matt damon Tagged Articles at Cinematical

August gave us the voice of Matt Damon in Ponyo, September gave us the inner voice of Matt Damon in The Informant!, and now October has brought us a look at his next two performances.

Clint Eastwood's Invictus is one of the last big likely contenders of the awards season, though it is as of yet unseen (unless those very few who have seen it are very good at being very quiet). Damon plays real-life rugby captain Francois Pienaar, whose team saw the support of Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) as a rallying point around which they might lift the spirits of South Africa in the wake of apartheid. It's political! It's underdog! It's opening in December! It's Oscar bait for certain, and Apple has the exclusive trailer.

Paul Greengrass' Green Zone, on the other hand, was shuffled out of the Oscar race once Universal decided to sort out its slate after a lackluster summer at the box office, and that may have been a wise move. Yahoo's trailer (which is also embedded below) comes across as more of a straight-up actioner than a ready-made contender, with Damon back in Bourne mode as a betrayed soldier on the hunt first for WMDs, and then for answers. Based on the best-seller Imperial Life in the Emerald City, it opens on March 12, 2010.

It's impossible to top an icon like John Wayne, but the Coen Bros' True Grit is shaping up to have a better supporting cast than the original did. (Hey, Wayne supposedly didn't like Kim Darby either.) Variety has just announced that Matt Damon and Josh Brolin are in talks to join Jeff Bridges in the Coens' remake.

Bridges will play Rooster Cogburn, while Damon is in talks to play La Boeuf, the Texas Ranger who pairs up with Cogburn and Mattie. I'll probably anger the Glen Campbell fans out there, but I think this is a vast improvement over the original casting. I can actually buy Damon as a Texas Ranger.

Brolin will be taking a walk on the nasty side, as he'll be playing Tom Chaney, the man who gunned Mattie's father down for the gold he had in his saddlebag. While Chaney wasn't the most pleasant fellow in the original, there's no doubt that Brolin will increase the menace and nastiness. I think we can all agree Brolin has done no wrong since his No Country For Old Men comeback, and this is the kind of role that'll be delicious to watch him tear into. The film is set to go into production in March 2010, and the Coens won't waste any time in the editing room as it's slated to be released in late 2010.

Last month, I was out of town for my little brother's wedding and stayed in a hotel room. You know how it is in hotel rooms -- late at night, you watch things on TV that you wouldn't bother with at any other time. My husband and I ended up watching part of Eurotrip, a rather lame comedy from 2004 about a couple of guys who travel to Europe so one of them can make nice with his longtime (female) pen pal.

I fell asleep fairly quickly, but not before watching a memorable scene with a cruelly comic song that reveals the main character's girlfriend is cheating on him. The song is called "Scotty Doesn't Know," and since the main character is named Scotty ... you get the idea. The lead singer looked oddly familiar, but it wasn't until later that I learned it was Matt Damon. Admittedly, Damon's singing voice is dubbed by the real lead singer of the band performing the song, Lustra. Also, we don't usually see Damon with a shaved head, chin piercing and a tattoo on his neck. An IFC article about Damon's numerous cameos in film claims Eurotrip was shooting in Hungary while Damon was there for The Brothers Grimm, and the Eurotrip filmmakers convinced him to appear in their film too.

First there was David O. Russell's much-publicized on-set freak out, and then it was Christian Bale all but tearing a cinematographer in half. Now a video has surfaced featuring Matt Damon directing Adrian Grenier in what looks to be a PSA for a site called One by One, which does exist and (thanks to commenter Corey for pointing this out) is apparently an organization that helps children in poverty from around the world. Matt Damon is the company's spokesperson.

So Grenier has, like, five lines to deliver, but he keeps stumbling over his words and pissing Damon off. Meanwhile, Jeremy Piven (who looks like he's either in his full-on Ari Gold character or just stepped off the set of Entourage) is frantically pacing behind Damon as he continually corrects and eventually goes off on Grenier. Piven doesn't say a word, so it's tough to say, yes, he is in character as Ari Gold -- though he does look to be acting as if he were Grenier's agent. That being said, Damon refers to Grenier by his real name and not Vince (though at one point Grenier asks if he should talk as Vince), so who knows what the hell is going on here.

I personally think they're filming something for an upcoming Entourage episode and decided to have a little fun at the same time by throwing together this little viral video. Either way it's pretty hilarious, and I wish it went on a drop longer so we could really watch cameo king Matt Damon freak out hardcore.

Watch the NSFW, foul-mouthed video after the jump, and you decide: is it real or is it fake?

It's not like snapping your fingers, and it can't all be attributed to hair and make-up. So how does a marquee beauty like Matt Damon transform himself into an ordinary-looking businessman in Steven Soderbergh's The Informant!?

Damon plays Matt Whitacre, the cinematic version of a real-life character, a scientist who became the vice-president of a chemical company and then turned informant for the government in the early 1990s. Damon doesn't perform a complete disappearing act, to the point that we don't recognize him. True, he gained 30 pounds for the role and his character wears a toupee. The extra pounds make him look "doughy" and soft, which is what Soderbergh wanted, according to USA Today. Yet he doesn't look excessively obese and he doesn't walk around with his shirt off; he just looks rather ... ordinary, a normal, thickening man from the middle of the country, with a wife and children and a house and a car (make that cars).

The actor has played pretty boys many times, which is kind of inevitable when you're a good-looking guy. Still, he has the deft ability to shift his charm downward, in service of the role, even in fluffy entertainment like Ocean's Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen. He doesn't turn all his lights off, just selected ones, just enough to dim the wattage of his stardom. All his skills as an actor are needed in The Informant!, which has an increasingly jaw-dropping story to tell. Scott Weinberg described it as a "quietly odd performance." It's also hilarious. Damon hits every note, blending into the story while retaining an innate goodness that makes you root for him even as you slowly realize you probably shouldn't. It's brilliant; I just don't know how he does it.

(By: Scott Weinberg, reprinted from TIFF 9/13/09)

If you're about to dig into a mid-'90s "period piece" about a plain nebbish at a food additive company who decides to blow the whistle on his corporation's illegal price-fixing practices, well, you better get a few interesting people to bring this sort of story to the screen. With a leading man less reliable than Matt Damon and a director less colorfully unpredictable than Steven Soderbergh, a flick like this could play like a well-meaning but hopelessly yawn-worthy docu-drama. Happily, since The Informant! boasts both of those filmmakers (and a big handful of others), it turns out to be a seriously entertaining film ... about a seriously plain man.

Damon plays Mark Whitacre, a high-ranking suit for a chemical company called ADM. Essentially, these guys create all sorts of wonderful food additives, and the focal point this time around is a corn product called lysine. Only problem is that ADM and virtually all of its executives, not to mention their competitors, are knee-deep in a global "price-fixing" scheme, which (in case you didn't know) is all sorts of illegal. But while Mark seems more than willing to narc on his colleagues, simply because it's the right thing to do, it quickly becomes evident that our semi-hero is hiding more than a few skeletons inside his own closet.

There's a long-running joke in Hollywood that one of the easiest ways to earn an Oscar is to either 'Ugly it up" or contract a disease. But, in recent years, one of the newer trends that can lead an actor to the podium is for them to take on a role where they play a person of same-sex orientation (a fact that has already become the stuff of satire). Over the past 10 years, plenty of actors have earned Oscars for playing gay roles, and the latest actor to join the club could be Matt Damon, who has signed to play Liberace's lover in Steven Soderbergh's biopic of the flamboyant musician.

So what's the big deal? Don't actors pretend to be different people all the time ... isn't that their job? Well, yes, but it's a little more complicated than that. Gay and lesbian political advocates have long lamented the sad state of affairs where straight actors are getting gay roles, instead of giving 'out' actors their chance to shine. So, while I question the idea that only gay actors could play a gay character, just as only straight actors can play straight characters, the sad fact is that Hollywood is still relatively puritanical when it comes to allowing their actors and actresses to be out and proud -- and that needs to change. But, that doesn't mean I think an actor (gay or straight) shouldn't play role any role they want ... just as long as they're good at it.

So on that note, I decided to give a little credit to five performances by straight actors in gay roles that transcended orientation and, ultimately, are just damn fine performances.

After the jump: my picks for the best of straight actors going gay for pay...

Once Clint Eastwood casts you in a movie, you're his friend for life and you'll probably enjoy a steady supply of work until the terrible day he decides to retire. (If I was a young actor at Warner Bros, I would just happen to walk by his office with bagels and coffee, just in case he was hungry and casting.) Thus, it's almost no surprise that Eastwood's next film will share the same leading man as his last. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Matt Damon, soon to be seen in Eastwood's Invictus, will take the lead in Hereafter.

The plot of Hereafter is being kept under tight, tight wraps. All anyone knows about it is that it boasts a script by Peter Morgan and is "a supernatural thriller in the vein of The Sixth Sense." (Movieline, though, snagged a copy of the script and offered up some more details, including the following: "After two tense set pieces that leave its main characters changed forever, the film becomes a quiet drama about three people trying to figure out what, if anything, exists after death." Oh, and Matt Damon sees dead people.)

It's also being executive produced by DreamWorks and Steven Spielberg. They were the original owners of Morgan's spec script, but happily handed it to over to Eastwood and Warner Bros, with Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy staying on as executive producers. It'll be the fourth film Spielberg and Eastwood shared producing credits on. (The others are The Bridges of Madison County, Flags of Our Fathers, and Letters from Iwo Jima. You might need that for a trivia contest someday.)

In the category of "too good to be true" comes news that blows my tiny little mind. Michael Douglas and Matt Damon will play lovers in director Steven Soderbergh's upcoming Liberace, based on the life of the famous pianist. (That's pianist, not ... oh, forget it.) I'm describing this as "news" because it was published online by People, and they wouldn't fib, would they? Actually, Jessica Barnes already covered this for us, briefly, so we know it's true. Still, it's Douglas and Damon paired as romantic partners, and that deserves a story of its own.

A French newspaper is cited as the source for People's item, and there are a few choice new quotes. Soderbergh is attending the Deauville Film Festival -- that's in France -- and said that costume and wardrobe tests have already been done on Douglas: "I swear to you, Michael amazed me. He crushed it." The director also says that Damon has agreed to play Scott Thorsen, the longtime assistant / boyfriend of the flamboyant entertainer. "Matt accepted the challenge," Soderbergh claims. Is it the challenge of kissing Michael Douglas, or pretending to be in love with him?

Soderbergh also said that the budget will allow for reenactments of Liberace's "spectacular stage act, which "often involved elaborate stunts such as flying or driving to his piano bench in a Rolls-Royce." If this all pans out to be true, and the movie actually gets made, I will be lining up to see flying pianos and the love story of the new century. How about you? Are you itching to see Liberace now that Douglas and Damon are on board?

Tooling around online this morning I came across this pretty funny interview from National Lampoons' Matt Zaller for Jennifer's Body, where, during the junket, he sat down with both Megan Fox and Johnny Simmons, but then ignored Fox the entire time -- made her wear a paper bag over her head so she wouldn't "get in the way" -- and then proceeded to chat with Simmons about potential sequels for Hotel for Dogs ... for like four and a half minutes. I was like, um, okay, that was odd -- because it was pretty clear this wasn't a skit or a sketch, and that neither Fox nor Simmons had any idea this dude was gonna pull out this weird stuff. So, instead, they just went with it ... and if you've seen Fox interviewed before, nothing phases this girl. You could be interviewing her while on fire, and she'd use you to light her cigarette and make the best of the situation.

So I thought, should I post this? I don't know. Because I figured you all would yell and cry stuff like, "That was so lame dude -- Cinematical sucks! I've seen other people do stuff like this! Huge fail!" But then a friend of mine just passed along Zaller's interview with Matt Damon for The Informant, and, well, it's fantastic. Not only does the dude wear clothing with pictures of himself photoshopped to make it look like he was hanging with Damon at some point, but he plays this recorded song that he made ... and, yeah, you just have to watch it for yourself.

Zaller's shtick sort of reminds me of Zach Galifianakis' Between Two Ferns, except here I don't believe the celebs are aware of what's going to take place. Watch them both after the jump and let us know what you think.

Oh, and more please.