Christian Bale is like a real life Batman, by which we mean, he’s a very wealthy man who can’t stop meddling in people’s business. First, he got bothered by some Chinese security while trying to visit some deaf bloke or something… and now, he’s mucking about with vagrants!

See, two tramps started having a scrap and Bale wasn’t having any of it!

Over Christmas (yeah, this is hot off the press!), the Batman star stepped in to break up a fight between two horrible pungent homeless men in California. Was he doing it for the good of those fighting? OF COURSE NOT.

See, the actor was shopping near his home in Brentwood, Los Angeles (hello stalkers! Yes indeed, Bale lives in Brentwood, LA, should you want to follow him around, dribbling on yourselves and fumbling in your trousers) when he spied two vagrants engaged in a heated altercation.

Alas, powered by meth or special-brew (or both if they had any class), the war of slurs escalated and Bale had to swoop in like some kind of nondescript superhero and intervene!

He told the odorous pillocks to take it elsewhere – away from all the non-stinky, home-having families that were enjoying the peaceful surroundings.

That’s right! Not a care for the gruesome life of a hobo! Nice, middle class people were dry-heaving and wanted to enjoy the sanctity of civilisation. They’re all idiots of course. They should’ve whipped out their smartphones and filmed it all. They would’ve had a YouTube smash on their hands, especially if they’d goaded one of the vagrants to try lamping Batman one.

An eyewitness said:

“I could not believe what I was seeing. It wasn’t clear what the people were arguing about – but it soon became apparent that their conversation was heading toward a violent incident.

A ‘violent incident’? Is that how people talk now? Anyway, they continued:

“One of the homeless guys cocked back his fist and was just about to strike the other man – but out of nowhere Christian Bale appeared and got in the middle of them! Christian acted like a referee and told the homeless men to take it elsewhere”

Insert your own ‘KAPOW!’ jokes.

What could be better than repeatedly smacking an A List celebrity about the head? It must be a great laugh! And that’s exactly what Chinese government-back guards did to Christian Bale when they saw his famous bonce.

They clearly couldn’t refuse the opportunity to beat Batman up. You can’t blame them really, can you?

Of course, the goons didn’t catch a bus to Bale’s house, especially to clobber him, rather, Bale was trying to visit a blind lawyer. Can’t get a decent lawyer in Hollywood Christian? What? This is some human rights issue or something?

The lawyer is called Chen Guangcheng and they’ve been illegally confined to their home in eastern Shandong Province. Now you know. See, ol’ Chenny has become something of a cause célèbre among China’s rights advocates, and quite a few people have been roughed up by government guards when they tried to break through the cordon around Mr. Chen’s village.

And there’s footage of Bale getting manhandled too! And boy, it’s dramatic as hell! Okay. It isn’t. Furthermore, it poses the question: Why didn’t the wealthy Hollywood actor buy a helicopter and just fly over the cordon?

It seems Bale wanted the drama of it all. You can see him getting a dead arm or something, while he mews:

“Why can I not visit this free man?”

Then, they get chased by a grey van. A GREY VAN! It’s just like Star Wars or something!

If you want to know more about Mr Chen, we advise reading a newspaper or a book or something. He’s a very interesting man, not that you care. You may skim read his Wikipedia page or something, right? But you don’t come to us for sensible discourse do you? Okay.

Mr Chen has a massive, massive wang. Better?

In the genre of sport movies, the boxing movie is king, the undisputed champion. In fact nowhere are the recurring themes of sport movies more prevalent or integral. Boxing provides expression to the inarticulate, allows the underdog to achieve, invites relationship-fracturing obsession and is rife with politics- all essential ingredients of the genre.

David O Russell’s latest film does not shy away from these clichés, it simply works within them as well as it possibly can.

Is this is a problem? Why should it be? Genre movies regularly achieve greatness. Westerns are strengthened by their confined narrative parameters so why not movies where the frontier is a pitch/ring/court?

Russell may be the one behind the camera, but The Fighter is Wahlberg’s baby. He’s wanted to get the true story of middleweight “Irish” Micky Ward onto the screen for years. The film follows the career of Ward and, more interestingly, his relationships with his family, friends and girlfriend.

It’s in these relationships where the real drama of the film is played out. The film avoids the melodramatic, and puts three-dimensional characters in situations reflecting the humour that exists in even tragic lives.

The film’s acting Oscar nominations are well-deserved. There’s Christian Bale’s showy performance as Micky’s crack-smoking half-brother and coach Dicky. With his manic demeanour and wild-eyed stare, it’s easy to dismiss it as one of those over-the-top turns that screams ACTING too loudly but this is a fully inhabited character and one whose balance of comedy and tragedy sets the tone of the whole film.

The real Dicky is larger than life and Bale captures him in all his charismatic glory. Besides, the film couldn’t rely on Wahlberg who plays inarticulate, sensitive and moral, which is convenient since it’s rapidly becoming his one-size-fits-all approach to dramatic roles. Luckily, it’s what’s required in a film about two men with talent but an ignorance of how to apply it.

The Fighter may be about a sport reliant on male physical power but all the alphas of the film are female- from Amy Adams’ convincing turn as the supportive and assertive partner, to Melissa Leo’s aggressively devoted mother. Leo’s performance could so easily have just fallen into ‘psychotic protective mum’ territory but she engages far more than that. Rather than simply being a device to produce the emotional conflict necessary for us to care what happens to the leading actor, she gives the character genuine depth. You may not agree with her decisions but you sympathise with her motivation.

Ultimately it’s these performances that lift the film up from being a standard biopic. That’s not to imply this is just an actor’s movie. The script is credited to three writers, none of whom have previously produced anything of this quality but the dialogue here is smart, funny and strikes the perfect tone.

It may not be the masterpiece that some have suggested, and it sits rather uneasily with some of its fellow Best Picture nominees, but it’s definitely one of the better films of the last twelve months. It is also undoubtedly the best one to feature not one, but two training montages.

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Phones are such an integral part of our lives that scientists are currently trying to implant a phone inside a gerbil’s face.

Once those tests are complete, expect a generation of babies to already be switched on when it comes to communication. Forget Bluetooth handsets, Constant Understanding Nerve Technology will make crap signal reception a thing of the past.

When that happens, the telephone will be missed, not least because Christian Bale and Mel Gibson have provided us with moments that show it to be one of the best inventions ever. Angry, angry moments. And now, thanks to the wonders of technology, IT SOUNDS LIKE THEY’RE SHOUTING AT EACH OTHER!

Of course, this isn’t real and just slices audio from the leaked tapes that made each of the men in question look like utter bellends. Still, it makes for a plausible conversation and is better than listening to JLS. People who are scared of rude words may want to avoid the following clip:

Batman 3 rumours are film’s vuvuzela – they’re so annoying that most people have stopped noticing them.

But forget rumours. This is something teetering dangerously towards fact. According to reports, Batman 3 – the follow-up to The Dark Knight that will definitely be directed by Christopher Nolan and will definitely star Cher as Catwoman and Johnny Depp AND Eddie Murphy as The Riddler (or something) – is set to be released on 20 July 2012.

That’s great news. Not only will Batman 3 be a nice warm-up for the Olympics, which begins a week later, but it also gives Christian Bale a good two years to practise losing his temper so that he can fulfil the historical tradition of looking like the universe’s most colossal bellend right before it gets released. Hooray!

We don’t know about you, but we’ve missed Batman since The Dark Knight was released in 2008. We’ve missed everything about it – from the grittiness of Christopher Nolan’s Gotham City to the way that Christian Bale’s Batman voice makes him sound like an old man who’s been force-fed 19 packets of dry cream crackers and then kicked in the throat by a donkey with electrodes in its hooves. Mainly the last one, to be honest.

But, finally, after two full years of the most preposterous casting rumours that history has ever known – although, admit it, you’d love to see Cher play Catwoman – it looks like we finally have a concrete confirmation of Batman 3′s release date. Filmschoolrejects reports:

It would appear as if Warner Bros. has their man. They’ve announced today that Christopher Nolan will return to his Batman franchise and churn out a third film… The studio is in the early stages of developing the movie . It is likely, however, that more details will begin to emerge closer to the release date of Inception, which hits theaters on July 16. Batman 3 is due to hit theaters on July 20, 2012.

Now, let’s just allow Christopher Nolan to carry on making Batman 3 to the best of his abilities without getting dragged down by any petty casting rumours, OK? Let’s just be comfortable with the fact that Christian Bale will be Batman, Michael Caine will be Alfred, Gary Oldman will be Commissioner Gordon, Cher will be Catwoman, Russell Brand will be The Riddler and The Penguin will be played by the man from the Go Compare adverts in a lady’s wig. No more arguments about it, OK? Jesus.

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Thanks to some unfortunate incident called Charlie’s Angels, the regrettably named McG has been tarred with the same brush as his peers Brett Ratner and Uwe Boll.

In fact, his handle on the Terminator story turned out to be a surprisingly decent entry into the muscular Arnie franchise.

McG knew he had much to prove, this would be an Arnie-less sequel for a series he owned from the moment his naked buttocks walked in front of the lens. So, with Bale serving as the ‘name’ on the banner it may come as a surprise that he actually has far less to do here than expected.

Sam Worthington – star of the upcoming Avatar – stands front and centre in this as Marcus. It’s no big spoiler to say that he is a machine – an early model that’ll lead to the hulking Schwarzenegger T-800 we love. Marcus’ mysterious backstory and handle on his own creation fortunately works as a compelling undercurrent to the main story – much of what makes this film enjoyable is Worthington’s performance and his ability to flip from tough action hero to tortured robot.

The film definitely relaunched the franchise from its slightly camp third instalment and instilled it with a grittiness clearly inspired from the likes of Scott, Cuarón and even a generous portion of the excellent reinvention of Battlestar Galactica. It is helped in no small way by Marcus’ journey which serves as a meaty introduction to the apocalyptic landscapes that Cameron could only tease us with in the neon-struck 80s.

Bale does disappoint. We have watched John Connor grow up and here he is trying to become the leader he feels he was born to be. At no fault of Bale he is given little to do here apart from formulate plans and turn in the odd action scene. The most compelling part of Connor’s life seems to have taken place between Nick Stahl’s impish incarnation in T-3 and Bale’s grizzle-toned skinhead here.

This film was meant to serve as a first entry into a new trilogy that would explore the resistance’s uprising against the machine onslaught, and Connor – much like other members of the support cast. – clearly had a lot of room to grow. Bryce Dallas Howard is criminally underused as John’s wife Kate and only shares a few scenes here. What we do get a lot of is Kyle Reese – a perfect capturing of Michael Biehn’s performance from T-1 and here by Anton Yelchin – whose obsession with Connor forms an interesting relationship, given he is his father pre-conception (try to keep up!).

There are nods to the previous entries and McG packs in plenty action spectacle that serves as much popcorn wallop as one would hope. There are a few ingredients that don’t quite mix well; silent child Star only acts as a homage to Newt from Aliens but serves no real purpose. Also, the big cameo towards the end is all too brief and not as well implemented as it could have been.

This film is leagues ahead of T-3 and, given time to expand the story, then a sequel could do for Salvation what T-2 did for T-1. McG may have tarnished his name with his bland CV but with this reinvention of the franchise he has delivered a film that stands alongside its predecessors with ease. It isn’t quite the level of Cameron ingenuity but McG delivers a sequel that makes you barely notice the absence of the Govenator.

The Blu-ray also gloriously ups the ante with the action, providing plenty of bang for your buck in HD. Also, there are plenty of features packed into the discs including a picture in picture commentary from McG and a slightly extended cut which features female heroine’s (Moon Bloodgood) breasts. A director’s cut surely to be as revered as Scott’s Blade Runner!

Hecklerspray rating: 4/5

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It had it all – a furious star, a nonsense story, an oddly-named director – but now Terminator Salvation has more.

That’s right – Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sort of. Even though it opens next month, Arnold Schwarzenegger still doesn’t know if he’ll be in Terminator Salvation or not. He might be, but only if producers insert footage from the first Terminator into the new film.

Which is rubbish. We want Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator Salvation in real life, perhaps as a demonstration of the time Skynet got drunk and made a murderous robot that looked like a fat old man for a laugh.

There’s nothing that anybody likes more than a third sequel to a 25-year-old film where you’re asked to completely disregard its entire TV spin-off series, most of what happened in the second sequel and the alarming realisation that in the future all embittered leaders of resistance movements against armies of unstoppable machines hellbent on the eradication of mankind will have accents that lurch indiscriminately between London, LA and borderline offensive comedy Pakistani.

And therefore, there’s nothing that anybody will like more than Terminator Salvation. Hype is already at fever pitch over Terminator Salvation, having been drummed up by a fairly impressive trailer and that tape of the angriest man in all the word bellowing “AH DA DA DA DA!” at a subordinate. But you know what would be the robot cherry on the cyborg cake? Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Arnold Schwarzenegger has played such a big part in all the other Terminator movies – he was the unstoppable villain in the first one, the underdog hero in the second one and the embarrassing shadow of his former self in the third one – that it wouldn’t feel right if he didn’t have a part to play in Terminator Salvation.

And now there’s a fighting chance that he might. In a way. In a really crappy way. The LA Times reports:

Warner Bros. is exploring whether it can insert images of Schwarzenegger from the original “Terminator” movie into the new film starring Christian Bale, directed by McG and slated for release May 21…  In the film, a prequel to the original, Schwarzenegger would be in a brief scene in which the main character encounters him as a “future Terminator,” according to the governor.

As potentially rubbish as that sounds, the description is a little vague. We imagine this means that Terminator Salvation will feature a scene where Arnold Schwarzenegger time-travels back from the future to try and kill Christian Bale, but Christian Bale gets all “YOU’RE A NICE GUY, YOU’RE A NICE GUY, BUT THAT DOESN’T FUCKING CUT IT!” on him, so Arnold Schwarzenegger decides it’ll be easier to time-travel back even further and just kick his mum in the stomach when she’s pregnant with him instead.

If that’s the case, we’re sold. Someone book us a ticket.

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Hey kids, here’s the new Terminator Salvation trailer – and, though we hate ourselves for saying this, it looks pretty good.

But we warned, the trailer does give away some pretty important Terminator Salvation plot details – like the bit where Christian Bale realises that the only way to beat the invincible machine army it to loudly berate it for trashing his scene, mock the way it walks by screaming “AH DA DA DA DAH” at it and then inform it that he’s finished with it professionally. So, you know, watch it at your own peril.

The pressures of being a celebrity are enormous—we understand that. Take Christian Bale for instance.

How can any thespian be expected to respond in a reasonable way when faced with the choking, all-consuming pressure that comes from having to play characters that either dress up as bats or battle evil futuristic robots?

Christ, it’s pressure like that that makes a guy want to:

a) wear a diving bell

b) allegedly assault his own mother, or

c) go absolutely apeshit over a DP’s unacceptable, um, walking.

That’s why, having now heard the infamous rant in which Bale reamed out Terminator Salvation’s Director of Photography Shane Hurlbut for walking into the shot, we all need to first pause and reflect on the truly horrible conditions that Christian Bale has to suffer through every stinking day of his life. That poor, poor bastard.

That understood, we do admit that the on-set blow up aimed at Hurlbut was indeed regrettable, and now it seems Christian Bale thinks so too. Taking to the airwaves on L.A.’s KROQ on Feb. 7, Bale apologised for his behaviour:

“The thing that disturbs me so much is that I’ve heard a lot of people saying that I seem to think that I’m better than anyone else. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I’m a lucky SOB. I never forget that and that is why I put so much into what I do I was out of order beyond belief. I was way out of order. I acted like a punk. I regret that. And there is nobody that has heard that tape that is hit harder by it than me.”

Christian Bale, you complete us.

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10 - Ah, The Onion, your’e funny because you’re true…

9 – Christian Bale: the Stephen Colbert response – Comedycentral

8 - Guitar Hero players: you will never, ever be as good as this 14-year-old boy – NYT

7 - Futurama voice actors at work - YouTube

6 - A picture of a live cow that was struck by lightning? Why certainly – Dailymail

5 - A request from Stuart Heritage: please click on this link to my dad’s flycasting blog so that all the traffic freaks him out – Michaelheritage

4 - That awful ’25 things about me’ Facebook meme gets mentioned in TIME. TIME, for christ’s sake. We’re all doomed - TIME

3 - Warner Bros want to make five more Batman films, the idiots – /film

2 - For the hell of it, here’s Barack Obama swearing. A lot – Thatjohnzillasite

1 - Possibly the best thing ever – a Russian anti-Coke calendar - Englishrussia

10 - One word: heh…

9 - Here’s the man Christian Bale went mental on. Now we can sort of understand why – Kodak

8 - Get a tan from your computer - YouTube

7 - Headline: Man Caught With Pigeons In His Trousers – Metro

6 - Here’s a newsreader doing the most spectacular live faint that we’ve ever seen – I Am Bored

5 - Surprise of the week: Facebook makes you depressed – Readwriteweb

4 - Want to make a sausage zombie? OK! – Instructables

3 – Ten things men should never do in public – Askmen

2 - Kids, don’t do drugs. Seven-year-old kids, definitely don’t do drugs - YouTube

1 – LIL’ O’REILLY! HOORAY! – Funnyordie

Christian Bale’s Terminator rant is easily the best thing to happen to the world in about five years – fact.

But what’s also fact is it’s not universally loved. The sad truth is that some saps can’t take pleasure from a recording of a prick being a prick to a prick. And, inevitably, most of those people are famous.

So far, Whoopi Goldberg and Terry Crews have stood up for Christian Bale, building hopes that there’ll soon be an all-star charity concert to raise awareness of the rights of unbearably dickish actors with indeterminate accents so. Fingers crossed it’s called AH-DAH-DAH-DAH-DAH-Aid.

Look, we know it might cause unimaginable harm to his career as an actor, but we never want this Christian Bale rant stuff to end. Really, we don’t.

It’s so perfect that we want it to follow him everywhere for the rest of his life. We want Batman 3 to be about Christian Bale being driven into geographically nonspecific madness when an Alfred The Butler keeps trashing his scene and walking about ah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah like this even though he’s a nice guy.

When Christian Bale dies, we want his Oscars ‘In Memorium’ photo to be accompanied by the sound of him shrieking “DO NOT SHUT ME UP! NO! NO!” In short, we are in love with Christian Bale’s Terminator rant and we want to marry it.

But that’s going to be an uphill struggle, not only because getting married to a recording of Christian Bale’s abusive voice is both unlawful and probably a sign of a deep psychiatric disorder, but also because several people are doing their best to brush Christian Bale’s obviously dickish behaviour under the carpet. Yesterday a Terminator Salvation assistant director called Christian Bale’s rant a ‘non-event’, and now other celebrities are leaping on the bandwagon as well.

First came Whoopi Goldberg. Whoopi can totally relate to Christian Bale’s predicament, partly because of the time she got so angry on the set of Star Trek that she ended up biting Worf on the forehead, and secondly because her day-job involves sitting on a table with Elisabeth Hasselbeck, a job which would leave anyone teetering on the edge of a violent meltdown. On The View, Whoopi said:

“We don’t know if this (incident happened) at the end of the day, we don’t know how many hours (he had) been working. It’s tough. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I too have gone off on people, because if you’re a professional, you know what you’re not supposed to do.”

And then Terry Crews, who is apparently an actor, decided to step in for Christian Bale as well, saying:

“I’d get mad too if I was the number one star in the world and people started to mess with me. He is a class act. He is one of the greatest actors ever. You can catch anyone on a bad day.”

Where we go from here is anybody’s guess. Although it looks like the movie world is already starting to rally around Christian Bale, there are also murmurs that his career could be badly affected by his outburst.

All we do know is that Christian Bale and Shane Hurlbut – the man on the receiving end of his tantrum – are through, professionally. Which is a real shame – as well as Terminator Salvation, Bale and Hurlbut had previously worked together on the Samuel L Jackson Shaft movie, meaning that Hurlbut’s career in the spectacularly badly thought-out remake/sequel business is all but over.

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The thing about Christian Bale is that he’s a nice guy. HE’S A NICE GUY! NO! NO! DO NOT SHUT ME UP! NO!

But you probably didn’t realise that. And that’s all thanks to yesterday’s glorious tape of Christian Bale unloading both barrels of his sweary idiot-gun at a director of photography on the Terminator Salvation set.

But, according to a Terminator Salvation assistant director, Christian Bale’s tantrum was a “non-event”. Rumours that he said this while whimpering on his knees while Christian Bale held a knife to his throat and cackled like a maniac are unconfirmed, but probably true.

Now, we’re not saying that Christian Bale is an angry man as such, but we wouldn’t really like to be in the same room as him today. Remember that Christian Bale is the sort of person who, if you tell him that he’s the above-the-title star of the second-biggest movie in cinema history, will get arrested for assaulting his own mother.

And that’s Christian Bale on a good day. So just imagine what sort of prick he’s being today, now that the infamous tape of Christian Bale ranting at a Terminator underling has hit the internet.

You’ve no doubt heard the tape already, so you’re fully aware of the majesty contained within. The swearing. The egomania. The deployment of at least 36 different regional accents. The immortal line “Why the fuck are you walking right through? AH-DAH-DAH-DAH-DAH like this?” The inescapable sensation that Christian Bale is the world champion of being a swaggering, self-important prick to almost everyone he meets. It is golden, and we’re not even slightly exaggerating there.

However, that hasn’t stopped any number of party-poopers from rushing up and widdling all over our strawberries by bleating that “oh, but the tape was taken out of context,” and “but Christian Bale is a professional,” and “you don’t understand what it’s like to be an actor.” And to those people we say this: “DO NOT SHUT US UP! Do not… NO! NO!”

Sadly, one of those people is Bruce Franklin – an associate producer and assistant director on Terminator Salvation – who has come scampering to Christian Bale’s defence, probably because he’s terrified that he’ll end up with a screwdriver poking out the top of his skull if he doesn’t. E! Online reports:

“If you are working in a very intense scene and someone takes you out of your groove…It was the most emotional scene in the movie. And for him to get stopped in the middle of it. He is very intensely involved in his character. He didn’t walk around like that all day long. It was just a moment and it passed. He is so dedicated to the craft. I think someone is begging to make some noise about this, but I don’t think it’s fair.”

Actually, we do see Bruce Franklin’s point here. Christian Bale was working on a very emotional scene. The most emotional scene in a movie full of emotional scenes, in fact. Wait, did we just say ‘emotional scenes’? We meant ‘utterly clueless scenes of Christian Bale running away from a load of angry robots’. Our mistake.

Whether Bruce’s defence of Christian Bale helps is another question, though. Some are already saying that Bale’s career might be affected by this tape, with producers being reticent to hire such a notorious hothead for their movies. But even if that’s the case, we’re sure that Christian Bale will still find work. True, that work will be limited to being the holiday cover for Bill O’Reilly, but a job’s a job.

But anyway, if the Christian Bale rant tape and all its reprecussions have taught us anything, it’s that we really need to build a time machine and travel back to see what the set of 3:10 To Yuma was like. Seriously, you can’t employ two actors as obviously mental as Christian Bale and Russell Crowe without someone having their jaw ripped out.

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Somewhere, right at this moment, we can absolutely guarantee that Alec Baldwin is breathing a sigh of relief.

Seriously, Alec should send Christian Bale a cookie basket. Because Christian Bale has made sure that Alec Baldwin’s insane ‘ignorant little pig’ rant at his daughter has been relegated to only second most brilliant recorded tantrum in history.

A recording of Christian Bale screaming at a Terminator Salvation DP has hit the internet and, if you do one thing today, you must hear it. It’s not just Christian Bale’s fury, you see – it’s the fact that he rants in about 13 different accents.

There’s a lot to like about Christian Bale – the fact that he’s not quite as good at acting as he thinks he is, the way he gave his Batman the most bewilderingly incoherent voice in cinema history, his, um, hair – but nothing even comes close to the way that Christian Bale promotes his films. When it comes to that, the man is a stone cold genius.

Upon the release of The Dark Knight, you’ll remember that Christian Bale got arrested on suspicion of assaulting his own clown mother in a hotel room. That’s dedication for you, and it worked – the film went on to become the second-biggest of all time. And it’s clearly a trick that Christian Bale wants to reproduce for his next movie Terminator Salvation.

What makes us so certain? Why, only a recording of Christian Bale going absolutely batshit at a director of photography on the Terminator Salvation set that’s just hit the internet. There are literally no words to tell you how amazing the tape is. It’s actually brilliant. We’re not overstating it one bit. Listening to Christian Bale going potty-mouthed berserk at a man who probably doesn’t even make a tenth of the money that he does is the best thing we’ve listened to all year.

Listen to Christian Bale’s incredible Terminator rant here

See? How incredible is that? We’ve found it so completely impossible to pick our favourite part of Christian Bale’s meltdown, so here’s a cluster of them for you. Oh, and by the way, you should take it as a given that the way Christian Bale’s voice lurches from LA drawl to gobby cockney to Nu Yawk screech to Welsh to borderline offensive comedy Pakistani during the rant is one of the best things about it. Because it is. Anyway, in no particular order:

“Do I walk fucking walk around the… NO! Do not shut me up, Bruce! Do I walk… No! NO!”

“Why the fuck are you walking right through? AH-DAH-DAH-DAH-DAH like this?”

“Do you want me to go and trash your lights? DO YOU WANT ME TO GO AND TRASH ‘EM?”

“You’re a nice guy. YOU’RE A NICE GUY! But that don’t fucking cut it.”

“I don’t need any fucking walking. He needs to stop walking. I AIN’T THE ONE WALKING!“

Genius. There’s, we’ve said. Christian Bale is actually a genius. Obviously he’s a gigantic self-important prick of the absolute worst kind and spending a second in his company must be like spending three eternities getting kicked in the jaw by an angry horse, but Christian Bale is a genius as well.

According to IMDb, Christian Bale’s next movie is the Michael Mann film Public Enemies. Lord alone knows how he’s going to promote that one, but we’d wager that it’ll involve a tank of petrol, a lighter, a box of puppies and some sort of tribal dancing.

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Well it certainly took long enough but The Dark Knight has finally fallen, to the might of Tropic Thunder and its wall of controversy.

While we all thought we would have to live in a world where no other films would ever get anywhere near The Dark Knight – a world where daily recitals of The Joker’s best speeches were made to be recited every morning in our schools, where every car is replaced with a Batmobile and where Morgan Freeman is elected King of Everything (with Christian Bale as his alleged muscle, obviously) – we have been proven wrong.

We worried for a while, but fortunately the ‘Greatest Film of All Time(tm)’ has been dethroned by Ben Stiller, Jack Black and a blacked-up Robert Downey Jr. And it’s sure to make the latter quite happy about it.

It would appear that controversy and notoriety really does help the fortunes of a cinema release these days – there were the obvious little numbers coming about before and after the release of The Dark Knight. It can’t be denied that the often-mentioned death, car crashes and alleged assaults had a positive effect on the fortunes of Nolan’s Batmasterpiece, and Tropic Thunder seems to have used the same technique to dethrone the four-week king.

Yes, there has been a lot of hoo-ha in recent weeks about the usage of the word ‘retard’ in Stiller and the gang’s Vietnam-movie comedy movie. Movie. Some people don’t like the word, and it’s apparently used quite liberally through the film.

But, of course, instead of looking into it and forming some kind of reasoned argument or debate about the issue, people just went and picketed screenings of the film, thus bringing it far more press coverage than it would have got without protests. And it would have got a lot of coverage without them anyway.

Throw on top of the pile the fact that one actor plays a blacked-up white man and you have another pile of outrage for the public to jump on. Shockingly though, this fell by the wayside with only a handful of comments being raised about the questionable portrayal. Possibly because they realised there was some satire at work there.

Either that or the blacked-up protesters couldn’t be heard over the legions of retard protesters. That’s as in protesting the use of the word, of course – we’re not calling them retarded for protesting the use of a word in a movie that is meant as a light-hearted comedy and a satire of the world of movies we are surrounded by today. Oh no. Not us.

Anyway – regardless of the retarded, blacked-up reasons that can be thrown around the fact remains – Tropic Thunder has dethroned The Dark Knight at the box office, raking in $37 million to the Baler and company’s $16.7 million.

If Tropic manages to gross more overall than Batman and chums then… well, frankly we’ll eat four gallons of testicle juice. Because that isn’t going to happen, even with all the controversy in the world.