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Unlikely in love: Why success-driven women fall for affable losers

In Katherine Heigl's new film, "Knocked Up," the "Grey's Anatomy" star and Botticelli beauty plays a successful career girl who has a one-night stand with an unemployed, slobbish slacker. When she becomes pregnant, the two reunite and eventually fall in love.

In pop culture, this isn't the first time the loser gets the girl. Think of John Cusack in "Say Anything," Jason Schwartzman in "Shop Girl" and almost every Adam Sandler comedy. For Type-A women at the top of their game, what's the allure?

"They're safe and fun," says Dana Ovadia of Walnut Creek, Calif. "You feel like you're still living in your youth when you're with a guy like that."

Director brings action-film chops to drama about bomb squad in Iraq

There are no female characters in the Iraq war drama The Hurt Locker -- practically no women in the movie at all, aside from the occasional Baghdad wife or mother caught by the camera in one of the film's vistas of the bustling, dangerous city.

The absence of women is not all that unusual for war pictures, which traditionally are a male domain. But behind the cameras of The Hurt Locker , which opened Friday, there was one noticeable, unmissable woman: Director Kathryn Bigelow, calling the shots on a film that makes every other action picture this summer sit up and take notice.

One-upping the boys is business as usual for Bigelow, whose career has been devoted to making male-oriented genre movies -- with one exception, the little-seen 2000 flop The Weight of Water , about an unraveling marriage.

Academy Awards' director category contains groundbreakers

Kathryn Bigelow sounds a wee bit tired of questions about being a "female director," but given that on Tuesday, she became only the fourth woman to be nominated for best director by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, she knows it comes with the territory.

"I long personally for the day when the modifier is a moot point," said a very happy Bigelow, whose film nabbed nine nominations, including one for best picture. "I anticipate that day will come, but if 'The Hurt Locker' can make the impossible seem possible to somebody, it's pretty overwhelming and gratifying. At least we're heading in the right direction."

"The Hurt Locker," Bigelow's stunningly visceral examination of life in a bomb-disposal squad in Iraq, is the culmination of more than 25 years in the business, and an aesthetic that defies conventional notions of gender (where women directors are often relegated to romantic comedies.) Her films include the vampire flick "Near Dark" and the surf thriller "Point Break," as well as the

Review | Did You Hear About the Morgans? (PG-13) **

In Did You Hear About the Morgans? , Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker are supposed to pass for a married couple, but they have all the chemistry of two actors who just met and shook hands moments before the cameras rolled. They don't even seem to like each other much -- I'm fairly certain I saw Parker's nostrils flaring in one scene -- which poses a bit of a problem for a movie that hinges on their characters working out their differences and living happily ever after.

Grant in particular looks bored and distracted and eager to get this silly movie finished. He can be an effortless, likable charmer -- his performance in the wonderful About a Boy is particularly underrated -- but in Did You Hear About the Morgans? , even his trademark stammering feels forced. When an actor's heart isn't in his work, you start noticing all the wrong things. Grant looks like he's been hitting the gym, he's had a little work done, and he seems utterly bored by acting -- or at least bored by the role of Paul Morgan,

A look at the week ahead in TV and movies

BIG SCREEN

The Hurt Locker (R) -- Director Kathryn Bigelow's visceral, harrowing drama about the experiences of three members of the U.S. Army's Explosive Ordinance Disposal squad during their tour of duty in Baghdad is the first movie inspired by the Iraq War to attain greatness. Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty co-star as soldiers with one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.

The Ugly Truth (R) -- The battle of the sexes again, this time centering on a TV morning show producer (Katherine Heigl) and her new on-camera anchor (Gerard Butler) who bicker and argue before falling in love. In other news, the world is still round.