LOS ANGELES?Last July, we heard about Christian Bale?s angry outburst at director of photography Shane Hurlbut on the set of ?Terminator: Salvation.?

Thanks (or in Christian?s case, no thanks) to the Internet, the audio file of the actor?s F-word-laden tirade against the cinematographer recently surfaced. Apparently, what provoked Batman?s Rated ?R? rant was Shane walking into the middle of a scene. Anyone who gets to hear the audio tape will get the impression that A) Christian sure has a temper and B) he is very passionate about his?as actors like to say it?craft.

Did Shane?s alleged mess-up merit such a flare-up? Recent reports say many of the cast and crew sided with Christian because Shane was ?condescending? and ?not well-liked.?

What was troubling for some was that Christian?s meltdown was followed days later by a shouting encounter with his mother in London.

The actor?s obscenity-laced harangue is revealing. In our previous interviews, Christian struck us as reserved and intensely private but occasionally, flashes of his sly sense of humor slipped through.

?Creatively married?

?Circumcised.?

That was Dustin Hoffman?s quick answer even before our colleague could finish asking the question, ?I would like to ask you the same question that I asked Emma Thompson??

We had just interviewed Emma, his co-star in the romantic comedy, ?Last Chance Harvey,? who told us that she ?absolutely fell in love with Dustin? when she was a girl and saw him as Ratso in ?Midnight Cowboy.?

?I don?t want to live with her,? Dustin joked when asked to comment about Emma in return. Then he said, ?No, we?re creatively married. After ?Stranger Than Fiction,? we wanted to work together again. It?s an extraordinary feeling when we work together. Marriage should be that easy.?

Apparently, both Dustin and Emma are enjoying happy marriages. He has been married to Lisa Gottsegen, a lawyer, for 28 years while Emma tied the knot with actor Greg Wise in 2003.

The talk about marriages prompted Dustin to share this interesting anecdote: ?I was studying acting in New York at the age of 21 [and] was on what was called a work scholarship?which meant I cleaned the toilets and they gave me free classes. The other person on the work scholarship was Barbra Streisand. That?s where we met. We never really became friends but for a while I did study with her roommate. Years would pass before Barbra and I bumped into each other again. Finally, we were going to work together on ?Meet the Fockers.? On the first day of shooting, I asked Barbra, ?Why didn?t we ever get married?? She looked at me and said, without missing a beat, ?Because we would have killed each other.? A law should be passed?actors should not be allowed to marry each other. You need one alpha and one beta, not two alphas.?

Asked what kind of a parent he is, Dustin revealed, ?It?s so hard to be objective when I?m eternally subjective but my kids tell me that when I did ?Fockers,? that was the first I acted the same way I do at home.?

Dustin, always an amusing interviewee, said of his wedding to Lisa in October 1980: ?All her father gave me was a used Toyota in terms of dowry. I?ve never forgiven him for that.?

?Pure entertainment?

At the packed advance screening of Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning?s ?Push? last Wednesday, we wondered if some of the moviegoers confused the sci-fi thriller with ?Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire,? the critics? favorite at the recent Sundance Film Festival. The latter is an intense drama of abuse.

?Push,? on the other hand, is, in Chris? words in the production notes, ?A pure entertainment film, like a lot of my favorite movies.? Chris and Dakota are undeniably charismatic, always interesting to watch. He is best known as Johnny Storm, The Human Torch, in the blockbuster ?Fantastic Four? movies. Dakota is in talks to be in the ?Twilight? sequel, ?New Moon.? (Earlier reports about Fil-Am Vanessa Hudgens being up for the part are said to be false.)

But guess what steals the movie about expats with supernatural powers? Its gorgeous location, Hong Kong. Peter Sova, director of photography, captures the eclectic, thriving Asian hub, from the fish market to the ultra-modern skyline. And always, the teeming masses of people that energize Hong Kong.

Paul McGuigan, who directs the movie that also stars Camilla Belle, Djimon Hounsou and Ming-Na Wen, explained in the production notes, ?The only plan we could come up with that seemed workable was to conceal the cameras on trucks and film through little holes. We would send the actors down the street and have them do their stuff. And it had to be a one-take thing. You can?t edit it because the background keeps changing.?

E-mail the columnist at rvnepales_5585@yahoo.com and read his blog, ?The Nepales Report,? on http://blogs.inquirer.net/nepalesreport.