{"id":79763,"date":"2010-12-22T10:37:05","date_gmt":"2010-12-22T17:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lookingcloser\/?p=79763"},"modified":"2012-10-03T16:51:44","modified_gmt":"2012-10-03T22:51:44","slug":"christian-to-play-a-christian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lookingcloser\/2010\/12\/christian-to-play-a-christian\/","title":{"rendered":"Christian to play a Christian?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Zhang Yimou has become quite an unpredictable, interesting director in recent years. He established himself with lush, dramatic, even operatic historical pieces, and more recently reinvented himself as a master of colorful, elaborately choreographed martial arts dramas like Hero<\/em> and House of Flying Daggers<\/em>. Along the way, there was the quiet, poetic epic The Road Home. And most recently, he baffled everybody by remaking the Coen Brothers\u2019 crime-story classic Blood Simple<\/em>.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next? He and Christian Bale are joining forces for an interesting project. And it looks like Christian Bale will be playing a Christian character again for the first time since\u2026 what, The New World<\/em>?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

AV Club:<\/a><\/p>\n

Christian Bale will follow The Dark Knight Rises<\/em> with a starring role in Chinese director Zhang Yimou\u2019s big-budget epic Nanjing Heroes<\/em>, which dramatizes the events of the 1937 Nanking Massacre. Bale will play an American priest who helps save a number of refugees after Japanese troops capture what was then the nation\u2019s capital and set about murdering soldiers and civilians and raping thousands of women. It\u2019s a tragic event in Chinese history that\u2019s been the subject of several domestic and foreign films of late, including Lu Chuan\u2019s City Of Life And Death<\/em> and Florian Gallenberger\u2019s John Rabe<\/em>, which celebrated the German businessman and Nazi leader\u2014sometimes called the \u201cOskar Schindler of China\u201d\u2014who saved thousands of Chinese by using his influence with Japan\u2019s military. Rabe is, of course, a central figure in Yimou\u2019s story as well, so there\u2019s potential for another internationally recognized star to join the film.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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