Watched Enter the Dragon again the other night. And now of course have to finally get around to watching Bruce Lee’s other 3 movies. But enjoyed this one again – my fave scene is when he jumps on Oharra and (I think, they don’t show it) snaps his neck? The expression on his face – slowed down for effect – is priceless! And BL is the guy who made random screams and yowls during fighting the gold standard (and spoofed many thousands of times since of course).

Enter the Dragon is a pretty decent movie on balance – I like John Saxon (seen him in several 70’s flicks apart from here, and he’s even in the first Nightmare in Elm Street if you can believe that) and the other actors are decent. There is more than a bit of the ‘James Bond villain’ aspect to the bad guy Han (especially given having his own remote island where he traffics in opium and drugged women, and holds Shaolin martial-arts tournaments?) which of course adds to the intrigue. Finally, the pacing is pretty effective – they never really get mired down in ‘too much plot, not enough action’ – the movie seeks to entertain, and not take itself TOO seriously (not as slapstick as Jackie Chan’s later movies though, either).

I also watched How Bruce Lee Changed The World tonight. I would call this a ‘faux’ documentary – some interesting factoids but is no Ken Burns movie by any means. While it doesn’t trace BL’s life in too much detail, and has some good interviews with his wife – it kind of uses some semi-lame people in too much screen time IMHO. I like LL Cool J well enough, but I really don’t give a crap about how BL made LL a bigger star and influenced him. There were a few other minor actors in there the same way – yet they gave fairly short shrift to Jackie Chan, Donnie Yen and others who might have had FAR more interesting things to say about BL and his legacy (in China, in HK and elsewhere).

They really tried to show a far-reaching influence of BL across fitness, activities like UFC and BodyBuilding (the former is not a sport, guys – it’s just people cruelly beating each other up!); music (RZA from Wu-Tang Clan) and of course movies and martial-arts pictures in particular. It is pretty amazing to see the influence BL has had after all these years (given only 4 movies?!), and like they said, it’s definitely not going away. But even as shown in this somewhat cursory way – BL was far more than just a martial-arts guy and movie star on the rise – he attained icon status (sadly) just about the time he passed away, and it’s also crazy to think he was only 32 (!) at the time. I will definitely have to visit his grave here in Seattle sometime this summer and pay my respects. What an interesting and complex guy – it is sad he died so young.

On to the other movies!

candybowl