Keira Knightley Interview Magazine

Too Beautiful to Act?

I had a conversation with a young, exceedingly good-looking actor last night about a script of mine that is currently in development.  He’d read it at his own request—it’s still a few drafts away from being camera ready, so not in wide circulation—after he heard me talking about it at a dinner party and realized that the description of the male lead was perfect for him: it’s about a guy in his mid-twenties, of German descent, from the Midwest.  Even though I promised to have him read for the role when the time comes, in my mind I am pretty sure I’m not going to cast him.  I can’t: I just don’t see this particular character as being that beautiful—someone who looks like that would be unlikely to suffer the same way as my hero.

REVIEW: Mum Loves ‘Anna Karenina.’ So There.

There was a moment after the first ten minutes of Anna Karenina when I thought director Joe Wright had somehow confused Tolstoy with Tchaikovsky—it would be understandable, what with both names having that Russian thing going on, and beginning with Ts and ending with Ys—and I was looking at a filmed version of The Nutcracker Suite.  Then the drama settled over the dancy-pransy stuff like thick ice on a Siberian lake, and the characters lapsed into something resembling normal film dialogue, although the balletic quality remained as the dominant conceit for the remainder of the film.

In that respect, Anna Karenina is a satisfying holiday piece, especially if you’re sitting, as I was, next to your mother in a theater on the Upper East Side of wintery New York, an area of our own imperial city that would be the modern equivalent of the locales in St. Petersburg where the film’s action takes place.  The fact I was wearing a short shearling jacket that makes me look like a hussar—a middle-aged Count Vronsky, perhaps, none of whose lovers ended under trains, but some of whom have definitely been emotional train wrecks—added to the meta quality of this particular movie-going experience.

Anna Karenina isn’t just a ballet confettied with words that are spoken more like sequences of musical notes than sentences that have a meaning to which one can attach real emotion.  It is a feature-length fashion film, which explains why so many spreads in the glossy women’s magazines, indeed entire collections from designers, have been inspired by this.  In that respect, it is supremely successful.  I do not want to go to a black-tie event ever again in my life unless everyone there is styled the way they are in Anna Karenina.  And if Marc Jacobs shows up in a see-through lace frock, throw him under a train.  (Please.  Finally.  Thank you.)

Keira Knightley Anna Karenina

Banana Hammock: Anna Karenina’s First Fashion Strike‑Out

Gentle reader,

Did you know that there is an entire cable network dedicated to food?  It’s called the Food Network so it’s kind of hard to miss.  In keeping with their desire to call it like it is over there, they have a show called Cupcake Wars, which is a competition where they bake cupcakes.  Where is the creativity, the nuance in titles like that?  If this shit keeps up, witty sarcastic people like me will be out of work all over the damn place.  On the other hand, The Learning Channel’s biggest success is ironically Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, a show about ignorant hillbillies that require subtitles to understand, so maybe we’ll be in business for a while after all.

Anyway, the episode I happened to see of this cupcake show challenged contestants to include at least two things from a long list of smoked ingredients that sounded a little disgusting at first.  When the girl from Indiana decided to make a corn muffin with crumbled bacon on top, I started to warm up to the idea.  Then she added bacon maple cream cheese frosting and topped it with candied bacon and bacon popcorn and I thought, “Why doesn’t she just put some fucking bacon on a plate and call it a day?”