Die Another Day

Starring: Halle Berry, Pierce Brosnan, Rosamund Pike Director: Lee Tamahori Original UK Premiere: 2002 Dvd Release: 3rd November, 2003 Number Of Discs: 2 Format: Anamorphic, Box set, PAL, Special Edition, Widescreen, Region 2 Encoding Subtitled In: Dutch, English

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Die Another Day is the twentieth James Bond movie made by EON Productions & the fourth & final film to star Pierce Brosnan as James Bond. It was released in 2002 & produced by Bond veterans Michael G Wilson & Barbara Broccoli. It is the first movie to not feature Desmond Llewelyn as Q since Live & Let Die. The film was distributed by MGM. In the film, Die Another Day refers to the villain who fakes his death in the opening sequence. When Bond meets up with him later in the film he says So you live to die another day. The plot, reminiscent of Moonraker, Diamonds Are Forever & GoldenEye, involves billionaire businessman Gustav Graves who builds an orbital mirror system that can focus solar energy on a small area—supposedly to light the Arctic nights but is actually a superweapon designed to destroy the de-militarized zone that separates North Korea from the South. Bond, with the aid of NSA agent Jinx, defeats the soldier & prevents global catastrophe, along the way bedding both Jinx & Graves assistant, the blond ice queen Frost.

DVD Extras: Die Another Day arrives on disc in a transfer that makes some of the CGI look less dodgy than it did in cinemas. The first disc includes two separate commentaries: an interesting, enthusiastic technical one with Tamahori & producer Michael Wilson, & a blander drone from Brosnan with input from bad girl actress Rosamund Pike. On Disc Two the main extra is Inside Die Another Day, a 75-minute making-of with the usual 007 DVD extra mix of boosterism & solid background how-the-hell-they-did-it info. The Region 2 exclusive turns out to be another making-of, a video diary effort that takes a more interesting, wry approach to the mix of enterprise & chaos that is the Bond production machine.

The 20th official 007 outing released in the 40th anniversary year of the series, Die Another Day is big, loud, spectacular, slick, predictable & as partially satisfying as most Bond movies have been for the last 30 years. Pierce Brosnan gives his best Bond performance to date, forced to suffer torture by scorpion venom administered by a North Korean dominatrix during the Madonna-warbled credits song. He traipses from Cuba to London to Iceland while feuding with a smug insomniac millionaire , who admits that hes an evil parody of Bonds own personality. There are many nods to the past: Halle Berry recreates Ursula Andresss entrance from Dr No, the gadget-packed car is a Goldfinger-style Aston Martin , the baddies line in smuggled conflict gems & super-weapons derives from Diamonds Are Forever & the jet-pack from Thunderball can be seen in Qs lab.

Its the longest of the franchise to date & the first to augment stunts & physical effects with major CGI, though the best fight is traditional: a polite club fencing match between Brosnan & Stephens that gets out of hand & turns into a destructive hack-and-slash fest with multiple edged weapons. Berry may be the first Bond girl with an Oscar on her shelf, but shes still stuck with a bad hairdo as well as having to endure 007s worst chat-up lines. Amazingly, most of the old things here do still work, though its a shame that director Lee Tamahori wasnt given a better script to play with.

Halle Maria Berry is an American actress. Berry was born in Cleveland, Ohio. She was named after Halles Department Store, a local landmark. Although she is generally considered African American, she is biracial, with a white English -born mother, Judith Ann Hawkins & a black American father, Jerome Berry. Berrys parents divorced when she was four years old & she was subsequently raised by her mother, a psychiatric-ward nurse. She has an older sister, Heidi. Berry was a popular student at her high school & was a cheerleader, honor society member, editor of the school newspaper, class president & prom queen. She subsequently attended Cuyahoga Community College. Before becoming an actress, she entered several beauty contests including Miss Ohio USA, Miss Teen All American, Miss USA & Miss World. Her talents as an actress have often been overshadowed by her physical beauty. In the late 1980s, she went to Chicago to pursue a modeling career as well as acting. One of her first acting projects was a television series for local cable by Gordon Lake Productions called Chicago Force. Posters Of Halle Berry

Editors Choice: Gothika, America, X Men 2, Die Another Day, Monsters Ball, Swordfish, Bulworth, Face Of An Angel, View DVDology

Pierce Brendan Brosnan, OBE is an Irish film actor & producer. GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough & Die Another Day. He is credited with reviving the Bond franchise after the critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful films starring Timothy Dalton. Brosnan was born in Navan, County Meath in the Republic of Ireland & was raised in England. In the mid- 1980s, he became a star in the USA as the title character of the NBC detective series Remington Steele. Brosnans first wife, the Australian actress Cassandra Harris, died of ovarian cancer in 1991 after 11 years of marriage. In 2001 he married Keely Shaye Smith. In July 2003 it was announced that he had been awarded an Honorary OBE by Queen Elizabeth II for an outstanding contribution to the British film industry. As an Irish citizen he is ineligible to receive a full honour, which can only be awarded to a British subject. On September 23, 2004 Pierce Brosnan received his US Citizenship. Brosnan is the father of three American sons & has lived in the United States for over 20 years. Posters Of Pierce Brosnan

Editors Choice: Die Another Day, The Matador, The World Is Not Enough, After The Sunset, Laws Of Attraction, Goldeneye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The Tailor Of Panama, View DVDology

Rosamund Pike is a British born in London, England. Pike was born into a musical family & studied English Literature at Oxford. She started acting very early & during her college years appeared in various student productions. Before graduating from Oxford, she played Fanny in the remake of Love in a Cold Climate, a BBC mini-series based on two Nancy Mitford novels. Pike became known to a wider audience with her role as Bond girl Miranda Frost in Die Another Day.

Editors Choice: Die Another Day, View DVDology

Lee Tamahori, born 1950 in Wellington, New Zealand, is best known as a film director although he got his start as a commercial artist & photographer in the late 1970s. Tamahori is of Maori ancestry & his break as a filmmaker came with Once Were Warriors, a gritty depiction of urban Maori life that was phenomenally successful in New Zealand. He then moved to Hollywood & is best known as the director of Mulholland Falls & Die Another Day, the twentieth James Bond movie. He also directed numerous episodes of television shows, in particular an episode of The Sopranos during its second season. State of the Union starring Ice Cube & Willem Dafoe ; he replaced the original director, Rob Cohen. Posters Of The Sopranos

Editors Choice: Die Another Day, The Sopranos, Along Came A Spider, Mulholland Falls, Once Were Warriors, The Edge, View DVDology

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