Recently, at age 50, Emma Thompson became a first-time blogger –– a term which, according to her, “as a computer illiterate, I get confused with ‘snog’ (British slang for kissing) and ‘shog’ (Shakespearian word used by Pistol in Henry V meaning ‘leave’) neither of which – I realize – is the correct interpretation.” The email missive posted by Melissa Silverstein was part of Thompson’s promotion for Last Chance Harvey, an older-woman-meets-even-older-man romance co-starring Dustin Hoffman (ah, but for the days of Mrs. Robinson!)

The still-radiant Thompson expresses relief that maturity has given her the freedom to let it all hang out rather than nip and tuck it all back in, but she ain’t got nothing on a few women a decade and more older whose sex appeal (plastic surgery aside) is decidedly more French Riviera than Fort Lauderdale. So to welcome this seasoned British actress/ blogging novice to the wild wild world of cyberspace, here are my picks for an international GGILF club.

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Already a veteran of original web production, writer/director/actress Lena Dunham first popped up on the cinephile radar screen with her terrific 2007 Slamdance short Dealing. She followed that up with an Nerve.com original serial Tight Shots, and this week she debuts a hysterical new web serial Downtown Delusional Divas on Index Magazine’s newly redesigned site. We caught up with her to discuss watching Helen Mirren play a homicide detective, why she hasn’t gotten around to reading Anna Karenina and what Lynn Ramsay and Tori Amos could do together. …Read more

• Julie Taymor is directing a film adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which will star plenty of Oscar-caliber performers, including Helen Mirren, Jeremy Irons, Djimon Hounsou and possibly Geoffrey Rush (Also: Russell Brand as the jester, Trinculo!). Taymor’s version should be interesting considering her postmodern take on the Bard’s Titus Andronicus for her film debut, and she’s already revealed one twist by casting Mirren in the lead, as a gender-reversed “Prospera”. But I bet it still won’t out-arthouse Peter Greenaway’s film version of the play.
• Forest Whitaker, who has already portrayed jazz saxaphonist Charlie Parker on the big screen, will play Louis Armstrong in a biopic obviously titled What a Wonderful World. Whitaker is also directing the film, though, so don’t expect this to be quite as Oscar-baited as it seems.
• Hollywood is going ahead with more than 40 major projects that will each lack strike protection despite the continued possibility of an actor walkout. According to Variety, the studios are indeed worried about the financial ramifications of a SAG strike, but they’re more concerned about not having enough tentpoles to release in 2010 and 2011. Because moviegoers will put up a fuss if they don’t get their Alvin and the Chipmunks 2 and remakes of RoboCop, Fame, Footloose, Clash of the Titans and A Nightmare on Elm Street.
• Oh, and we can now add Overture’s newly announced remake of George Romero’s The Crazies to the pile, too.
• What should we do about the financial crisis? Kill the poor — or eat them? — says a new sci-fi film titled Fortuna that’s heading into production next month. Likened to Soylent Green, the pic will be set in 2100 when the middle class is gone and the rich have created a deadly contest with which to eliminate poverty.

• Scheduling the first major presidential debate on a Friday initially seemed like a mistake to me, as I figured most Americans would rather go out tonight than spend the eve of their weekend thinking about politics. Yet now I’m hearing about debate-watching parties, and Variety expects the event to curb moviegoing tonight — that is if the debate even happens. But even if it wasn’t going to be only teens populating the multiplex tonight, Eagle Eye would still rule the weekend, as is currently predicted.
• Continuing the studio’s push of The Dark Knight for Oscar, Warner Bros. is giving Academy members the option of being shipped a Blu-Ray screener, which will showcase the film’s Imax-friendly ratio changes, in order for voters to have “the best possible chance to see what we did technically.” Or members could actually go see films as they’re meant to be seen on the big screen. Fortunately, TDK is also being rereleased in January.
• Helen Mirren will star as a retired Mossad agent who must return to the job in John Madden’s The Debt, a remake of the 2007 Israeli film Ha-Hov. Though it’s probably more Munich than 007, as long as Mirren’s playing a role reminding me of Daniel Craig, I’m hoping there’ll be a gratuitous scene featuring a bikini-clad Mirren ascending from the sea.
• Nick Nolte will guide a pair of newly orphaned vacationing children in the indie Arcadia Lost, which sounds to me like a Greek-set Walkabout meets The Earthling, a film that most made me cry as a child due to the way Ricky Shroder’s parents die in a terrible Winnebago accident.

David Cross has written a long blog post justifying his appearance in Alvin and the Chipmunks. He lists four “mitigating factors” (and #4 has a sub-clause, so it’s really five), but it all pretty much comes down to what you’d expect: “indie hipster cred” doesn’ pay for upstate cottages, and he needed the job. An excerpt:

I like to work. I really do…Up to working on Alvin I had not worked in six (SIX!) months. That is an eternity if you’re an actor. Think about not working for two months with no hope of anything on the horizon. Now triple that. It was the longest period without work since after Ben Stiller got cancelled (the show, not the man) and I was going nuts. I was depressed and difficult to live with. I was VERY happy to have the work. Again, no regrets.

Cross basically has to do this (the blog post, not the work) because his fan base consists in large part of post-punk consumerists––ie: people who themselves enjoy the spoils of consumer culture, but persist on holding their cultural icons to an impossible high standard of “integrity” and commercial purity. This is why we don’t see similar posts from, say Helen Mirren, justifying her choice to follow up her Oscar-winning work in The Queen by playing sexy academic in National Treasure: Book of Secrets. Which is a shame, because I’d love to see her follow in David Cross’ footsteps, and use a New York Times review as evidence for why her fans could/should “suck it.”

• Advancing the dangerous notion that an Oscar is the first step to the Nobel Prize, Variety asks An Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim and producer Laurie David to confirm that “the film played a part” in Al Gore’s Nobel lauding. Meanwhile, the Guardian reveals that the film’s recent battle for educational clearance in Britain was engineered by “a Scottish quarrying magnate who established a controversial lobbying group to attack environmentalists’ claims about global warming.”
• According to Pamela McClintock, Across the Universe has managed “by the far the best showing among specialty releases so far this fall” by drawing repeat visits from teenage girls. Meanwhile, the under-marketed expansion of The Assassination of Jesse James was, as could only be expected, a failure, grossing less than $400,000 on 163 screens.
• Taylor Hackford will direct his wife, Helen Mirren, in Love Ranch, about “a couple who opened the first legal brothel in Nevada and the violence that resulted when their relationship was tested by infidelity.”

Discussing “The Best & The Worst.” Paul reviews The Queen with Helen Mirren, best picture and best actress nominee for the Oscars 2007. Kevin reviews A Sound of Thunder. George Lucas betrays The Empire Strikes Back. Risselada calls in unhappy about our coverage of Sundance.

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