And I liked it. I was almost sad when he put the Batman costume on, because that injected silliness into what had been a serious and interesting movie. (Well, by action movie standards.) Still, it was good. No one does grim like Christian Bale.

I forgot to say: I also saw "Howl's Moving Castle," the Hayao Miyazaki film based on the novel by Diana Wynne Jones I read as a child. The plot was changed quite a bit, but it was still good....very well-animated and the anti-war message was welcome (and the fire-bombing scenes were eerie when you consider them in relation to WWII Japan). And, wouldn't you know, Christian Bale does the voice of Howl, which surprised me because the American accent was flawless. His accent in Batman was also perfect. And he's got really, really big muscles.

i love christian bale. have you seen the movie where he had to lose 60 pounds? i haven't. yet. spider, send me a mailing address for you. i have a letter i wrote a while back and forgot to mail.

The 60-pound loss movie is The Machinist, which we rented this week. As a movie, it's just okay. But he looks.....holy fuck. Holocaust sick. For the first 10 minutes i couldn't follow anything, just curled up in my chair feeling nauseous. I almost felt like i would cry. It makes Tom Hanks at the end of Castaway look like a fat fuck. He has set the new standard for artistic suffering. Does he still have an accent? I watched an interview where he didn't, but thought maybe he was one of those people who (Mel Gibson, Nicole Kidman used to) hide their accents even in the press. Why do they do that?? That's lame and uncalled for, but would explain why he seems to have trouble screaming or yelling words coherently. Anyway, my point is that if he DOES still have an accent, and he lost all that weight, this guy is something really special. Not just the pretty boy the media will hound him for. Batman- good. I love his Bruce Wayne, his "ha ha HAHAH! I don't know what the fuck I'm doing! I'm buying this hotel, I guess! I'm pretending to be rich and doing a really bad job! For the love of god help me!" I want to eat him, he can play so evil.

He does still have his own accent -- from imdb.com: ************ In the "Fresh Air with Terry Gross" radio interview first aired June 13, 2005, he admitted to Gross that because Batman is "such an American icon," he had decided not to perform his promotional interviews for the movie Batman Begins (2005) in his natural mixed Welsh/British accent. He instead spoke to Gross in an almost-inflectionless mid-American accent, only revealing his dialectic roots with a few words. ************* I have a promotional postcard for "the Machinist" on my refridgerator, but I've never seen it....I'd better see if I can find it soon before I go back home, I guess. Kazu, will do.

assalammualaikum.