Having just watched The Upside of Anger, the new Kevin Costner/Joan Allen/dysfunctional family flick that was actually quite good, entertaining and moving and funny, I've come to a couple of conflusions:
1) Actresses today, young and old, have no wrinkles, at all, on any portion of their faces stretching from their forehead to their ears. They all look as if they've never spent a day oftheir lives in any kind of real-world situation that involves stress or precipitation or perspiration. There were four daugthers in this movie, ranging in age from sixteen to twenty-four or so, and the mother, Joan Allen, who must be in her mid to late forties, and none of them had anything even remotely resembling real, honest-to-goodness facial expressions that looked authentic. Why? Because they've all botoxed the hell out of the foreheads, I'm guessing, which means that when they get really, really angry, their face contorts into various positions, none of them betraying the hint of a wrinkle. Totally takes me out of the movies these days, wondering how all these women have such perfect faces.
2) I really, really don't like titles that thematically state the message of the movie. The Upside of Anger is a clever title and all, but it's so generic and blatant; it's so direct. It's like that movie from a few years called The Myth of Fingerprints. Titles should have a hint of the specific in them, I believe. (Exceptions abound, of course, none more so than Do The Right Thing, the perfect title for a pretty much perfect movie. But exceptions only exist for the masters.)
I do think it would be cool, however, if each of us could have thematic principles related to our lives flash across our foreheads when it's thematically appropriate in real-life situations. Let's say you get angry -- wham, bam, ' the upside of anger' flashes across your face with a neon intensity. That way it would be easier to figure out what kind of a person somebody is, whether they're a prophet or a prick, a saint or a sinner. You could walk into a bar and come across a Fonzie wannabe with a 'Be Cool' sign beneath his brow, or a major-league whiner bitching and moaning about their lack of a salary could have ' Million Dollar Baby' slapped beneath their chin. The possibilities are endless, the likelihood, well, not likely...
