Enjoying the commentary so far guys but one quick distinction.

In the idea that this predated Reality TV as a phenomena, that's really only partially true.  MTV's The Real World had been on the air for 6 years by the time this movie came out, and PBS "An American Family," predates this by about 25 years. 

And while a large portion of Reality TV is quite sensationalistic and trashy, at its best reality tv has some merit.  Keep in mind, An American Family was the the first time an openly gay character was on television, which is even crazier considering it wasn't a "character," at all but a real person.

Also, while this was Jim Carrey's first real dramatic role, 1996's "The Cable Guy," was a fairly dark comedy, and stretched his talents a bit.  Also per Steven's comment that Jim might have had a fucked up childhood...not really.  While his family struggled a bit financially, he was very close with his whole family, especially his father.  Instead of watching a lot of TV, the family put on little shows in the living room.  That's where a lot of his performance instincts come from.

Good to see this online finally.

Heard of it, meant to check it out, haven't yet.

^This reminds me of a line from "Garth Merenghi's DARKPLACE," where Garth says, "I"ve actually written more books than I've read."

Joss Whedon and Paul Thomas Anderson are my favorite commentar...ians..? because they really do a good job of walking you through their thought process and can reference their influences with a lot of candor and do it in a concise manner.

It's not bad.  Jason Scott Lee trained with Jerry Poteet for the film, who was one of Bruce's original students at the Oakland school, so there is solid lineage there.  The fight scenes, were not pure JKD though.  They use Lop Sau, Pak Sau, and a bunch of other techniques that Bruce carried over from Wing Chun into JKD, along with his similar mannerisms, but at the end of the day the fights are choreographed accordingly.  It should be noted that when Bruce was choreographing Enter the Dragon he used a number of techniques that you wouldn't see many JKD parctitioners using (jump kicks, wheel kicks, etc).

It should be noted that in theory at least, JKD should look different from fighter to fighter.  If you go into most JKD schools these days, you learn the same mix of Wing Chun, Kali, Silat, and boxing that Bruce Lee and Dan Inosanto practiced all those years ago.  But the spirit of what Bruce taught was reduction, not addition of techniques.  He always made the analogy that a sculpter doesnt add stone to make the limbs of a statute, he chisels away the unnecessary until the true form is revealed.  Bruce was about REDUCING the techniques in all styles until you were left with what worked for you.  It sounds simple, but in the martial arts world at the time this was revolutionary.

Someone had brought up doing Documentaries, and its something I've nudged for before.  Teague has had a (totally reasonable) objection to doing them, but I would still be interested.  I come from a docu background, as my student Doc got a DVD release about 10 years ago.  I am a huge doc fan, and the Doc section of my DVD/Blurry collection eqauls roughly 1/4. 

My short list would be

1)  American Movie
2)  Dark Days
3)  This Move is Not Yet Rated
4)  Mr. Death
5)  Dogtown and Z-Boys
6)  E-Dreams
7)  Overnight
8)  Capturing the Friedmans
9)  When We Were Kings
10) The War Room

Totally love the movie.  Commentary was fun but again...comic books are a medium, not a genre.  I wouldn't place this or Watchmen as the greatest *air quote*  Comic Book movie adaptation, though.

Also, forget that Bruce Lee curse, shit.  Shannon Lee and Linda Lee Caldwell are alive and well.

Aguirre is great.  I totally dig most of Herzog's stuff.  You can see his influence in Erroll Morris early stuff like Vernon, Florida.

I am of the opinion that what entertains you is a living thing, and when you experience something, matters.  All of the DiF crew had a great time seeing Inception when it came out in theaters.  We organized a huge group, had drinks before and stimulating conversation after.  Those moments are framed against when we saw it...opening week, before the rest of the world had informed us what they thought of it.  I would much rather have had that, then to catch the movie on netflix streaming.

Which isn't to say that its bad to see it at home well after release.  It's not at all, its just different.  I saw Vertigo with my father when I was 15.  Had I discovered it while in school, I might have had a deeper insight because of my studies, but there's no way I would trade the TIME that I saw that movie with any other.  We happened to pay 3 bucks for the rental, but I would pay anything, in retrospect.

When it comes to video games, the night Editor crew on The Amazing Race season 12 had an after hours Halo 3 ritual every night after work.  I'd work with my good friends all night, and then go home so we could jump on XBox live and we'd all chat and play until the sun came up.  There was no way I could wait until it was cheaper.  Its not just about the social aspect either, because I'm GLAD I played the 50 bucks for Silent Hill 2 came out.  Playing that by myself with the lights out gave me more legitimate scares than any horror movie I've ever seen.  Could it have done that three years later when I could have paid ten bucks?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  I wouldn't trade it though.

My boy Phill Gonzalez is one of the artists on that game.  He designed most of the Terran buildings.

Overnight (Boondock Saints)
Killing Priscilla (Eye of the Beholder)
Lost in La Mancha (Terry Gilliam's Don Quixote)
Hearts of Darkness (Apocalypse Now)