Michael Colombier, the composer who composed the beautiful string arrangements for Madonna on Die Another Day, Don't Tell Me and Easy Ride as well as composing the soundtrack for Swept Away has died:

 French composer Michel Colombier died yesterday after a six month battle with cancer. He was 65. Colombier was one of the most prolific and versatile French musicians of his generation. Besides his career as a film composer, scoring over 100 feature, cable and television films since the early 1960's, Colombier was a prolific song writer and arranger who worked with artists such as Madonna, Prince, The Beach Boys, Paul Anka, Barbra Streisand and Earth Wind and Fire.
 As a film composer, Michel Colombier scored a lot of French and American films, including The Golden Child, Ruthless People, New Jack City, How Stella Got Her Groove Back and The Money Pit. His background in jazz was evident in the majority of his film scores, and his ability to compose original score music that merged seamlessly with pop songs made him the perfect composer for 1980's films with song - heavy soundtracks, including White Nights, Against All Odds and Purple Rain (which won a Grammy Award as well as an Academy Award for Best Song Score).