Fleming's Live and Let Die freely quotes from Fermor's book about the Caribbean, The Traveller's Tree.

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From Moore's first film Live and Let Die in 1973, violent death was dumbed down.

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Jane Seymour, who played Bond girl Solitaire in Live and Let Die, said award recognition was not Bond's priority.

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By the time of Live and Let Die's release in 1973, Paul McCartney's title track hit the No. 2 mark on Billboard's Hot 100 list.

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His next appearance was in 1963 in From Russia With Love, played by Welsh actor Llewelyn, who played the role in every subsequent Bond film, except Live And Let Die, until his death in 1999.

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On the other hand, no James Bond theme -- not "Goldfinger, " not "Live and Let Die, " not "Nobody Does It Better, " not even anything by Matt Munro, A-ha or Madonna -- has ever won an Oscar, so 007 is overdue.

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First up for a makeover, should Winder's vision be realized, would be Fleming's second novel, "Live and Let Die, " initially made in 1973 in Moore's first appearance in the lead role -- something that would likely only raise eyebrows among Moore connoisseurs and fans of the original's epic Wings title track.

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Yet the Beatles remain the band that we can't live and let die, doomed to be recycled as fading photocopies of the original with every incremental improvement in music technology and significant anniversary until one day we can all look forward to high-definition holograms of John, Paul, George and Ringo performing "All You Need is Love" in our living rooms.

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To Die and Let Live originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning.

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