SHOOTING STARS: It’s the taste of the town with ‘Top Chef,’ ‘Man vs. Food’

  It’s a combo meal deal this week as not one but two food-related cable TV shows chow down in Las Vegas.
  The sixth season of Bravo’s “Top Chef” begins the second week of a monthlong stay with locations ranging from the desert to the Strip. But word has it that the show is headquartered not at a local casino but at a warehouse south of McCarran International Airport.
  The Travel Channel’s “Man vs. Food,” meanwhile, is scheduled to visit Vegas for a second-season episode.
  Host Adam Richman will challenge his appetites at the local culinary attractions Hot & Juicy Crawfish and Hash House A-Go-Go, while the show's trademark challenge will take place at the Sahara's NASCAR Cafe. (And, to work off all those calories consumed, Richman’s expected to stroll the Strip during the shoot.) Second-season episodes begin airing Aug. 5.
  Good sports: In addition to being a great food town, Las Vegas is a great sports town.
  That’s reflected in the lineup for ESPN’s “30 for 30” project, a series of 30 hourlong films honoring the cable network’s 30th anniversary.
  Topics range from Michael Jordan’s temporary switch from basketball to baseball (from “Bull Durham” director Ron Shelton) to hockey great Wayne Gretzky’s signing with the Edmonton Oilers (from “Friday Night Lights” director Peter Berg).
  Two Las Vegas-related titles deal with issues near and dear to Pair-a-dice: boxing and sports betting. “One Night in Vegas” focuses on the fateful 1996 night heavyweight Mike Tyson defeated Bruce Seldon at the MGM Grand — but never got to party with rapper Tupac Shakur, who was gunned down outside the MGM after the fight. Reggie Rock Bythewood, who scripted the Notorious B.I.G. biopic “Notorious,” will direct.
  And “The Rise and Fall of Jimmy ‘The Greek’ Snyder,” from sports documentarian Fritz Mitchell, focuses on the sports handicapper’s life and the growth of sports gambling.
  Both projects, currently in development, are expected to film here.
  Extras, extras: The big-screen comedy “Get Him to the Greek,” a spinoff of last year’s “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” checks into town next week. (Watch for an interview with writer-director Nicholas Stoller in next week’s Shooting Stars.)
  But casting officials still are looking for locals to appear as clubbers, audience members, hotel guests, buffet patrons — and more. If you’re interested, register online at www.DavidAnthonyCasting.com.
  And some 40 unpaid extras are needed for a locally produced game show, with Marty Allen and Robin Leach as guests, shooting at the Gold Coast next Tuesday, May 12. To signal your interest, e-mail host/producer Stephen Sorrentino at stephensorrentino3000@yahoo.com.
   Road trip: German TV viewers usually keep up with their favorite expatriate family — the Reimanns of Gainesville, Texas, pictured at right — in periodic segments featured on the weekly “RTL Extra” newsmagazine.
  But the former Hamburg residents hit the road for a TV special all their own, documenting a 10-day road trip that will bring them to Las Vegas.
  They’re on the road now, heading through Texas, New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona en route to Nevada, according to director Dagmar Vetter.
  It’s the family’s first vacation in five years, and the four members — father Konny, mother Manuela and kids Jason Lee and Janina — will be traveling in a 1975 Cadillac and silver Airstream trailer, Vetter reports.
  “This family is so special and crazy,” she e-mails, “and they are famous in Germany.” Which means “all the German tourists in Las Vegas will be surprised to see them there.”
  ‘Absent’ here: A documentary about the importance of father figures, and what happens when they’re not around, was scheduled to conclude a three-night shoot Sunday on the streets of Las Vegas.
  “We’re coming to Las Vegas to speak with prostitutes,” explains Justin Hunt, the documentary’s writer, producer and director, who noted that “chances are, if a woman’s on the streets, she didn’t have a good father figure in her life.”
  The project’s other subjects range from students at an inner-city Miami high school to boxer Johnny Tapia; Hunt hopes to complete the documentary by year’s end.