I’ve been wanting to try a podcast since starting the Watch List last summer, as a way to converse with knowledgeable friends and colleagues about films, TV, and other matters pop cultural. Meredith Goldstein was an obvious choice to kick things off: For two decades now, the Boston Globe “Love Letters” columnist and I have been sharing a fondness for schlocky/irresistible movie romances over lunch, in e-mails, and in the editorial hallways. Why do these movies work? Why are they sometimes more fun when they don’t work? Premiering just in time for Valentine’s Day, the first installment of Ty Burr’s Watchcast features the two of us hunkering down for a chat about that classic rom-com convention, the Cinderella transformation, with a focus on the ditzily enjoyable 2002 release “Maid in Manhattan,” a movie (available on demand here) that asks us to believe Jennifer Lopez and Ralph Fiennes could belong on the same planet, let alone together.
This is the first of four Watchcasts in which Meredith and I will be coming at the genre from a variety of angles: The classic movie romance (Michael Powell’s wonderful 1945 film “I Know Where I’m Going!”), the “magic” (or, as I like to call it, “insane”) romantic drama (“The Time Traveler’s Wife,” from 2009), and a foreign language candidate to be named later. We’re still working the bugs out of the format, and the edges might be a little rough: Your feedback is welcome. I hope you enjoy listening as much as we had fun chatting. Happy Valentine’s Day! May your heart get hammered in only the best ways.
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