Matt Damon Defines Summer Style in Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant
It’s time to play everyone’s favorite game, “Rejected Sears model, Amber Alert suspect or Matt Damon in character.” A celeb site ickily called Splash received a batch of open-shirted, pale Damon photos from the set of Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant. We haven’t talked much about the flick on: Damon plays Mark Whitacre, “the highest level executive to turn whistle-blower in U.S. history,” whose prolonged undercover work for the FBI gathering price-fixing evidence against his employer, an agri-biz powerhouse, um, did nothing to help a severe bipolar disorder.
Moreover, Whitacre embezzled millions from his employer while working with the “good guys.” He was released from prison in 2006 after serving more than eight years, and now has a COO position in bio-tech. If you saw the guy pictured here at the hotel pool, such a bizarre narc trajectory would sound about right, no? Scott Bakula will play the main FBI dude in the film, which is a welcome/unpredictable casting choice for a role usually created for Christian Bale. Opening March ‘09, The Informant looks to join notable white collar paranoia thrillers like The Insider, Michael Clayton and Damon’s own The Good Shepherd.
via Gawker
World’s most insane game shows feature nudists, car theft and nipple clamps
For the most part American game shows are pretty tame. Oh sure, we eat a live slug once in awhile, and we take a dip into a pool of rattlesnakes on occasion; however, overall, the craziest thing we do is have our halter tops fall off while running down the stage. And, that’s by accident.
The rest of the world, on the other hand…well, they’ve pretty much thrown off the Puritan shackles that we still bear and, for lack of a better phrase, let it all hang out when it comes to their game shows. Sometimes literally. Some examples of this can be found at Cracked.com, which lists 6 examples of the most insane game shows in the world.
If you scan the list you’ll see that most of the game shows involve some type of humiliation or extremely painful challenges that the contestants have to go through in order to win a measly prize (if there is one at all). For example, on Spain’s El Gran Juego de la Oca (Great Game of the Grey Goose) players are locked in an acrylic glass box filled only with sand and boa constrictors. The goal is to find a key in the sand and get out without dying of snake-related asphyxiation. They can also be subjected to leg hair waxing by a sexy woman in a nurse’s uniform who performs a striptease. Actually, that last one doesn’t sound too bad.
On the Japanese game show Downtown no Gaki no Tsukai ya Arahende!! (Downtown’s Not An Errand Boy!) contestants get smacked in the twig-and-berries if they don’t properly complete a tongue twister. They can also have their nose hairs forcibly removed, their ear lobes gummed by an old man, or just have a simple pair of clips attached to their nipples. Gosh, the worst that happens to us is that we don’t find the briefcase with the $1 million dollars in it!
I think my favorite game show concept listed is Russia’s The Intercept. In this program, an unsuspecting person off the street is given a new car. The catch: the car has been reported stolen to the police and he / she must avoid them for 30 minutes. Man, if this show had been around back when O.J. was running form the Los Angeles police he would have made a mint!