my old pal christian bale

I'm sure I've told you before about how Christian Bale was my teen idol. This is pre-American Psycho Bale when he was still a skinny English guy with crooked teeth. Oh, those were the days.

Anyway, this week I saw two of his most recent films. First, I'm Not There with a Q&A afterwards with director/co-writer Todd Haynes (the man can talk!). My favorite thing about the movie (because I didn't really like it...the concept is great, but the execution is lacking, which is generally what I think of Haynes's work, such as another Bale-starer, Velvet Goldmine) is Bale with a Jewfro and a bad '70s suit preaching some Born-Again Christian babble. Oh man, I was nearly rolling on the floor (you know, in my mind).

Then I saw Rescue Dawn courtesy of Netflix. Now, that's a good movie. But it also contains something truly disturbing. It's an image that continues to haunt me days later, and I can only hope that with time it will dissipate. Bale eating a live snake! Could he really, truly have been eating an uncooked live snake (or a just barely dead one)? After watching the making of featurettes on the DVD that tell you about all the jungle-living things he really did, I believe it. And man, they continually showed him eating that snake during the featurettes. Watching it the first time through my fingers covering my eyes, I nearly puked. I knew it was coming when the snake appeared and he attempted to and then caught it. Oh my god, it was horrifying.

And as Haynes said about Bale, "He can do anything!"