UPDATE: Our Ben Foster Podcast Interview on ‘The Messenger’ is Now Online – Click Here to Listen or Click Here to Subscribe for Free to the Podcast and have the interview downloaded automatically.
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In February I asked the question of that character actor you may have seen in a comic western, or a sci-fi flick, or a vampire movie, or a vampire western, or a comic book blockbuster or some combination of all of those:
Is Ben Foster the Best Actor in American Film Today?
It’s October now and Foster’s still on my mind . Just look at him in the trailer for the new Iraq War fallout movie ‘The Messenger’:
Messenger Trailer (Quicktime on Apple trailer site)
He may look like Owen Wilson genetically splurshed with Edward Norton – but by God he knows how to perform in front of a camera. His energy seems internal – it leaks out of the edges of the frame, like there’s some sort of strange melancholic miasma seeping out of the screen.
He’s the reason I’m seeing ‘Pandorum’ tomorrow – a film that I’d normally avoid as it doesn’t seem to be enough – meaning that right now I’m either into seeing films that are masterpieces, (those that transcend their genre to become lasting works of art), or pics that are absolute trash. ‘Pandorum’ looks like neither.
As for ‘The Messenger’ – who knows?*
The mere fact that it seems to be a film about adults in real-world situations rather than the usual Ben Foster gig of ‘genre cheese’ bodes well.
I hope it challenges him as an actor – people have a far more critical eye regarding the things they know, (getting drunk, friendships on the road, being attracted to someone), whereas nobody knows what the hell a vampire-cowboy-astronaut sprinting away from some sort of weightless space monster looks like. Well, at least not yet.
‘The Messenger’ opens October 30th in the U.S.
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*Only caveat: ‘The Messenger’ seems to be suffering from the blue/teal attack we’re currently going through at the pictures (scroll to end of post). Sigh.
