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I may be nuts, but shouldn't this have started like 10 minutes ago? I'm on central time, which is 2 hours behind pacific...

EDIT - I will leave this here to demonstrate how utterly stupid I am, but yeah...  I got here about 4 hours early cause my brain is dumb. I forgot the sun goes around the earth from east to west. The sun does go around the earth, doesn't it?

I loved this flick when I saw it in the theater, but the more I see it, the less I enjoy it. It's one of those flicks that was such a huge hit when it came out that it got really overplayed and over exposed. I honestly found the Kung-Fu vs Karate conversation more entertaining than the movie

You guys started talking about Jet Li / Jackie Chan and all these other martial arts stars. I'd be interested to get your takes on the three films that were made that are all based on the same story. The fight in Ip Man where he squares off against the Karate students has been done in two other films that were more loosely based on the same story. I'll link to all three of the fight scenes: (I apologize for being unable to find a hilariously dubbed version of the first one)

1) Ip Man - Donnie Yen's version of the fight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g6jc_9OzhI
2) Fist of Legend - Jet Li's version of the fight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpvuCbrJ_JI
3) Fist of Fury - Bruce Lee's version of the fight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHFXTeQWXjo

It's like a little mini history of Kung Fu flicks. By seeing three different takes on the same scene / story you can see the sort of stuff that was popular. The Lee flick has him using weapons and showing off, the Li flick has him just go in and pound on people, but without really seeming to 'hurt' anyone too much. He comes off as kinda stiff and unemotional to me. The Yen version is just so quick and brutal. He's hobbling and possibly killing people in his version. Lee is also probably causing a lot of damage with his little nunchaku (that's what the people on youtube call them, so that's what I'm callin them...), but everyone seems pretty much OK at the end. Li's version...  forget it. He doesn't really seem to be hurting anyone aside from maybe a couple of bruises. It's weird, tho, cause an earlier scene in that flick has him definitely breaking bones and fucking people up, but the fight where he's supposed to be avenging the death of his master, he lets them all off easy. Very odd.

You guys should watch US Seals 2. It's the most awesomest movie ever. I'd suggest doing a commentary, but the film's awesomeness can't really be analyzed. It simply is. The fight choreography was done by a guy who's been a stunt double for Jackie Chan. I repeat: A stunt double for Jackie "I do my own stunts" Chan. Apparently when Jackie Chan doesn't feel like throwing himself off a building onto a bus while on fire, he calls Andy Cheng. The flick was also directed by Issac Florentine, who's directed some fairly fun little action flicks (tho I've only seen a handful of them) and several Power Rangers episodes, and who apparently wrote his own IMDB bio... wait, what movie are we talking about again?

Oh yeah...  Crouching Tiger... It was pretty decent, I guess. If you're only gonna do one martial arts movie, you totally should have done Ip Man.

I just read through this post and it makes me sound like I'm some kind of cracked-out, obsessed freak who watches too many B-Movies and has no other sort of life. Sorry about that. I swear I'm not on crack.

I have to assume that Del Toro isn't dumb enough to leave something like the Pale Man scene in the film unless he wanted it there for a specific reason. I'll be damned if I know what the reason is, but I'm more likely to believe that he had some legit reason for doing that - at least in his own head - whereas there are many other writers/directors to whom I would never give that much credit.

But even if Del Toro did have some specific reason to write some of these more 'troubling' scenes the way he did, it doesn't mean that it makes any sense or that he shouldn't have done it some other way. If the goal was just to have an excuse to have the Pale Man wake up, a 'suspense' moment of him closing in on her while she was unaware, a moment where the Pale Man demonstrates exactly what he'll do if he catches her (eat her alive), and then have her flee to the next suspense scene where she's trying to make a door as he's closing in on her again... This is probably the most straightforward way to write that. Maybe that's all it is. Just writing it as plainly as he could.

As far as the replies to my original post RE: "it's an interesting detail, but how is that helping the story?"

I have no idea. I just find it fascinating. I didn't notice it until after I had seen the flick a couple times. There are some other things that I'd love to figure out as well. I haven't given much thought to the story about the rose that gives eternal life, but I'm gonna bet that it does have some correlation to the film. Perhaps the fact that the film has so many things like that that is evidence of some poor writing. If that stuff is SUPPOSED to make sense and enlighten the rest of the film in some way, then obviously I'm in the dark, and I assume a lot of other people are as well.

It could be a cultural thing, tho. It's possible that in Spain or Mexico these stories are obvious references to something specific to that culture.

@Jeffery
I agree with you, man. I didn't really go into it expecting much beyond "War" and "some fantasy stuff". Pretty sure someone had told me before I went into it that it was more 'reality' than 'fantasy', so maybe I was just better prepared for what the film was, as opposed to the people who just saw the trailers and thought "ooh, dark Alice In Wonderland!". The trailers were pretty misleading...