If you left It’s Complicated thinking you’d like to own the house Meryl Streep’s character lives in, you’re not alone. It’s a common reaction to any film directed and/or written by Nancy Meyers. Personally, I’m still hoping to end up in a Vermont home similar to Diane Keaton’s in 1987′s Baby Boom (and with a vet) and vacation annually at Keaton’s Hamptons beach house in Something’s Gotta Give and Kate Winslet’s English cottage in The Holiday. In a recent must-read New York Times Magazine profile, Meyers, who believes a home and its furnishings can develop a character, also explains her heroines’ exquisite and expensive taste as “appealing. It softens the message.” Times writer Daphne Merkin then has to ask: Does that “softening the message” ultimately weaken her films?

Jeanine Basinger, chairwoman of the film-studies department at Wesleyan University, tells the Times that Meyers’ films don’t require that you think about them after the credits roll: “She makes it easy for the actors and the audience…. They can slip into their parts and be happy, and we can slip into our seats and be happy.” I don’t think whether or not I can afford on-screen linens determines if a movie stays with me. Baby Boom is burned into my memory because I’m a single city girl who wonders if she should slow down and move to the country, and The Holiday because I fantasize about having the cojones to take an extended solo vacation and make a new reality for myself for two weeks. I enjoyed It’s Complicated, but because I’m not a divorcée, I’m not going to spend time thinking what if. But since I am currently thinking that I really would have liked to have seen Streep’s completed renovation, let’s take a poll: Which Nancy Meyers movie house would you most like to live in? Vote after the jump.

P.S. I’d ask you to weigh in on the “softening the message” debate, but honestly, wouldn’t you be pissed if you saw a Nancy Meyers romantic comedy at this point that didn’t have a house you coveted? Or would you rather see another Private Benjamin and Protocol from her?

P.P.S. Not a joke there. I do love Protocol. READ FULL STORY »

As we were leaving Sherlock Holmes yesterday, I asked my 62-year-old mother how awesome it would be to see Robert Downey Jr. star in a movie with Johnny Depp. Her response — “I would need a tranquilizer” — wasn’t exactly a surprise. She enjoyed Sherlock Holmes and Johnny Depp’s recent Sexiest Man Alive People cover equally. But it does show the kind of massive appeal a film costarring Downey and Depp would have. So, PopWatchers, let’s pitch us some plots…

I would love to see them play two eccentric actors who get caught up in some sort of real-life espionage. (Knowing that my mother shares my love for the 1987 Shelley Long-Better Midler classic Outrageous Fortune, I’m confident she’d second this.) Though it’s tempting to give them a bromance à la Holmes and Watson, they should initially hate each other à la Tango and Cash (another reference that I’m sure would appeal to the duo). Part of me wants it to be a period film, which would give Downey and Depp even more room to play; part of me wants it set today, but penned by Steve Martin with the heightened reality of Roxanne and LA Story.

So to recap: I’m pitching Outrageous Fortune meets Tango & Cash and Roxanne, possibly in period garb.

Your turn. What’s your dream project for Downey and Depp?

Photo Credit: Depp: Solarpix/PR Photos; Downey: Jamie McCarthy/Wireimage.com