68 replies to this topic

[Safari Suit]

Her best single of the last ten years. Sadly

[HildebrandRarity]

I like it.

I saw Madonna in concert in October last year and she even did a version of Die Another Day which included two prize fighters in a boxing ring on stage.

I also agree that Klienmann's Main Titles together with the song work reasonably well.

[Judo chop]

DAD has one of the best titles sequence/song combos in Bond. The song is really good, the sequence is brilliant. Both are wasted.

[tim partridge]

Pure stinker from the nadir of Madonna's career (not counting Hard Candy, of course). How unfortunate that Eon/MGM got the timing so wrong on this! Madonna had already done the perfect 007 song with Beautiful Stranger, only a couple of years before!

Oh if only she'd written DAD with Patrick Leonard rather than Mirwais Ahmadzai. What a painfully wasted opportunity that in no way represents the best Madonna could have given Bond.

I do like DAD's approach and I think Madonna had the right idea, which wasn't the out of touch pastiche of the other Brosnan songs, but Mirwais' dated for the time production and the cheap lyrics just make this another dreary addition to the appalling American Life album. Only Michel Colombier's great orchestral flourishes (which were added long after the song was recorded) manage to inject the "song" with anything remotely resembling melody. Let's be honest too; Colombier could have scored the whole movie.

I think if Madonna had gone for the same approach for DAD, but had written the song with Patrick Leonard instead of Mirwais, had Nellee Hooper, Leonard, William Orbit, Stuart Price or whoever produce it, we'd have something on par with Goldfinger. Honestly. Remember FROZEN?

Kleinman generally did well, except that his fugly RED FONT seems to have wandered off the set of NSNA, and I loathe whenever he does the "ego" directors credit (which doesn't have any place in a Bond film).

Edited by tim partridge, 17 February 2009 - 03:47 PM.

[sthgilyadgnivileht]

Kleinman generally did well, except that his fugly RED FONT seems to have wandered off the set of NSNA, and I loathe whenever he does the "ego" directors credit (which doesn't have any place in a Bond film).

Agreed 100%!

[Safari Suit]

I'm not sure if I agree with you about Perfect Stranger, but I agree with you about Frozen. That record (and later The Power of Goodbye) knocked my sideways when it came out. Granted, I was eleven at the time, so perhaps not the most critically astute person in the world, but then again that was a part of what made that song special. For people my age, and even those a bit older, Madonna, much like Michael Jackson, had just always sort of been there, having hits all our lives, seemingly never leaving the charts. She couldn't just grab our attention with a half-way decent hook like The Seahorses or whoever could do, she had to release something which really caught your attention. And that time, she did.

Then she had to spoil it all by releasing that annoying piece of tat Music, which was released when I was 13 and seemed to be on heavy rotation until I was about 16.

[DR76]

I don't love or hate the title song, "Die Another Day". It was okay. Nothing to get excited about. As for Madonna's appearance in the movie, I had no trouble with it either. It was simply a nice little cameo. I still don't understand the commotion by some fans over her appearance.

[Daddy Bond]

I don't love or hate the title song, "Die Another Day". It was okay. Nothing to get excited about. As for Madonna's appearance in the movie, I had no trouble with it either. It was simply a nice little cameo. I still don't understand the commotion by some fans over her appearance.

I don't have a personal problem with it, it's just that I'm not big on cameos for Bond movies. She did just fine in the part she had, I just didn't see it as necessary.

[DR76]

I don't love or hate the title song, "Die Another Day". It was okay. Nothing to get excited about. As for Madonna's appearance in the movie, I had no trouble with it either. It was simply a nice little cameo. I still don't understand the commotion by some fans over her appearance.

I don't have a personal problem with it, it's just that I'm not big on cameos for Bond movies. She did just fine in the part she had, I just didn't see it as necessary.

People have been making cameos in Bond films since the 1960s. I believe that Ian Fleming made a cameo in "FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE". Michael Wilson does it all the time. Even Maud Adams made a cameo in "A VIEW TO A KILL".

[Safari Suit]

But people are going to be more distracted by the appearance of someone who has pretty much been one of the most famous people on earth for two decades than they are by a brief appearance by an author many might be able to name but few could put a face to, and a producer that few outside of fairly knowledgable Bond fans could name. Madonna's role is more than a cameo really anyway. And she's a pretty terrible actress. She may have had a fairly compelling screen presence and an appealing bravdo when she made Desperately Seeking Susan all those years ago, but that had long faded by the time she appeared in DAD.

[plankattack]

I liked it when it came out, but then I like them all when they come out. It's definitely not something I choose to listen to now though. The credits are decent and fit the song, but the song now seems as dated as some of Tamahori's directorial "enhancements."

[Joey Bond]

I have a soft spot for anything Die Another Day, as it was the first new Bond film to come out after I became a Bond fan. So I probably like the song more than most people.

It's got 5 stars on my iTunes. The only other Bond songs to have 5 stars are "Nobody does it better", "The Living Daylights" and "You know my name".

[AgentBentley]

As a James Bond theme, it's among my least favorite - as most of the recent ones are.
As a dance tune, it's a great track.

[DR76]

But people are going to be more distracted by the appearance of someone who has pretty much been one of the most famous people on earth for two decades than they are by a brief appearance by an author many might be able to name but few could put a face to, and a producer that few outside of fairly knowledgable Bond fans could name. Madonna's role is more than a cameo really anyway. And she's a pretty terrible actress. She may have had a fairly compelling screen presence and an appealing bravdo when she made Desperately Seeking Susan all those years ago, but that had long faded by the time she appeared in DAD.

I understand if you were distracted by Madonna's appearance. But what makes you think that all Bond fans were? I certainly wasn't. I had no feeling about her cameo, one way or the other.

[danielcraigisjamesbond007]

I think that the song works well with the title sequence. But, as a song by itself, it didn't really impress me...

[BlackFire]

It's a good song, but for a Bond theme is not that good.

[Aris007]

I liked the song from the fisrst time I heard it! The title sequence(along with the rest in Brosnan's era) is great! The song matches perfectly and it's a good tune! However, it's not my very first choice in the playlist "Bond songs"!

[Safari Suit]

I understand if you were distracted by Madonna's appearance. But what makes you think that all Bond fans were? I certainly wasn't. I had no feeling about her cameo, one way or the other.

I don't think I implied, and certainly I didn't mean to imply, that all Bond fans were distracted by Madonna's cameo, in fact I don't think I even implied I was distracted by her, I was fairly indifferent to it too. I just hypothesised some of the reasons some viewers (not limited strictly to "Bond fans") have objected to her cameo.

[Brian Flagg]

As someone who was sick to death of Madonna's "overexposure" in the 1980s and especially the early nineties (wih that idiotic SEX book), I finally managed to actually enjoy her "Ray of Light" album and surprisongly didn't mind "Die Another Day", though the timing of having Madonna singing a Bond song wasn't so good because she had peaked commercially over ten years prior. Besides that, pop music was no longer the force it was in the 1970s-80s, as the boomers' idea of cool has gone the way of the Earth Shoe, the Leisure Suit, and the word "Groovy." Hip Hop/Rap had long been the preferred "hip" music, though certainly not in the Flagg household...

[Nicolas Suszczyk]

Not surely my favourite, but I like it.

The same feeling I have with "Another Way to die". Both "Die Another Day" and the latter are awful songs but they stick to my head all the time and I keep listening to them.

[Aris007]

Not surely my favourite, but I like it.

The same feeling I have with "Another Way to die". Both "Die Another Day" and the latter are awful songs but they stick to my head all the time and I keep listening to them.

I don't know if I feel the same thing about "Another Way To Die" too. I didn't like the song in the first place, but I can't say for sure that I'm not going to change my mind in the future! Both songs, though match with the titles just perfectly!

[Della Leiter]

I was 7 when this song was popular, and I didn't realize it was a Bond song until I started watching Bond. That was only last year. So I liked it when I was seven, but as a Bond song, no thank you. It's probably one of my least favorites. It would work better in some kind of girly 'I'm-a-spy-but-I-go-to-the-mall-and-paint-my-nails' movie. They're playing it as Pierce is being tortured. I mean, come on. It's so upbeat-sounding, and he's gasping for air. I think that's just a tad tacky.

[MajorB]

I've never been wild about it as a Bond song, or as a song per se. But as an accompaniment to the titles, I think it works really well. I agree with many here that the titles are among the best in the series, different and inventive, and the song contributes a lot to the atmosphere. As for Madonna's cameo, I thought she was meh--monotone delivery and not much presence. But she was only on for a brief time and didn't do much harm, I don't think.

[Bill]

Certainly not my favorite of the Brosnan songs, but still not bad. The voice synthesizer bit was very distracting. I have one of those best of Bond cover CDs of all instrumental versions of the then 20 Bond films, and the way that was covered, using a full orchestra, particularly strings, is spectacular.

For whatever it is worth, the song is traditional enough to sound like a Bond song. Not the atrocious piece of garbage that is Another Way to Die, which is absolutely dreadful.

As for Madonna's cameo, it was brief enough not to do any damage. For the record, I liked DAD. A lot. Probably my favorite Brosnan Bond film. Yes, the invisible car is a bit too much, and the CGI surfing looks a little fake, but the sheer exuberance for the 40th anniversary film more then makes up for it. Brosnan is the perfect Bond, Halle Berry is a real Bond girl for the 21st century and the whole film is a whole lot of fun.

Bill

[dee-bee-five]

Don't love it, don't hate it. Set against "Another Way To Die" it attains classic status - but it's no John Barry.

As for Madonna's cameo, what's the big deal? She may be a bonkers child-snatcher but, personally, I rather enjoyed her trotting out her Sapphic swordstress number. But then I've always felt that DAD had more positives than the naysayers on here would have one believe - and that they far outweighed the negatives. DAD did what it said on the tin, end of.

[Zorin Industries]

I like the song. It works for the film. And that's all it needs to do. Not pander to some people's forty year old mantra of what makes a good song.

[Safari Suit]

I wouldn't really describe it as upbeat-sounding.

[Royal Dalton]

I can't say I think it's a good song. But it works alright with the title sequence.

[O.H.M.S.S.]

I think the title sequence (with Madonna's song) is fantastic, but the rest of the film isn't.

[Fiona Volpe lover]

I'll happily defend certain aspects of DAD,but I hated that song when it first came out and still do,though I do think the title sequence is good and very clever.