Christian Bale has been in China for the premiere of his movie, The Flowers of War, which is about the Rape of Nanking.

Yesterday the socially-minded actor attempted to visit the home of Chen Guangcheng, a civil rights activist who has been under house arrest for a year. Bale was accompanied by a CNN film crew and had driven eight hours to the activist’s home.

There, guards stopped Bale and the crew just outside the house. The Huffington Post:

When Bale approached Chen’s house, he was met by an escalating number of guards…. Punches were thrown and shoving ensued as he, along with the CNN camera crew, tried to push his way way through to the house.

According to CNN‘s current front page, a “high-speed car chase ensues.”

Here’s the kicker, according to HuffPo: The movie Flowers of War was funded, in part, by the Chinese government. It’s no wonder Bale expected to be given a “pass” to see the housebound Chinese activist.

See that up there? That’s video of production of the Dark Knight Rises. Cool, huh? I know there’s a lot of you guys out there who are positively nuts about this movie, so I tried to get everything together all in one little neat package for you to check out today. But what I really want to talk about is Christian Bale in the role of Batman. Appropriate? If not, who should be playing this new, updated Batman? Personally, I’m not a big Christian Bale fan. As far as I’m concerned, he’s the same in every role. My husband thinks Bale is the best Batman yet, but I don’t know, guys. I just don’t think so. These are some trying times, and I think it’s imperative that we make GOOD decisions in everything we do, you know?

So we’ve already kind of talked about the interesting choice of Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, so now have your say – who’s your favorite Batman?

Maybe you’re a nerd.  Maybe you just like action-packed movies.  Maybe you’re like me and you just nod and smile when charming young men eagerly tell you about things like the sequel to Iron Man or who finally got cast as Captain America in hopes that someday they might also tell you with that same eagerness that they would like nothing more than to be your loving husband.  I don’t know, I’m not trying to pass judgement.  But odds are, you probably saw The Dark Knight because, for whatever reason, it was pretty awesome.

Warner Brothers announced yesterday that Batman 3 was in the works, directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Christian Bale as that lovable, self-made superhero, Batman.  There’s also Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, and Michael Caine as Alfred.  It’s going to be released on July 20, 2012.  And those are all the facts.

I’m not an expert on the movie business or anything, but I think that having a script or at least a working plot would be helpful in making a movie.  Or maybe more than a small handful of characters.  But like I said, I’m not an expert, I’m just making observations.  And I am going to observe that without Heath Ledger, this movie is probably going to go ahead and suck.  Like Batman and Robin with Alicia Silverstone suck.

Go back to stomping on Robert Sean Leondard’s dream of being a beautiful swing dancer, Christian Bale.  It will serve you better.

I know Christian Bale said he took full responsibility for his recorded rant that exploded on The Terminator set, but now that he’s on the cover of GQ, it sounds like ‘s taking about fifty percent of the blame.  The other half falls to his character, John Connor, who was obviously at fault since almost all the screaming was in an American accent.

Would you have unleashed the Rant as intensely, if at all, had you been playing someone other than John Connor?
Of course not. And it wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t been playing that scene, for Christ’s sake, between John Connor and his wife, which is probably the most intense one in the movie.

I’ve been wondering if you’re so Methody that when you kept yelling, What don’t you fucking understand? the question between the lines wasDon’t you fucking understand that by walking in front of the lights, you’re putting the survival of the human race at stake?
[an irritated sigh] I’d definitely say that that guy who was yelling was at least half John Connor, and the rest was Christian Bale.

Save for a few British inflections in those four minutes of sustained screaming, the Rant occurred in your Americanized John Connor accent. Did you use that voice off-camera throughout filming?
I do that because I’m just not very good at switching between two voices. If I had the talent to turn it on and off on cue, I would. But I don’t, so I have to maintain. Otherwise I’m aware that I’m “doing an accent” whenever I’m filming, instead of just speaking. Hey, listen, I don’t make any excuses. None of it is excusable. You know, I feel I already said everything about this that needs to be said when I called up the radio station.

Let’s hope this is the end of it so we don’t have to keep listening to Christian Bale justify his anger management issues.

“It’s not excusable what I did. I went way overboard. A lot of it was to do with the scene we were doing and stupid as it may sound to a lot of people, my character was going through a great deal in that particular scene. The person on the receiving end is a grown man. Believe me, he really wasn’t fazed by it … Like I said, I had it coming. It should never have been recorded. It was recorded for jollies. But I’m not trying to cover up. So there’s not embarrassment in that I wanted to keep it hidden. I’d done it in front of a whole lot of people. I take full responsibility for it. I’ve never said anything different. I’m not blaming it on anything. I took it a bit too far.”

Christian Bale, discussing his infamous rant on the Terminator: Salvation set in a new interview with Esquire. Above find my favorite little remix of the rant, which includes a brief cameo by Barbara Streisand.

Christian Bale’s reputation has gotten so bad after the whole rant-y thing that he’s supposedly planning to star in a romantic comedy.

The Dark Knight actor – who hit the headlines when a recording of his foul-mouthed rant on the set of the new Terminator movie found its way on to the Internet – is going all-out for laughs in a bid to show the other side of his personality.

‘Cuse me? Christian Bale in a romantic comedy is like Elmo making a cameo as a junkie in the next Batman flick. Does. Not.Compute. I would love to see him spending an hour and a half desperately trying to mask his disgust with the entire operation though. The best part is that Drew Barrymore is the person that suggested this and she’d be his co-star/love interest.

“He has a habit of going for very dark and moody roles so that’s not helping his image either. It was his friend Drew Barrymore who suggested he might try something like a romantic comedy, and it looks like he might star in something with her. Drew is looking for the right script.”

I love Drew Barrymore – seriously – but unless they’re remaking a modern day Beauty and the Beast I fail to see those two personalities meshing. 

You think he’d do the whisper growl voice the whole time?