Amph James Bond: Now Disc. "Skyfall" Video Blog by Sam Mendes

What is your favorite Bond opening song?

This one is actually really tough for me because Bond has had some really good opening credit songs over the long run.

My list fluctuates from time to time, but the songs just shuffle around. There is a core group of five that constantly change position.

1 (For the time being) The World is Not Enough -- Garbage (I also like the video they did)

2 Tommorrow Never Dies - Sheryl Crow (She doesn't sing it in tours when she does performances -- damn)

3 Thunderball -- Tom Jones (The ultimate power song)

4 The Man With the Golden Gun

5 Live and Let Die Axel Ros -- just joking, Paul McCartney and Wings. (Was there ever a more unnecessary remake of a song?)

 

Favorite Bond song is A VIEW TO A KILL by Duran Duran. It's the only thing I really liked about that one.

 

My favorite song (besides Monty Norman's original "James Bond Theme") is probably Goldfinger. Everything about that song gives a feeling of Bond.

Oh, and I love seeing Sheena Easton appear in the opening credits of "For Your Eyes Only"!!

Another great song, that's really hard to find, is the Bond Theme remake by Parodi/Fair. It's the cool Bond Theme they play in the GoldenEye trailers. I think it's one of the best James Bond Theme remakes.

 

best opening song? Goldfinger, TSWLM is second


my favs:

bond-connery
villian-blofeld (jaws is breathing down his neck in the race though)
girl-tracy
film-goldfinger

 

Best Bond songs:

1) Goldfinger always memorable and set the standard for future Bond theme songs.

2) You Only Live Twice Some of John Barry's finest work... Great theme

3) A View to a Kill just a great Bond song.

4) Living Daylights/Spy Who Loved Me (Nobody Does it Better) Two great songs but I can't decide which one I like better

5) Moonraker... again Shirley Bassey

6) Live and Let Die

Oh and I'd like to add a special nod to the opening music for OHMSS, although technically not a Bond song, the theme for OHMSS is just great... which also leads to another John Barry classic simply titled "007" this piece never appeared in the opening title sequence, but Barry used it a number of times during fights, or chase scenes (Notably when Bond is stealing the Lector in FRWL, during the boat chase in Moonraker, and during the under water battles in Thunderball).

Best Unheard Bond themes:

1) Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (the original theme to Thunderball before they replaced it with Tom Jones' horrible song)

2) Surrender (K.D. Lang and David Arnold's awesome theme for Tomorrow Never Dies which can be heard in the closing credits... far better than that abortion of a song by Sheryl Crow... God what were you people thining???)

Which of course leads to the all time worst Bond songs.

4) Man With the Golden Gun... wow what catchy lyrics.. "He has a powerful weapon, he charges a million a shot, an assasin whose second to none, the Man With the Golden Gun."

3) Diamonds are Forever, the only bad Shirley Bassey Bond song. Goofy lyrics and too damn repetative.

2) Tommorow Never Dies... starts off promising for about 20 seconds, and then degenerates from there.

1) And of course the all time worst Bond song... Die Another Day... what an absolute piece of utter garbage. They should have known what they were getting since Maddona's gone techno. They should have gotten her during her "Take a Bow"/Evita days... when she actually sang.

Yancy (aka gallandro)

 

Yeah, I think Madonna was a pretty crappy choice for Die Another Day. They could've done better.

 

Can't believe I missed this. I'm a huge Bond fan. Sourdust, you rock BTW.

Bond: Timothy Dalton
Film: OHMSS (same as the book)
Bond Girl: Tatiana Romanova (From Russia, With Love)
Villain: Ari Kristatos (For Your Eyes Only)

The Villain, for me, was a believable one and that counts. I should note that I am a Fleming fan as well as a film fan, and I thought Kristatos was a good Fleming-style nemesis. The Fleming factor also influcences my choice of Bond.

As for the next Bond - Clive Owen!!!

E_S

 

Have any of you Bond fans been to Universalexports.net?

 

Best Bond songs are IMO

Goldfinger
Thunderball
Live & Let Die


Cj

 

There's a Universal Exports website? I always go to JamesBond.com and IanFleming.org ....

 

Gobi-1, I used to write stuff for Universalexports.net!!! I went under the name Ajay there.

E_S

 

Favourite Bond
Sean Connery
Favourite Bond Movie
From Russia With Love
Favourite Villain
Grant
Favourite Bond Girl
Tatiana Romanova
Favourite Bond Music
GoldFinger


..but you have to admit that the best Bond Opening is "In Her Majesty's Secret Service", after all "this would never happen to the other fellow"!!

 

My favorite opening song is either "OHMSS" or "The Living Daylights", although a-ha had a better version of the latter song on their third album.

Best title sequence? A recent one, actually--Goldeneye.

 

The Goldeneye opening was pretty good. The thing I love about the James Bond world is that a country with an incredible amount of resources like England would only send one person to investigate a plot that would threaten the entire world. Whereas in real life a country like England or America would utilize hundreds of people to work on something as small as mail fraud!

 

Okay, how about a couple of new categories???

Best opening Pre-Credits/Teaser sequence, and Best opening Titles (not necessarily the music, but the title sequence).

So here are my votes:

Best Opening Pre-Credits Sequence:

Goldfinger: Set the standard for future pre-credit action scenes. Great suspence, great fight between Bond and the bad guy.

OHMSS: Great intro for Lazenby, and really showed he could hold his own against Connery's Bond.

Living Daylights: My favorite pre-credits sequence ever. Great action, and a fantastic introduction for Dalton... Non-stop thrills.

Goldeneye: Fantastic intro to Brosnan's Bond

Worst Opening Pre-Credits Sequence:

Hands down For Your Eyes Only. What was up with that??? A good Bond spy thriller marred by a goofy holdover from the cartoonish Moonraker era. Also a special nod to A View to A Kill only because of the Beach Boys music, otherwise it was one of the best openings ever.


Best opening Titles:

Tie: You Only Live Twice and Moonraker. Great John Barry music set against beautiful Maurice Binder images... Fantastic!

OHMSS: Great montage a favorite Bond moments... great way to pass the torch.

Special nod to FRWL. Talk about guts....Projecting credits on women's body parts... great idea. I especially loved "007" being displayed on a woman's shaking cleavage. Also Directory of Photography Ted Moore's credits being displayed on a woman's butt was a nice touch.

Worst Opening Titles:

Die Another Day: Talk about chaos. Okay, the idea of telling the story arc of Bond's time in a North Korean prison during the credits was inventive... but add to that Maddona's hideous techno song, and the weird images of the women dancing techno-style, and you just have a complete mess.

This is fun... let's think of some other categories.

Yancy

 

Best pre-credits sequence: Licence to Kill. I just love how the bride's maids carry in Bond and Felix's parachutes. From Russia With Love and The Living Daylights are pretty darn good, too.

Worst: For Your Eyes Only. Really, really bad. Moonraker was pretty lousy too.

Best title sequence: Goldeneye looked pretty slick.

Worst: Die Another Day. I don't need to explain this.

Best score: OHMSS.

Worst score: Sadly, For Your Eyes Only has this disco stuff that tarnishes Moore's best movie.

Best Felix: David Hedison.

Worst: Whoever the weenie in Goldfinger was.

Best sidekick: (tie) Kerim Bay in FRWL and Patrick Macnee in A View to a Kill. Steed really made that movie a lot better. It needed him, too.

Worst: Jinx. But maybe it's not fair to count Die Another Day....

 

--Best pre-credits sequence:
1) Goldfinger ... That's no doubt one of the best, and those few minutes really show what Bond is about. Like sacrificing the girl to save himself from the guy behind him. And then there's the clever "Shocking, positively shocking." line he uses.
2) The Spy Who Loved Me ... I like this one mainly because of the Log Cabin Girl and the Union Jack on Bond's parachute. Classic! (Even Vin Deisel's XXX movie copied that...)

--Best opening titles:
1) From Russia With Love ... I also love the names and "007" projected on a woman's body.
2) For Your Eyes Only ... Only because Sheena Easton is in it!
3) GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough ... I like all three because they're done in Maurice Binder style and I like the 3-D computer generated stuff (like the oil women in TWINE). I didn't like Die Another Day all that much though...

 

(1)THUNDERBALL(2)ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE

 

I'm with you on the opening titles to "Die Another Die", there was nothing sexy about those titles at all, and the song was okay, not the best, but not the worst either.

 

Does anybody know when the second and third DVD box sets are supposed to come out? The first one was released last year when DAD came to theaters.

I've got 'em all on VHS but I NEED the Special Editions on DVD. It's been months and still nothing... I work at a big retail store and I still can't found out when they're being released. Stupid Wal-Mart.....

Anybody know?

 

Pre-title sequences hit a low during the Moore years. I mean, WTH has the pre-titles of Octopussy or FYEO got to do with the stories? Nothing.

I personally really like the Living Daylights, as it introduces Smiert Sphionem, the new 007, plus some great action. Thunderball wasn't too bad, OMHSS was kinda fun, FRWL was interesting and tense, like the whole film, GoldenEye - well that brought the series back with a BANG!


Anyone got any of the Sideshow James Bond figures? They're limited editions of 10,000. I have DAD Brosnan and Dr. No Connery

E_S

 

For me, the lowest point in the title sequences (other than DAD altogether) had to be in The Living Daylights. The lyric says "and the headlights fade away", and on the screen you've got headlights fading away.

Bad bad bad

Although perhaps I'm overlooking the embarassingly nonsensical Octopussy titles....

 

The best pre credit sequences IMO are
From Russia With Love
Diamonds Are Forever
Moonraker (only good Moore opening sequence) The Living Daylights
The World Is Not Enough

The worse precredit sequence has to be hands down the Moore film where he drops Blofeld's wheel chair down a smoke stack. The title of the film evades me at the moment. Probably because the film was just as bad.

 

Moonraker? What, with Jaws falling onto a circus tent?

Live and Let Die had an alright opening.

The actual titles themselves - well, I agree about TLD, but it was the 1980's and it was a-ha, so I mean, what more could I say?

EDIT: I watched it again, just then - ewwwwwww.

However, the opening sequence is fantastic and Dalton really suits the role. He's also, as far as I can tell, the second parachutist to land.

EDIT2: citizenjohn, that'd be For Your Eyes Only.



E_S

 

Hm, I should say for the sake of full disclosure that I own all seven of a-ha's albums, their greatest hits album, and their recent live album. Big fan, actually....

It's just the idea of showing the exact thing that the lyrics are saying....

*runs out of thread*