My sincerity has always been one of my calling cards; so it stands to reason that pathological liars are people I consider to be my polar opposite.  The best movie I’ve ever seen about people like this is still Shattered Glass; but The Informant probably deserves to be in the conversation now.  The film stars Matt Damon as a typical Midwestern middle management type who decides to ‘do the right thing’ and sell his bosses out to the F.B.I. when he realizes they’re involved in price fixing in their industry.  But as a member of the Justice Department asks when the case is nearly closed, ‘Why is he doing this?  What’s in it for him?’

I won’t ruin the various twists and turns of the film for you; it’s well worth watching and enjoying for yourself.  So let me be the 1424th person to ask: is there anything Matt Damon can’t do?  More than once as I watching this, I thought to myself, this is the same cat who plays Jason Bourne, one of the most badass action characters in the movie game right now.  And here he is, playing a complete schlub, being everybit as convincing.  Brad Pitt certainly couldn’t pull it off, I don’t think Clooney could either.  Damon is mastering the Everyman character.

One last note, Steven Soderbergh was one of the directors I (and many others of my generation) looked up to for a long time.  sex, lies and videotape, Traffic, Out of Sight, Ocean’s 11 – that is a career and a half.  He’s kind of made whispers that he might be done with the game; I know about the various struggles Spike has getting his projects off the ground.  These two guys aren’t my age obviously, but they’re not that old.  I throw that out there to say, while we can kind of see the direction the Business is going in, if it forces artists to completely leave, it’s not necessarily a direction for the benefit of the Game.

And now I climb down off my soapbox…