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In the past class, we started About Time and Stepford Wives (2004). I really liked them both so I decided to finish them. I really enjoyed About Time a lot. It seemed like it just got better and better as it went on. The cinematography felt really fresh and pretty and clean to me. I am a fan of Bill Nighy so I enjoyed his presence in the movie. The story kind of reminded me of a movie called Expiration Date, in which a Native American man finds out about his family curse where the men of the family always die on their 25th birthdays from getting hit by milk trucks. I also thought the movie had a good soundtrack; Ben Folds, yay! I always seem to like these romantic comedies that have just a bit of a twist to them, like Stranger Than Fiction. To me, the most touching part of the movie was definitely when the main character's wife was about to give birth and the main character went back to see his father one last time. I was crying SO HARD during that scene! Later my roommate and I were making Thanksgiving curry, I told her about that part of the story and I started crying again! Man, so touching! Another part that really tugged my heartstrings was when the main character's sister was confessing her fear that she was the failure in the family who would never amount to anything. I related to her because everyone else in my family seems so smart and talented compared with me. I was glad that her life got back on track. It seems like things always work out for people in these movies; I wish real life were like that. Lastly, I liked when the main character's mother was first meeting his fiancée, and she said, "You have a really pretty face," and the fiancée said, "No, I just am wearing a lot of mascara and lipstick," and the mother said, "Oh, yes. Good. It's very bad for a girl to be too pretty. It stops her developing a sense of humor. Or a personality." I thought that was pretty funny, and honestly it seems like it's often true! Even though it was a bit weird since that actress really had perfect facial proportions that you couldn't fake with mascara and lipstick.

Stepford Wives on the other hand seemed to get a little worse as it went on from the point at which we stopped watching it in class. The beginning was so hilarious, and so was the part when the family first arrived in Stepford and were getting shown around, but I felt that it lost its sparkle from there. I liked that part where the lady in "I Can Do Better" said, "Before this show, I only slept with one man. And that was usually Hank." It was sad how this seems like it could almost be a real reality TV show. It reminded me of an ad campaign on PBS where they made funny fake commercials for extremely mindless reality TV shows. For example:

It was a bit confusing how in the beginning, the main character seemed to really love her job and be super into it. She seemed like she really fit into that world. But then when she went to Stepford, she seemed more counterculturey, which seemed to contradict her persona from before a little. I know that her brain was zapped before she got to Stepford, but later when she meets the short Jewish lady, she says something like, "OMG I LOVE your work, the one about your mother? What was that called again? Oh right, I Love You But Please Die." The lady in the beginning of the movie didn't seem like the kind of lady who would be a big fan of the works of a sassy dorky feminist lady. One question I was left with in the end of the movie was I wondered what would happen to the Stepford wives after they stopped being controlled robots. Because if all of them are like that lady who kept saying "Do-si-do" over and over, then they all have a good amount of robotic machinery in their brains. The Do-Si-Do lady stopped going haywire when the mayor came and kind of snapped her neck a bit, causing her robotic machinery to spark. Is all of that sparky metal stuff just going to stay inside the Stepford wives' heads for the rest of their lives?