Anna Karenina will be gorgeous

Atonement lenser Seamus McGarvey & composer Dario Marianelli are back on board for Joe Wright's Anna Karenina so we know that, at the very least, it will look & sound gorgeous.

Joe Wright brought an interesting creative vision to both Pride & Prejudice and Atonement, so it will be interesting to see what he brings to Anna Karenina.

Joe Wright's Anna Karenina

Joe Wright reunites with Keira Knightley (&, less excitingly, Matthew MacFadyan) to adapt Leo Tolstoy's classic novel of infidelity & social shame in Tsarist Russia. It's a good thing, too, because Anna Karenina has only been brought to the screen 24 times before (17 times on the big screen, 7 times on the small) between 1910 & 2009 (spanning pretty much the entire history of cinema). Only a small handful of these have been successful adaptations, however, so perhaps there is merit in Wright revisiting the material.

Keira Knightly joins a distinguished & sizeable population of actresses to have filled the Karenina shoes (including Greta Garbo, twice, Vivien Leigh, Sophie Marceau, Jacqueline Bisset, Helen McCrory, Claire Bloom, Tatyana Drubich & Tatyana Samojlova), with a total of two major award nominations among them (both for Garbo).


It seems at once a good & predictable idea for Wright to return to period literary adaptations. With Keira Knightly. His Pride & Prejudice was fresh & - considering they whittled it down to 127 minutes - effective, while his Atonement was audacious & intoxicating. So, although his recent foray into stylised contemporary fight flicks leaves me wanting much more, it will be interesting to see what he does with Anna Karenina, and if Keira Knightly's on-going bid for a second Oscar nomination will finally pay off.

Plot-wise, Anna is the young wife of an older aristocrat who - when her husband (Jude Law) won't grant her a divorce - embarks on a scandalous affair with the young & wealthy Count Vronsky (Aaron Johnson), changing both their social fates forever. Anna Karenina has recently adorned the burdensome title of "Best Novel Ever Written", although this is likely due more to Tolstoy's prose & style, which bridged the gap from realist to modernist novels (thanks, Wikipedia, for making me sound smart), than his  plot, so the trick for Wright will be translating it to the screen in a suitably beguiling visual language that is true to its source, but appealing to a modern audience. But that is what Wright is good at.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows - Trailer

Robert Downey Jr in period drag? It's either genius or the moment when Guy Ritchie pushes his re-imagining Sherlock Holmes franchise just too far. Personally, I always enjoy Downey Jr & am glad that Ritchie has found an audience again. I'm not a Holmes purist, so I enjoy the literary / action mash-up. It helps that the sets, costumes & Hans Zimmer score are always on point.

Kate Winslet. Matt Damon. Steven Soderbergh. Contagion.

Steven Soderbergh's latest is a virus epidemic thriller with a killer cast, including Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Marion Cotillard, Laurence Fishburn, Jennifer Ehle, John Hawkes, Elliott Gould & Bryan Cranston. Looks like fun, in a horrible catastrophe kind of way.

This is Soderbergh's 5th film with Damon (and they team up again next year for Liberace, with Michael Douglas as the celebrated titular pianist, and Damon as his lover, Scott Thorson).

Soderbergh capitalises on his cast in the gritty character posters below: