Sean Penn’s had tough year – his protracted divorce must have left him feeling emotionally exhausted, a shell of a… hang on.

Sean Penn’s bonking a model? A Sports Illustrated model who’s easily young enough to be his daughter? Oh. Apparently Sean Penn was seen with Jessica White last weekend, leading to speculation that his divorce is final.

True, it’s also led to speculation that Sean Penn is going through a gigantic mid-life crisis and the next thing you know he’ll have grown a ponytail, bought a pair of leather trousers and pretended to like N-Dubz, but that’s by the by.

We’re starting to suspect that Sean Penn hates us, you know. This year has been a non-stop downer thanks to the recession and the terrifying proliferation of celebrity deaths, but there was one beacon of hope keeping us going – Sean Penn’s on-and-off divorce from Robin Wright Penn. First Sean Penn was getting divorced, then he decided to call it off, then he decided to divorce her again, then he called it off and temporarily quit acting to focus on his personal life, then he decided to divorce her again. It was hilarious. But now Sean Penn has put an end to our fun, the bastard.

Because Sean Penn has been seen stepping out with a woman named Jessica White, who is famed for her ability to wear bikinis and the fact that she’s almost exactly half the age of Sean Penn. Here’s how the New York Daily News reported the new relationship:

The couple was reportedly spotted Friday night having an intimate chicken dinner at Hotel Griffou, where they knocked back vodka and seemed very comfortable with each other. “They were holding hands,” a witness said. “They seemed really into each other. She was laying on him. She was laying on his shoulder. He seemed really into her.” A source says … “She wants to get serious with him.”

Ah, chicken and vodka. No wonder she was all over him – it’s a classic combination. That’s why so many of our dating experiences have ended with us drunkenly vomiting into a bin in the alley next to KFC. Sean Penn is one classy guy.

Anyway, we’re wrong to mock, because it seems like Sean Penn and Jessica White have got the perfect relationship. They both love each other for who they are and not, say, because Sean Penn is a powerful Hollywood actor and director who’d easily be able to kickstart a struggling model’s movie career, or because Jessica White is a pretty young girl who’s so dazzled by fame and material wealth that she’d end up having it off with a man who looks like a flood-damaged Mr Punch statue that’s been carved out of a turnip.

Probably.

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Warning: prepare to disregard this story when Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn inevitably get back together next week.

Because, come on, who are they kidding? We’d say that you’d be able to set your watch by the regularity in which Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn almost get divorced and then call it off, but it would be false – you can’t set your watch by it because science has yet to develop a way to accurately measure increments of time that microscopic.

Anyway, that’s the news – Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn have filed for divorce again. Again. Again.

Slowly but surely, Sean Penn’s life is turning into something resembling Sean Penn’s movie career. That’s not to say it’s exciting or dramatic or full of intense scenes of gut-wrenching emotion, though – more that it’s dull, repetitive and given far more attention than it really warrants.

And that’s mainly because Sean Penn and his sort-of technically-still wife Robin Wright Penn still can’t make up their titting minds whether they want to get divorced or not. You may remember the time in 2007 when Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn decided to get divorced in a move that probably wasn’t caused by Sienna Miller, although it’s fun to blame her anyway. And if you remember that, you’ll remember Sean and Robin deciding to call it all off a little while later.

And then you might remember the time four months ago when Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn filed for divorce again, only to call it off again a few days later. Well, guess what – Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn are filing for divorce. No, really, this time they mean it, although presumably they reserve the right to make a humiliating back-down by teatime. People reports:

Robin Wright Penn has filed for divorce from her husband Sean Penn, PEOPLE has learned.  The papers state that “both parties have already agreed to [shared] custody” over their minor son, Hopper Jack, 16, and that “the estranged couple have already agreed to division of all property.” The reason for the split is listed as “irreconcilable differences.”

Now don’t take that last sentence too seriously. You know that divorcing couples only have a limited number of options to use as the cause for their split, and ‘irreconcilable differences’ was simply the closest option to their real reason, which is either ‘probably concilable differences’ or ’something to pass the time before Cash In The Attic comes on the telly’.

But still, let’s hope that this time Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn have made a final decision about the state of their marriage, and that they’ll be able to both positively move on from here. They’d better, because talking about all their constant divorces and un-divorces is making us feel like we’re trapped in a hall of mirrors. And you definitely don’t want to be in a hall of mirrors with Sean Penn. Imagine all those gigantic chins everywhere. It’d be nightmarish.

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Sean Penn! Come back! We forgive you for everything! But come back! We need you now more than ever!

Sean Penn has literally picked the worst time ever to take a career break. You see, it’s just been announced that at next year’s Oscars, 10 movies will be nominated for best picture instead of five. That means Hollywood needs to make twice as many drearily highbrow movies about either civil rights, the horrors or war or mental illness to fill the nominations quota.

Otherwise, God help us, a film that people actually enjoy might be nominated. Sean Penn, we’re begging you.

Remember all the fuss that was made at last year’s Oscars when The Dark Knight wasn’t nominated for best picture? It was shocking, and it was absolutely the fault of the Oscars. It wasn’t that the film went on for a bit too long, or that people pretended to like it more than they really did because Heath Ledger died, or that nobody could understand what the lead character was saying at any given point in time because he was intent on doing the world’s longest impression of Phil Mitchell straining for a poo – it happened because the Oscars hate films that people like.

But to be fair to the academy, its hands were tied. It couldn’t nominate The Dark Knight for best picture because there were only five nomination spots – and Oscar rules clearly state that preference should be given to films about the Holocaust, gay rights, ethnic minorities, infamous real-life politicians and muddled adaptations of literary works. So between The Reader, Milk, Slumdog Millionaire, Frost/Nixon and The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, that didn’t leave any room for The Dark Knight.

But next year? Next year things are going to be different. For seemingly no reason whatsoever, it’s been announced that the number of best picture nominees will double to 10 at next year’s Oscars. The LA Times reports:

The change is a direct result of a two-year, in-house search for ways to broaden the appeal of the show, and with good reason — viewership is sagging. “Last year there were more movies that I thought might have fit in the nominations,” Academy President Sid Ganis said Wednesday, acknowledging that hits such as “Iron Man,” “The Dark Knight” and “Tropic Thunder” resonated far more with moviegoers than with academy voters.

It makes so much sense – from now on the academy will be able to nominate a whole new wave of populist, audience-pleasing movies and still end up giving the best picture Oscar to the same highbrow, barely-watched, uncomfortably bleak biopic of a disabled celebrity that it always does. Everyone’s a winner.

Or maybe we’re being cynical. Maybe next year the Oscars really will start to focus on movies that audiences like. And maybe it can introduce a best haircut Oscar while it’s at it. And an Oscar for the star with the winningest smile. And Twilight can win everything. Oh, what fun it’ll be.

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Possibly in a bid to prove once and for all that filming the movie Milk didn’t really turn him gay, Sean Penn has decided to call off his legal separation from his big, fat, ugly wife.

For the record, the woman is probably small, thin and pretty – but wife-compliments are just the kind of thing Sean doesn’t allow people to throw around in his wife’s presence.

That’s why she was leaving him, we heard. We didn’t really hear that.

“I work hard all day, & when I come home all I want is a hot meal waiting for me and perhaps the sports-score section of the newspaper. Is that too much to ask? And by the way – your face is like 70% crows feet! Hag!”

Well that’s just the sort of talk you won’t find floating around the Penn house anymore. That’s because Sean Penn and his wife Beverly Butt Crack Magillicutty-Penn are currently reconciling again.

Please don’t make us check on her real name. Just take it.

News of their new found-again marital bliss may seem like deja vu. Well that’s because it’s already happened like a dozen times. Do you doubt our count? No really – sift them with us:

12: There’s the time he maybe left her for Sienna Miller

11: There’s the time he left her for a mule that he and Sienna rode on their second date

10: There’s the time he left her for A-Rod

11: There’s the time he left her for not getting mad enough when he left her for A-Rod

12: There’s the time he left her for a discounted turkey sandwich

13: There’s the time he left her not necessarily for any specific one person or sandwich, but because he wanted to take a year off to make steamy love to several hard working otters. We heard he was impressed because they seem so industrious.

Well look at that – there were thirteen instances. We must of missed one in our initial count.

Our legal department says some of those might be speculation-based. You know what’s not speculation? The fact that he had filed for divorce citing irreconcilable differences recently. Well he’s calling it off again. People.com’s got the skinny:

“The Oscar-winning actor filed a request Tuesday to dismiss his legal separation case, Marin County, Calif., court records show. “This appears to imply that they’re reconciling again,” says L.A. divorce lawyer Lynn Soodik, who is not involved with the case. “It’s unlikely Sean Penn would request a dismissal for any other reason.” This is the second [read 13th] time the actor has rescinded divorce papers. Penn, 48, and Wright Penn, 43, started divorce proceedings in December 2007 after 11 years of marriage.”

Well all’s good in the Penn household. Until the next time he wants to watch that Deadliest Catch episode he DVRd like two weeks ago but she won’t let him because she’s in the middle of a Scooby-Doo on Monster Island marathon.

That’s the exact reason our parents split, incidentally. We’re just saying Penns – if you really want things to work maybe you should buy a second television. Or check out Hulu.

We hear they have quite a show selection.

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We’d imagine that Sean Penn is hard to live with. Not because of his brooding intensity. Forget all that nonsense.

No, we’d imagine that Sean Penn is hard to live with because you’d be tripping over his weird Mr Punch chin all the time. It’d be a nightmare. Any time you managed to carry a tray with a jug of orange juice on it from the kitchen to the living room without tripping over Sean Penn’s chin would count as a massive victory.

And that’s why Sean Penn and his wife have filed for legal separation. Exactly that. We imagine.

Sean Penn isn’t a man who likes to repeat himself. For instance, after he married Madonna he didn’t then go onto marry another tiny old lady with a silly British accent and a vagina that’s visible from space. And his film roles are all completely different, too – one minute he’ll play an anguished, emotionally-tortured murderer; then he’ll play an anguished, emotionally-tortured ex-con. See? Completely different.

So it’s a little strange to see Sean Penn start to repeating himself almost exactly now. You may remember that in 2007 Sean Penn separated from his wife Robin Wright Penn in 2007, possibly because of Sienna Miller but probably because of Sean Penn’s weird Mr Punch chin, before they suddenly changed their minds a few months later and got back together again. Well guess what’s just happened.

That’s right, Sean Penn has had another go at filing for legal separation from Robin Wright Penn. The Times reports:

The Milk actor blamed “irreconcilable differences” in papers filed in Marin County, near San Francisco last week. He is seeking joint custody of the couple’s two teenage children and asking the court to waive spousal support. With long film careers behind them, any divorce settlement would involve millions.

It was hard to tell, but there have been signs that all were not well between Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn. For instance, Sean Penn conspicuously forgot to mention his wife during his Oscars acceptance speech this year, and also THEY ALREADY FILED FOR DIVORCE ONCE BEFORE A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO. You need eagle eyes to pick up intermarital stresses like this, so don’t beat yourself up if you missed them. OK, beat yourself up a bit.

Anyway, we can’t help feeling that this divorce is the worst possible thing that Sean Penn could do. What if he finds that his mood is lightened by freedom of singledom? That’d be the end of his career, surely? It was bad enough watching him smile twice in Milk, so God knows what’ll happen if he actually decides to laugh on camera. It’s too horrifying to contemplate.

Also, Sean Penn would be screwing his wife over if he moved out of their marital home. Between the weight of his awards and the weight of his ego, he’s probably buggered the foundations right up. Plus nobody wants to live in a house with chin-grooves scored into it, do they?

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You’d better be. Because, even though he’s won every single other award on the face of the Earth for The Wrestler, the Oscars have just decided to snub Mickey Rourke and give the Best Actor trophy to Sean Penn. Honestly Oscars, when Mickey Rourke goes off the rails again and ends up starring in Sylvester Stallone’s Get Carter 2, the blood will be on your hands.

Also, Slumdog Millionaire won a bunch of Oscars, which is a great surprise to… oh, nobody.

Prior to Oscars, all the bookies were saying that the big awards were all sewn up. And, mostly, they were. What’s more, all the reactions to the big awards were sewn up too -

* Slumdog Millionaire won Best Picture and Best Director, and Danny Boyle looked like the happiest Morrissey impersonator on Earth on both occasions;

* Kate Winslet won Best Actress and immediately flew into her ‘asthma sufferer you’d most like to punch’ shtick;

* Heath Ledger won Best Supporting Actor and accepted the award in person, admitting that his accidental suicide was simply a ploy to win an Oscar;

* Mickey Rourke won Best Actor and… hey, wait a minute! Mickey Rourke didn’t win Best Actor at all.

Even though he was the critical and public favourite for the best actor Oscar, the Academy decided that the last thing it wanted to hear was another bloody eulogy for a dead chihuahua and gave the Best Actor Oscar to Sean Penn for his role in Milk instead.

Then again, it all seems so obvious in retrospect. The Oscars love Sean Penn. If Sean Penn did a fart in a ziploc bag, he’d probably get an Oscar for it. Because when Sean Penn wins an Oscar, you know you’re going to get a dangerously sincere acceptance speech about cinema’s ability to weave itself into the fabric of the national consciousness, and that tends to ease moviestars’ guilt about being paid millions of dollars to memorise a handful of words in the right order once a year.

Also, Sean Penn won his Best Actor Oscar for Milk, which allowed the Academy to register its disappointment of the passing of Proposition 8 in California last year. So now the entire television audience of The Oscars – essentially a dwindling handful of gay men and nobody else – know that some actors think Proposition 8 is bad. Thank God for that.

Also, did you see The Oscars? What with Sophia Loren, that man who balanced his Oscar upside down on his chin and Hugh Jackman’s big gurning head on top of that little puppet body, these were probably the gayest Oscars in living memory. At least Sean Penn’s victory was a decent fit.

But, despite this upset, the 2009 Oscars will go down in history as the Slumdog Millionaire Oscars. Actually, no, who are we kidding? They’ll go down in history as the Oscars where it looked like Angelina Jolie was cackling at Jennifer Aniston’s inability to talk properly. Something tells us you’ll be hearing more about this soon.

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How? By flipping well falling back in love again, that’s how. Although they filed for divorce in December, Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn have now decided to call the divorce off so that they can sit around kissing and holding hands for the indefinite future.

We feel sick – this isn’t how Hollywood marriages are supposed to go at all. Where’s the infidelity, the bitterness, the petty public games of one-upmanship? Where, damn it, is the embarrassing sexual encounter with the seven-foot transsexual hooker? Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn, your happiness infuriates us.

We’ve got several different theories as to why being married to Sean Penn must be horrible. These include:

• His chainsmoking.

• His grouchiness.

• His constant po-faced chest-beating about the war.

• The way we expect that he spent months walking around the house practising his disabled voice all the time before filming I Am Sam.

• The fact that Madonna divorced him and yet still hasn’t divorced Guy Ritchie. We couldn’t stay in a marriage knowing that our spouse wasn’t even as good as Guy Ritchie, that’s for sure.

• The fact that he looks like a Mr Punch doll that’s been left in an acid bath for a month.

But try telling any of those reasons to Robin Wright Penn, because she loves Sean Penn so much that she can’t even bring herself to divorce him properly any more.

Back in December, Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn shocked the world by filing for divorce. They had been married for 11 years, which works out at about 400 Earth years, and were generally regarded as one of the strongest couples in all of Hollywood. Literally the strongest – not one person has ever challenged Robin Wright Penn to an arm-wrestle and come out of it without looking like they’d been in some kind of horrific industrial accident.

What caused the Sean Penn/ Robin Wright Penn divorce proceedings? Was it, as some suggested, because Sienna Miller wanted to hump Sean Penn? Was it for some other reason? Or a reason other than that? Or another one?

Well, actually it doesn’t matter, because Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn have decided to call the whole divorce thing off. Reuters reports:

Oscar winning actor Sean Penn and his wife actress Robin Wright Penn have withdrawn their divorce petition filed in December, a court document posted on celebrity Web site TMZ.com showed on Wednesday. The request to dismiss the divorce, filed one day earlier in Superior Court of California in Marin County north of San Francisco, shows the withdrawal was made “without prejudice.” A spokeswoman for Penn declined to comment, and no further details were available.

And that’s exactly the way it should be – no further details deserve to be available, because Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn’s love should speak for itself.

Also, any details that are made available are going to look doubly silly when Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn decide that they really are going to get divorced again in a couple of months. Let’s not forget that.

Read more:

Sean Penn, wife Robin end divorce proceeding - Reuters

But imagine if you're married to Sean Penn and all of a sudden Sienna Miller starts openly flirting with him. Would you smash Sienna's pointless little face in? Would you just be thankful that he'd stopped the war-ranting for a handful of joyous seconds? Or would you just divorce Sean Penn?

Sean Penn's wife did the last one, apparently. Lazy bitch – she could have at least tried the first one while she was at it.

Sienna Miller might not have ever been able to make a film that didn't make us want to squeeze our fists up our nostrils and rabbit-punch our brain to death, but that isn't to say that she doesn't have any other special talents. For example, it looks an awful lot like Sienna Miller can plough through famous cock like a combine harvester operated by a grinning toddler jacked up on Red Bull.

In the last couple of years Sienna Miller has been linked to Jude Law and Darth Vader and Leonardo DiCaprio and the dirty-looking man from Notting Hill and Diddy and, of course, her own reflection. But now the well is running dry for Sienna and she's had to get it where she can. And, if reports are to be believed, that means Sean Penn. Even though he looks like an embittered, penniless Mr Punch doll who'd rather stab himself through the heart than ever crack a smile at anything.

Sean Penn split up with his wife of 20 years recently and nobody knows why – aside from the fact that, you know, he's Sean Penn and he probably never did the dishes because he was too busy trying to do an impression of a disabled man for a film after reading a report about how you always win an Oscar if you play a disabled man – until now. Possibly.

Whatever you do, try not to visualise this – we'd hate for you to sue us because you vomited so hard that your eyes popped out – but reports are suggesting that Sienna Miller was the third party in the Sean Penn divorce. According to The New York Daily News:

A source recalls a party in a suite at a New York hotel where they both were staying. "Sienna was sitting on Sean's lap," according the source. "She was dressed very sexily. She had her arm around his neck." That night, claims the source, they stayed up quite late. One Penn friend maintains there was never anything romantic between them. "Sienna is like that with everyone," says the friend. "She's very physical. She drapes herself over people she likes. She doesn't mean a lot by it."

Sienna Miller's slave also denies an affair, calling the rumours "outrageously untrue." So why, then, would she even go near Sean Penn? Well, it might have something to do with the fact that Sean Penn is a big name in Hollywood and a successful actor and director to boot, while Sienna Miller looks like the sort of person who'd burn down an orphanage if it got her one extra close-up in a movie.

Maybe this can all be explained away as a case of Sienna trying to use her feminine wiles to get a part in Sean's next film. Which we'd be totally cool with, actually. So long as it was a sequel to Into The Wild that ended with Sienna freezing to death in an arctic wasteland.

Read more:

Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn split up after (Sienna) Miller time - NY Daily News

And this year the Cannes Film Festival is going to be extra special because the head of the Cannes jury has been announced as Sean Penn. As one of the most respected actors and directors working in Hollywood today, Sean Penn's appointment will mean that the movie he awards his prize to will get an even bigger publicity boost than usual. It also means that anyone who's recently made a movie that's funny, uplifting, deft or about anything other than how terrible the Iraq war is should probably stay at home this year because they ain't winning jack.

2008 is going to be Sean Penn's special year for awards. That's not saying a lot because Sean Penn wins awards every year – in 2003 he won an Oscar for Mystic River, in 2006 he won the prestigious World's Most Gloomily Humourless Bastard award and he's the current California State champion for that Nintendo Wii game where you ride a cow around knocking over scarecrows.

But this year – this year is certainly different. Although nobody went to see it, the Sean Penn-directed Into The Wild has emerged as quite the Oscar front-runner, picking up Screen Actors Guild nominations and Critics Choice nominations for its visceral portrayal of an annoying boy dying in the snow really slowly.

And now Sean Penn gets to award awards to other films too, because he's just been named as the head of this year's Cannes jury. And, as expected, Sean Penn accepted his appointment with a statement so needlessly wordy it looks like he must have destroyed a thesaurus just writing it:

"It seems there has been a rejuvenation of cinema building worldwide; increasingly thoughtful, provocative, moving, and imaginative films by talented filmmakers: that a new generation of filmmaking may have begun. The Cannes Film Festival has long been the epicentre in the discovery of those new waves of filmmakers from all over the world. I very much look forward to participating in this year's festival as president of the jury."

So what can we expect from Sean Penn's tenure as president of the jury at this year's Cannes Festival? Hard to say at the moment, but knowing that Penn likes brooding, intense, heavy-handed dramas with serious messages, we wouldn't be surprised if he opts for Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach. That came out this year, right?

Read more: 

Sean Penn to head Cannes Film Festival jury – Reuters 

But so far this awards season, something has been up. The Sean Penn-directed Into The Wild hasn't been winning any awards, with all the gongs instead either going to There Will Be Blood or No Country For Old Men. Worried that Sean Penn is losing his magical touch? Don't be – the annual Critics' Choice award nominations have been revealed and Into The Wild has smashed itself into contention, getting nods for Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Director, along with four others. However, it should be noted that the Critics' Choice awards also gave five nominations to Hairspray, so there's every chance that the voting panel is made up of buck-toothed idiots.

When it comes to awards, there's nothing that voters like more than performances so intense that you the think the actor is going to throw up or get a nosebleed or poo themselves at the climax of each scene they're in.

And nobody does that better that Sean Penn, a man so award-friendly that he may as well be suspended above the stage for the duration of the next Oscars while audience-members pelt him relentlessly with golden statuettes until he passes out from all the glory.

But Sean Penn hasn't starred in any films this year, so what are award voters supposed to do? Simple, they'll find whatever he has done and throw awards at that instead. That could be the reason why the French animation Persepolis – featuring the voice talents of one S. Penn – has been routinely beating the likes of Ratatouille in the awards announced so far, and it could also explain all the Critics' Choice award nominations for Into The Wild.

Up until now, awards season has been dominated by two films – There Will Be Blood, which won big at the LA Film Critics association awards, and No Country For Old Men, which has won a raft of New York Film Critics Circle and National Board Of Review awards.

That left no room for Into The Wild – a intense, soul-searching film about, um, the wild and shit – until now. The Critics' Choice awards have nominated Into The Wild for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Director, Best Writer and Best Song, for a song by Pearl Jam which makes us wonder if we should perhaps ask for a recount.

Into The Wild has edged out its closest competitor teenage pregnancy comedy Juno, which received six Critics' Choice nominations. Other highly nominated movies included Atonement, Michael Clayton, No Country For Old Men and Hairspray, with five nominations apiece.

This would normally be the point where we listed all the Critics' Choice award nominations in full but if, like us, all this punishing onslaught of movie awards and nominations is making you wish that film had never been invented and that we should all just waggle coloured rags tied to sticks around for entertainment in the future, you'd probably prefer it if we just linked to them instead.

Read more:

Critics' Choice Award Nominations