1. Hardcore Career Woman Whose Heart Melts: Pity the loveless, career-driven shrew — that is, until the right man comes along. Best-laid plans, etc. As seen in The Proposal, No Reservations, What Happens In Vegas, Raising Helen, and New In Town, these hard-hearted women learn what really matters through a series of highly convoluted circumstances.

2. Falling In Love With The Help : It's a genre at least as old as Jane Eyre, but the last decade saw no sign of upstairs-downstairs eroticism abating. Often with the service-industry job in the title — Maid in Manhattan, The Wedding Planner, The Nanny Diaries, even Secretary, these movies were mostly Cinderella fantasies, spiced up with power differentials. Love Actually actually managed to fit several such romances into one movie (with Colin Firth, Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman's plotlines).

3. Quirky Girl Brings Adventure: It's good news that eighties-style makeover flicks were in short supply in the last decade. And maybe we can also be happy that in the place of the ugly duckling came the nominally indie, self-consciously quirky girl with the adventurous streak — see Natalie Portman in Garden State, (500) Days Of Summer (actually, this genre is essentially owned by Zooey Deschanel), Nick & Nora's Infinite Playlist, Juno, and even Serendipity and Along Came Polly.

4. Journalist On Assignment (Often Secretly): The traditional media may be in crisis, but on the silver screen, being a journalist remains glamorous, exciting, and the best way to meet a man. How else does one get into romance-ready scrapes? See: How To Lose A Guy in Ten Days, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Rumor Has It, Down With Love, The Ugly Truth, and even wedged into dual audience comedies like Mr. Deeds (an unconvincing Winona Ryder as a tabloid reporter) and Zoolander (Christine Taylor as an investigatory journalist.)

5. The Reformed Bad Boy. This genre allows both male actors and the audience to have it both ways: first, caddish masculinity and assurance that our hero is a guy's guy, then, the right woman to come along and transform him, unwillingly, into a softy. See, for example, Wedding Crashers, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, Hitch, Two Weeks Notice, About a Boy, and What Women Want. Who said you can't change a man?

6. My Best Friend's Wedding (Stretched Over Another Decade). There is a strong correlation between the ballad of the overlooked best friend (or sometimes sibling) and the frantic drama of the wedding. Maybe we can blame Julia Roberts — if her character in the 1997 hit didn't get the guy at the end, well, we've spent the oughts making up for it. Movies like Made of Honor, My Best Friend's Girl, 27 Dresses, Definitely Maybe, Just Friends, and In Her Shoes make it clear from the trailer that the buddy will come to his or her senses in 90 minutes or less.

7. Dealing With The Hardass Parents: In-law jokes are a worn genre in and of themselves, but films like Monster in Law, Meet The Parents, Guess Who, You Me & Dupree, and Just Married took it to the next level with slapstick gags about overbearing parents jealously protecting their offspring. An implicit reaction to the new overparenting?

8. Male Lead, Stammering Charm: Whether you preferred him British (Hugh Grant) or Yiddish (Ben Stiller), it was all about the klutzy je ne sais quoi. Grant in particular owned this genre, starting in the 90s and persisting throughout the oughts with the wretched Music & Lyrics, the Bridget Jones' Diary movies, and now Did You Hear About The Morgans?, among others.

9. Fish Out Of Water: Nothing's hotter than being new in town and needing to be initiated by an attractive stranger. See: Save The Last Dance, The Holiday, The Prince & Me, New In Town, and Under The Tuscan Sun.

10. Time Travel: romantic comedies are all about putting road blocks between hero and heroine. And what's a better impediment than living in different ages? In movies like Kate and Leopold, 13 going on 30, 17 Again, and The Time Traveler's Wife, love proved it could triumph over the time-space continuum.

Says the Washington Post,

If Chelsea Clinton is getting married on Martha's Vineyard in the next 10 days — and some chatty islanders plus the National Enquirer insist that she is — it should help to have a former commander in chief, a current secretary of state and a brigade of Secret Service agents acting as her co-conspirators. Though they've never confirmed an engagement, rumor has it that Bill and Hillary Clinton's 29-year-old daughter will wed longtime boyfriend Marc Mezvinsky at the estate of Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen, or some other family friend's estate, either this weekend or next. Or not.

The antics necessary to keep such an arrangement shrouded in the requisite secrecy - think a lot of document-shredding, aliases, and security companies. As the piece says, "Paper invitations are the ultimate liability." Your only chance is the top-secret getaway, the "decoy" trip, the "haha it's not a barbecue it's actually a wedding!" Because if these wedding planners are pros, the paparazzi are more than their match. "They'll go to bizarre, great lengths," says planner Mindy Weiss.

Upon reading this, I immediately thought: Hello Rom-Com! It's like The Wedding Planner meets Notting Hill meets some combination of 27 Dresses and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Picture it: a control-freak wedding planner famed for her discretion ("they tell me you're the best," people will tell her repeatedly) is planning the nuptials of Brangelina-level celebrities. Meanwhile, charming reprobate paparrazo has to get the shots or get fired/not get a promotion. Obviously, he must infiltrate. But she's wise to him, and a series of tricks and false leads and red herrings ensues as they match wits and the sexual tension grows. Can they trust each other?
Can she relinquish control? Can he trust his emotions? Obviously the celeb couple engages in many comic-relief shenanigans, too. There may be a gay colleague thrown in, because. Haven't yet decided whether she has a stuffed-shirt boss or if she's too uptight and asexual to attract anyone until paparazzo loosens her up. The only thing I haven't figured out it...will true love prevail?

Keep Celeb Vows Veiled In Secrecy? It's No Snap [Washington Post]

The story will focus on the 40-ish Bridget's desire to have a baby "before time runs out." Oh, goody. Just what the world needs! A slender Hollywood actress given "permission" to fatten up and pretend to freak out about her biological clock.

It's been eight years since Bridget Jones's Diary hit the screen — and thirteen years since the novel was published — and the neurotic, messy character feels very dated. Even more tired is the my-life-is-not-complete-without-a-child cliché. From Marisa Tomei stomping her heel while ranting about her biological clock in 1992's My Cousin Vinny to Tina Fey's Baby Mama (not to mention Liz Lemon's baby fever).

Plus: Not only do we have to read about Zellweger eating "biscuits and gravy, crispy duck, Snickers, milk shakes, pizza and butter-soaked potatoes" — People calls this her "very special diet" to "get in shape" to play Bridget Jones — but when the filming is finished, we'll inevitably have to hear about Zellweger's amazing weight loss, which will surely involve a personal trainer and grilled chicken and lots of veggies. While regular Americans get fat-shamed, Renée is a yo-yo dieting icon!

When the Bridget Jones novel came out, its appeal was that its heroine was offbeat and charmingly imperfect as she obsessed about love and career — a fresh take. But now that the series has become about weight and babies, how does it differ from all the other crap targeted to women?

Third 'Bridget Jones' In Works [Variety]
Renée Zellweger To Pack It On Again For Bridget Jones [People]

Before we get into the actual, you know, issue, a brief note: how annoying is the portrayal of childbirth in rom-coms? You know the drill: Knocked Up, Nine Months, She's Having A Baby, Father if the Bride 2: hilarious antics ensue! Particularly annoying is when the crazed mom-to-be starts screeching about how much she hates the guy for knocking her up! LOL! Here's an egregious and typical example of the genre, from the classic Fools Rush In. Start at 6:20.

Anyhoo. Many of said films feature a 'natural birth plan' which then leaves the woman screaming for drugs midway through. And a new Swedish study claims to give the lie to "natural is better" - or, at any rate, claims that natural childbirth classes are fairly useless. Says the Beeb,

More than 1,000 mothers-to-be took part in the Swedish trial, thought to be the first major analysis of the efficacy of such preparation for childbirth....They attended one of two classes: the first taught natural coping methods, the other emphasised pain relief. but the BJOG study found no difference in the use of epidurals between the women when they went into labour. Just over half the women in each group ultimately opted for the spinal analgesia which reduces or eliminates the pain of contractions.

While one natural-birth advocate claims this is no argument against antenatal education - which, at the very least, fosters partner cooperation and can lead to a sense of relaxation and control, a spokesman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists says, rather smugly, that "this research may temper the statements of the more pro-natural people."

It was our general impression that women who opted for natural childbirth - or indeed took prenatal classses - did so not because they were under the impression that lamaze could simulate the numbing effects of an epidural, but rather because they wanted to experience the birth sans drugs, or didn't wish to expose the infant to them. If a woman went into natural childbirth expecting a pain-free cakewalk, well, sure, that would be a pretty rude awakening. Doesn't everyone know that childbirth in the post-infant-mortality modern west is a warm-hearted farce in which the mother is temporarily transformed into a pain-crazed clown prior to the father's transformation upon holding his child for the first time? Clearly the "pro-natural people" need a dose of Matthew Perry-style reality (with amusing paramedics, of course!), stat.
Natural Birth Classes Questions [BBC]
Fools Rush In [YouTube]

In which she is paired with beautiful, talented, OMG so super sweet that two separate of you bitchy commenters corroborated his wonderfulness James Marsden. And I can tell already that this is going to be one of those movies where you leave thinking OMG how awesome would it be if they really were together? Ew.

Please, evolutionary biologists of the world, explain to me exactly how it helps perpetuate the human race to draw me and my legions inexorably to such a cynical, manipulative, retardedly irresistible love story entirely set at weddings. Oh wait, I just answered my own question.

A Puff Of Fresh Air [Washington Post]