectations and bestow the Best Picture award on another film. This year more than most, however, the suspense over who will walk away with which statuette appears to be considerably lower than usual.

Brokeback has won just about every other major award so far, from the Golden Globes to the Baftas. Likewise, Philip Seymour Hoffman is the runaway favourite for Best Actor for his magnificently nuanced performance as Truman Capote in Capote. Reese Witherspoon is hot favourite for Best Actress for playing another real-life character, June Carter Cash, in the Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line, although there is a small chance she will be squeezed out by Felicity Huffman playing a transsexual in Transamerica.

This has been an unusually quiet awards season all round.

None of the Best Picture nominees has been a box-office smash, and the competition between them has been remarkably gentlemanlike by the standards of recent years.

It may be no coincidence that Harvey Weinstein, the rambunctious co-founder of Miramax Films who has sold up to Disney and started his own new independent production company, is largely sitting out this year's awards.

Still, some glimmers of controversy have made themselves felt in the past few days.

One of the producers of Crash, an ensemble piece about racist tensions in Los Angeles which is up for Best Picture, is suing one of her colleagues for alleged non-payment of about $2 million. Meanwhile the other producer, Bob Yari, is suing the Producers Guild and the Academy because he has been dropped from the list of producers who can claim the Best Picture Oscar, should Crash be so lucky.

In certain quarters, Crash is being touted as the most likely beneficiary should the Academy voters decide they are sick of gay cowboys. The Los Angeles Times has launched a curious publicity campaign on its behalf in the past few days . . . curious because the film paints a less than flattering portrait of LA and has sharply divided critics as to the accuracy of its depiction.

Crash's writer-director, Paul Haggis, was the screenwriter on last year's Best Picture winner, Million Dollar Baby.

Controversy also hangs over Paradise Now, a Palestinian entry in the foreign-language Oscar competition which tackles the theme of suicide bombing. Despite glowing reviews, the film's director, Hany Abu Assad, told an Israeli newspaper on Friday he thought his Oscar chances would be stymied by the pro-Israeli bias of the Academy.