Back from vacation!

That's right, my long vacation is over, and I've returned with the television season, to continue chronicling my disapproval of Indiana Jones, CSI Miami, and a few other regular shows, as well as anything else that catches my fancy. Or really, anti-fancy, since it's going to be mostly complaints.

First up, though, to mention a film I saw during hiatus, and the amazing theme I've discovered in Gwyneth Paltrow's films. The movie was something called 'The Good Night', which, by and large, was a completely by-the-numbers mid-life crisis thing, where a guy realizes that his life hasn't turned out the way he hoped it would, so he gets into something weird to recapture some happiness. In this case, the guy was Martin Freeman, who, despite being the star of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is still best known for playing Tim on The Office. The weird thing he gets into is lucid dreaming, wherein the participant controls their own dreams while asleep, allowing them to live out fantasies.

The plot follows a fairly predictable course, with the guy first finding the 'thing' a refuge from his disappointing real life, especially his montrous shrew of a wife, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, but then he begins to realize that the fantasy is unfulfilling, and decides to try and put his life back together. Then he's hit by a car and thrown into a coma.

At first I thought this was something of a surprising twist, until I remembered that the film 'Sliding Doors' had the exact same message, and also starred Paltrow. In that film, the audience was shown the two possible ways a woman's life would have progressed over a year, depending on whether she'd found out about her boyfriend's infidelity. If she hadn't found out, she would have spent a year miserable, but if she had, she would have successfully gotten her life together, and then been hit by a car and killed.

So if I'm interpreting the theme of these two films accurately, it's that even though life is a string of humiliating miseries, don't try to improve your lot, because fate, in the guise of a speeding car, will kill you for your hubris.

Thanks, Gwyneth.