I probaly never woulda known this if there wasn’t a movie, but it turns out Laurence Harvey, who is a guy in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (but not Frank Sinatra), had a daughter named Domino. But wait, there’s more. This daughter supposedly tried to follow in the footsteps of her super model mother, but then got bored and became a bounty hunter. Rich girl model becomes bounty hunter – sounds like a good story, and apparently director Tony Scott was friends with Domino and spent 12 years trying to bring “her story” to the screen. Tragically, she died of a drug overdose last summer having only seen parts of the unfinished movie. I just watched the whole god damn thing so believe me, I can relate.
Okay, that was low and unfair and in poor taste. In the spirit of the movie. They say the real Domino liked what she saw of the movie and was real excited. She was a DJ and recorded a song for the opening credits. And her death was ruled an accident, unlike my paying $9 in good faith for a movie I hoped would be entertaining. You gotta wonder if the best way to honor your dead friend is to put her name on a horrible movie that has nothing to do with her. Whatever happened to pouring one on the curb? I guess maybe they had a weird friendship.
[Confidential to Skander Halim: if I die tragically before your option runs out, FOR GOD'S SAKE don't let Tony Scott direct. Or produce. Or watch. Life is too precious.]
The movie DOMINO is most like is NATURAL BORN KILLERS. I always figured Oliver Stone was trying to make some prophetic warning about the media’s exploitation of violence, not realizing that everybody already figured that one out before he did. But in retrospect it turns out maybe he was prophetic: he was trying to warn us of the incoming tide of the Michael Bay style, the Bruckheimerization of the cinematic language, and/or Tony Scott’s big screen mid-life crisis. Oliver Stone was whacking us over the head, cutting the soundtrack into 750 pieces, torturing us with electric guitars, jarring edits, uncomfortable closeups, senseless switches from super 8 to regular to vhs to black and white to cartoon network. As obnoxious and pretentious as it was at least we knew what he was going for, I think. Some kind of impression of an oversaturated media culture is my guess. (more…)
There’s alot of comic strip books turned into movies but usually they Hollywood em up alot. They change the story and the super hero clothes and turn brits into americans and alot of the fans are fundamentalists so they get pretty upset. Batman doesn’t have nipples because bats don’t have nipples, Super-man isn’t supposed to wear that shade of blue it is actually a different shade of blue, that kind of thing.
