Brand, who will soon be co-starring with Mirren in The Tempest, kicked off the flirtation in the Daily Mail:

He said of Helen, infamous for getting her kit off for the camera: "She is so hot. There's something about her that drives me wild.

"She's so sexy and enchanting, just look at her form.

"They're going to have to hold me back when we start work. I'll be all over her. I don't know how I'll get any work done."

Eventually, the Mail caught up with the cougar in question, who purred:

"I heard Russell fancies me. I fancy him too," [Mirren] told us. "I mean, who can resist a man that looks so good in tight trousers.

He's absolutely lovely."

Helen and Russell, while we adore you separately, we fear that a potential union between you two could end badly; after all, think of all the cocaine, date rapes, and water sports you've worked so hard to put behind you! To become romantically entangled would only bring those bad habits back to the forefront, so we must politely ask that you stay with your previous partners (Mirren with Hackford, and Brand with his elephant vagina) before the British film industry is brought down by a debilitating storm of naughty randiness.

• Russell Brand wants to bed Dame Helen Mirren [The Mirror]

• Brand new toy boy? [The Mirror]

OPEN SINGERS/ACTORS CALL FOR SPIDER-MAN A NEW BROADWAY MUSICAL Directed by Julie Taymor, Music and Lyrics by Bono and The Edge of U2

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR: Peter Parker: male, 16-20's, great Rock voice, can be nerdy with understated sex appeal, good sense of humor Mary Jane: female, 16-20's, beautiful girl next door, strong pop/rock singing voice Principal Woman: female, 25-35 years old, Amazing Rock vocals, think Sinead O'Connor with a Middle Eastern /Bulgarian/Greek/ twist. Foreign, world music types are great, foreign accents are great! All ethnicities.

JULY 28, 2008 10:00am-5pm THE KNITTING FACTORY NYC

Please prepare 16 bars of a pop/rock song that shows range. Please bring sheet music. Also a photo/resume stapled together, IF YOU HAVE ONE. IT'S COOL IF YOU DON'T! spidermancasting@gmail.com

We take their lax headshot requirements to mean that they are fully prepared to pluck a spider-in-the-rough from obscurity if they feel he's the right Peter Parker for the part. That said, there's no shortage of nerdy, understatedly sexy young men currently vying for roles on the Great White Way. Rather, it's the Bulgarian Women's Choir defectee they're hoping will fill the "Principal Woman" slot that might prove to be the bigger casting challenge. Once Bono gets a look at the available talent pool, he might ultimately have to settle for a Bashkortostanian throat singer to play villainous voodoo priestess Calypso instead.

• Previously: Spider-Man: The Musical! [Defamer]

He said that Ms. Taymor was overreacting to a normal Hollywood process of testing different versions of a movie, something he has done many times before, including with Michael Mann's "Last of the Mohicans." He called his version of "Across the Universe" "an experiment."

"She's a brilliant director," he said. "She's made a brilliant movie. This process is not anything out of the ordinary. Her reaction through her representatives might be. But her orientation is stage. It's different if you're making a $12-million film, or a $45-million film. No one is uncomfortable in this process, other than Julie."

And he warned that the conflict could hurt the movie. "If you work off her hysteria, that will do the film an injustice," he said. "Nobody wants to do that. She's worked long and hard, and made a wonderful movie."

Following his persuasive and sensitive argument (note his laudable tact in never once mentioning the phrase "on the rag," no matter how badly he wanted to say it), Taymor will probably come around and finally open herself up to "the process" she's so irrationally resisted until now, allowing fellow director Roth to share the cinematic gifts that made Christmas with the Kranks such an aesthetic triumph.

• Film Has Two Versions; Only One Is Julie Taymor's [NY Times]