Anna Karenina (2012)

Keira Knightley has played a lot of different types of characters over the years, but a lot of those characters do have one thing in common: a corset.

There’s a lot of imagination in this week’s best releases. From a ghastly creature haunting old visual mediums to reenvisioned historical moments, and world and their wars built entirely for the small screen, this week in home entertainment offers a little something for everyone, even if that something is watching scantily dressed teens try to find a younger sibling in a haunted house.

Skyfall may be seen by some as just another silly blockbuster action movie, but the truth is that it really was one of the most beautiful films to be released in 2012, the Shanghai sequence alone deserving tons of recognition. But do you think that he deserves the top prize from the ASC?

Creating this list has filled me with a dizzying amount of joy and dread. Really, 2012 was a year that offered so many examples of daring and thrilling cinema that it was difficult to even determine what the criteria should be for a list of my personal ten favorites. In the end, I went with my gut, selecting those films that not only hit me hard in the theater, but also lingered with me for days, weeks, or months afterwards, and which I can still vividly recall.

2012 was a really, really hard year to sum up in list form, and a top 20 would really be more appropriate to reflect the astonishing variety of blockbusters, out-of-nowhere successes and totally tiny arthouse stuff that grabbed me this year. A lot of these movies snuck up on me, only revealing their brilliance long after I'd written a review or thought I'd forgotten about it. Plenty of those not on this list did the opposite, making an amazing first impression and fading so quickly

With the cast and crew gushing so profusely about how terrific Knightley's performance is and how deep her devotion to the role was, it seems this featurette is meant as a kind of "For Your Consideration" ad. It's a relief to see Focus Features making such a push, since—despite all its grace, grandeur and great performances—this film appears to be getting lost in the shuffle with so many hotly anticipated titles nearing release.

For a while Domhnall Gleeson didn't think he'd become an actor. As the son of famed Irish actor Brendan Gleeson, he had every young person's urge to separate himself from his parents-- even as it became clear to him that acting was what he wanted to do anyway.

It’s never easy playing the third wheel in a love triangle, particularly when it’s your wife who wants to leave you for another man. Couple this with the fact that Karenin (Jude Law) is a well-respected and very public figure in Russia’s aristocracy – and his crumbling marriage is being played out on a national stage – and you can understand why Anna Karenina is such a challenge

This time of year you're probably overwhelmed figuring out your holiday plans and making a list of everyone you need to give presents, but there's another list you probably have in mind as a movie buff: the Oscar nominations. No, the nominees won't be announced until January 10, but now is the time to start catching up on the names that will probably be read that day

The conversation, according to Keira Knightley, started on the set of . Her director, Joe Wright, asked her who she thought was one of the most-important female roles in classic literature. When Knightley answered with Anna Karenina, based on the novel by Leo Tolstoy, the wheels began turning on what now stands as a vibrant, contemporary, yet still reverential adaptation

This week, inspired by Lincoln, Anna Karenina, and Breaking Dawn – Part 2, for inspiration, we offer a selection of historical dramas, steamy costume dramas, and supernatural romances.

If Anna Karenina was a by-the-numbers, Garry Marshall-directed romantic comedy, we’d actively root for Anna (Keira Knightley) to buck the odds and be with her true love, Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). But this isn’t Hollywood fluff. It’s classic Russian literature – Tolstoy, to be specific. Anna is a married Russian socialite, and Vronsky her forbidden fruit

This week on Operation Kino, we're embarking on a pretty ill-fated affair, as we review Joe Wright's gorgeous new movie Anna Karenina. From there we bring you the newest installment of OpKino Indie, in which Da7e chats with Chris Cullari, Jennifer Raite and Carolyn Jania, the team behind the new short film "The Sleepover,"

Now we have Anna Karenina, which might be the umpteenth adaptation of the Tolstoy classic but which stands very much on its own, partly because of Wright's bold decision to set most of the film inside a dilapidated theater, where bedrooms are tucked in among the rafters and horses can trot among the audience seats

Between Election Day and a nasty fever that suddenly took over my life, I didn't have it in me last Tuesday-- and I got the feeling you guys had other things on your mind as well. Plus, what we're talking about this week is the same thing we would have been talking about last week: Lincoln and Skyfall, and the handful of mysteries still waiting for us down the line

As for Houdini, his biopic almost landed in the hands of The Hunger Games director Gary Ross. And his life story is informing a Broadway musical backed by Aaron Sorkin and Hugh Jackman. But the escape artist really deserves his own movie, and in my opinion, Wright would be a tremendous choice to take over the project.

This week marks the wide release of one of the very big Best Picture contenders, Ben Affleck's Argo, but through sheer chance I've managed to catch up with four major Oscar movies in the last week. Argo is among them, so we'll start there, but there's plenty else to go over, even if the rest of these movies won't emerge in theaters for a few weeks yet. Exciting times to be a moviegoer!

This is such a smart campaign, because audiences need to be informed that Karenina -- despite being based on centuries-old Russian literature – is a passionate piece of filmmaking that crackles with creative energies, lustful performances, emotional heat and palpable tragedy. Don’t mistake this for another dry costume drama.

The Toronto Film Festival technically doesn't wrap up until Sunday, when award winners will be announced (including the usually important Audience Award) and the crowds will recede from downtown Toronto for another year. But Team Cinema Blend has already left the premises, with dozens of movies and a handful interviews under our belts

The heavy hitters emerged at the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday, as audiences got their first look at films that would make any cinema junkie drool. Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina, Ben Affleck’s Argo and Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha all played north of the border to packed houses … and we were there for as much of it as we could absorb.

Russian literature might not float your boat, but we remain excited for Karenina because of Wright’s previous collaborations with lithe, beautiful leading lady Keira Knightley. They reinvented Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, then found heat in a steamy pre-war affair on the wrenching Atonement.

It's still hard to know exactly how it will work out, but today we get another glimpse at the film and, once again, it's cramming with arresting visuals and some intriguing looking performance. The clip also has a lot of Keira Knightley and Wright talking about the idea behind the film's melodramatic style. Take a look below

Wright has become cheered for his incredible and complicated long takes, like the beach scene in Atonement and the underground fight scene in Hanna. But now his love of this elegant but hard-earned fluidity has informed the entire construction of his Anna Karenina, an epic breathtaking in its ambition.

Between Baz Luhrmann's Great Gatsby and Joe Wright's Anna Karenina, moviegoers will be spoiled for choice this winter, when it comes to luxurious adaptations of novels that explore ill-fated love in high society. Focus Features has previously unveiled a striking string of first look images for Anna that revealed an almost unrecognizable Jude Law, a stunningly regal Keira Knightley, and a mustachioed—yet dapper—Aaron Johnson.

It's hard to think of anything that really connects the upcoming Robocop remake and the upcoming Anna Karenina adaptation, so let's just get down to facts. Recent schedule updates at Box Office Mojo have finally assigned release dates for both films;

In 2007 director Joe Wright made a huge splash when he directed Atonement, a period drama starring Keira Knightley, Saoirse Ronan and James McAvoy. The film was a huge hit, both with audiences and critics, and it ended up earning seven Academy Award nominations (and it won for Best Original Score). Wright's last two films, The Soloist and Hanna, were both a step away from what we have typically seen from the director

Wright has been very vocal about wanting McAvoy for the film, but it's been unclear if McAvoy's schedule would cooperate; based on what he told me it seems that's still very much up in the air.

Cumberbatch actually makes this even more of an Atonement reunion, having played the actual rapist who goes off scot free when Ronan's character Briony accuses McAvoy instead. The British actor has been working steadily for years in all kinds of films you might recognize him in

Though Hanna, a modern-day action thriller with strong fairy tale elements, is a bit of a departure from the polished period world of Atonement, Anna Karenina gets Wright back to what he established early as his wheelhouse. It's a classic story that's building a phenomenal cast

It's still a little unclear which role he might potentially be attached to in the eight part novel. There's Anna husband, twenty years her senior, which might work considering Law is thirteen years older than Knightley