KISS KISS BANG BANG (2005), or Batman Meets Ironman

Anyone who has worked with Brando comes away a little fey. Johnny Depp in DON JUAN DEMARCO, Karl Malden in STREETCAR, and Val Kilmer in THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU. Okay I’m wrong about Malden but there’s no doubt working with Brando is transformative. No actor is ever the same. No one has ever cried more realistically on screen than Brando, I’m thinking of a scene in LAST TANGO where he’s crying remembering his dead wife. Hell, Brando’s essence even got Red Buttons an Oscar for SAYONARA. Larry King is a better interviewer since Brando layed one on him.

Val Kilmer works his magic in the Robert Downey Jr. thriller KISS KISS BANG BANG. Downey had me at CHAPLIN and his real-life personal problems caused [and may again cause] one of the great losses in modern film acting. Reminds me of Darryl Strawberry, who also admits to his problems and prefers jail to rehab. Downey was clean again, enough so to star in this modern day pulp fiction. Kilmer is a gay shamus, Downey plays a thief posing as an actor posing as a private dick. They work together reluctantly on two overlapping cases of murder, mistaken identity, and more murder.

There’s beautiful women, more stiffs than a CPA convention, and a healthy dose of sadism. [Like Connery said of the Bond series, “It’s sadism for the family.”] The body count is higher than Paul McCartney past the customs gate. There’s a genuinely funny torture scene yet just as brutal as the one in CASINO ROYALE (2007). Kilmer gets them out of a jam in this and two other instances using his gay sensibility, but there’s nothing offensive or mincing or condescending about it. He is laugh out loud funny.

Director and writer Shane Black has made a low budget classic with high budget production values and perfs. There's a neat title sequence too, so watch this one from 00:00 to end.

Grouting--Give me the Weapon to Win/Hips and Security Cameras Don't Lie

GROUTING

This week I learned how to regrout. It's pretty simple. You clean the area, chip out 1/16 inch of the old grout, wipe away the excess with a sponge, and apply the new grout using your finger. After 10 minutes, wipe away the spillover on the tiles. One hour later, get an old sock and polish the hardened grout. When it's done you'll have a bright white grid where the old gray one stood.

My bathroom window looks out on grass, trees, and flowers. I think this is why I get an unusual amount of mold. An attack starts with a spot and can spread rapidly in a few days. Five years ago I scrubbed the ceiling and applied two coats of anti-mold paint. That did the trick. I wanted to apply the paint after the regrouting but my wife gets sick from the smell of paint. I'll have to wait until she goes on vacation.

We've come a long way. The mold is on the run. Sure there are sleeper cells that show up here and there but we can handle it. My hands are tied from achieving total victory today. We'll be in there a long time but I know I can outlast the current mold because I have the weapons. The mold will always be there, waiting, and it's just a matter of will and a question of when victory be achieved.

MY SPOT

Many years ago I was sitting on the floor and my young son said, "Dad you have a spot." I denied it even though I knew it was true. About the size of a quarter, I could barely see it in the mirror.

Today I observed the spot from the aerial angle of a bodega security camera. [It's good to know a place you can still get a beer before noon on the way to the beach.] My mirror told me the spot was bigger than a half-dollar and smaller than a Little Debbie but this camera revealed it to be closer to a 1960s Ring Ding. The glare of the unforgiving fluorescent light may have made it look bigger than it really is.

Upsides of losing hair:

• I can feel the first drops of rain
• Faster haircuts
• Saving money on shampoo
• Ladies love bald guys

Downsides:

• None that I can think of
  

KNOCKED UP/In Vitro Fertilization/When Life Begins

The new movie KNOCKED UP got me thinking: Does anybody think in vitro fertilization has gotten out of hand? It was a good idea but now it's Russian roulette for these poor dead kids. They're in a lifeboat and almost inevitably someone gets pushed overboard because there's not enough supplies for all to survive when they go for 6 kids at one time.

Here's a theory I developed on my own to answer the question: When does life begin?

If you can freeze it, thaw it, and implant it in the mother to successfully bring it to term, the embryo was not alive because freezing kills alive things. The frozen embryo was in a pre-alive state.

Embryos can be frozen from 1-6 days after fertilization in culture. They can't be frozen after 6 days because they're alive. Why? The attempt to freeze kills it just as you or I would be killed if we were frozen. I inferred that researcher must have tried freezing embryos past 6 days with little or no success. The freezing killed the embryo. Or did living in culture too long kill it? Either way, I conclude: Life begins on the seventh day. At that point an embryo cannot be frozen anymore for successful implantation.

Third Minn. Sextuplet Dies; 3 Critical

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June 16,2007 | (AP) MINNEAPOLIS -- Half of the sextuplets born prematurely to a Minnesota couple have now died, while the others remained in critical condition, hospital officials said Saturday.

A third boy, Lincoln Sean Morrison, died Friday. Two of his brothers, Tryg and Bennet, died earlier in the week.

The four boys and two girls were born last Sunday about 4 1/2 months early a Minneapolis hospital. Doctors had advised the couple to selectively reduce the number of viable fetuses to two, but they declined.

Parents Ryan and Brianna Morrison released a statement saying it's been "a difficult week" for them, and thanked everyone for their prayers and support.

"We continue to trust in the Lord and are hopeful for a good outcome for Cadence, Lucia and Sylas," the statement said.

Hospital officials said no further information would be released.

DOCTOR, YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING!

DOCTOR, YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING! (1967) with Sandra Dee, George Hamilton, Dwayne Hickman, Bill Bixby, Dick Kallmann, Celeste Holm, Mort Sahl

This a 1960s sex comedy about a girl with no talent pushed by Mama (Celeste Holm) to make it as a pop singer. She has three guys who are crazy about her: the next-door childhood buddy and ladies’ man (Bill Bixby); a shoe salesman and sometime-actor (Dwayne Hickman); a musician (Dick Kallman). The three take turns coming on to her every five minutes but she doesn’t reciprocate. Her office day job boss (George Hamilton) is the one she’s nuts over. He’s a Vulcan, think Bill Gates with a tan and a suit that fits, except he’s crazy about Sandra like everyone else.

The general theme is WIZARD OF OZ meets THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY. The movie is told in flashback and under the opening credits we see a madcap race to the hospital. Sandra is pregnant and the three fellows all propose marriage so the child will have a father. Each one knows he’s not the father so it’s pure altruism, although you can tell they would gladly raise another man’s child for a future with Miss Dee.

For some reason I expected an explanation for her pregnancy, such as the unseen night she spends with George Hamilton was actually a secret wedding in Tijuana that they somehow never talked about. But no, the last scene reveals that she’s unmarried and that they had engaged in premarital sex. I was shocked and wondered if this was the first major release where an unmarried pregnancy was played for laughs. It’s like trying to remember when phones had wires.

Random memories:

Dick Kallmann was the star of one my favorite shows in 1965, HANK, the story of a lunchwagon man who becomes a college drop-in by using disguises to sneak into class. Get it? A knock at college dropouts to have the main character want to drop in, the show was canceled but they gave him a last episode whereby he was finally able to enroll for real.

Bill Bixby: In the 1980s Bix became so frustrated at the failure of his quality efforts on TV, such as GOODNIGHT BEANTOWN, that he turned to hosting the cheap dramatic anthology TRUE CONFESSIONS, but he bounced back to become one of the tube’s best directors. He died way too young of prostate cancer.

Mort Sahl plays the nightclub owner and he speaks for the squares in the audience. He hates the music, which means the kids will dig it. He hasn’t made many movies but he was good in this playing a cynical Mort Sahl-type. He turned 80 this year.

Sandra Dee: If Sue Storm was based on Doris Day, then Sandra could have played the Invisible Girl in 1967. Early in the picture it looked like DOCTOR could have been an Ann-Margret vehicle, but when George tells her she’s the kind of girl you want to marry, not a girl of whom you’d like to rip her clothes off, you know they cast the right gal. Plus, Ann-Margret could sing a little and a running gag in the pic is that this gal doesn’t have any much singing talent. I don’t know if she was a good enough actress to play a terrible singer who improves imperceptibly.