New Remake of "Anna Karenina" with Keira Knightley in the Lead. Yikes.

Greta Garbo as Anna (1948).

Yesterday, I was writing here about the Count of Monte Cristo being turned into the ABC drama series "Revenge," which starts airing this month -- and today, I read that there's going to be another remake of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, this time starring Keira Knightley.  

You remember her, she's the actress that played Elizabeth Bennet in a 2005 remake of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

Jude Law is going to play Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin (Anna's husband) and Aaron Johnson is in the role of Count Vronsky (Anna's lover).  I checked IMDb, but so far there's no word on who is going to play Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin. 

My first thoughts:

I recently read Anna Karinina (see post here) and it's still pretty fresh in my mind.  Having read this movie news on Nikke Finke's blog, I'm not sure what to think.  I'm not overjoyed.

• I have no idea who Aaron Johnson is ... but he better be really something if Jude Law, of all people, is the guy that Anna dumps for him.  
• As I recall, you didn't get thru the first three chapters before you learned that Anna was much younger than her husband, and that he wasn't all that handsome.  I don't see how they are going to ugly-up Jude Law for this one. So, I'm puzzled by Law's casting. 
• Which brings me to the female lead:  I don't see Keira Knightley as Anna.  It's not working for me.  Maybe it's that Anna seemed older to me than Keira Knightley when the story began ... maybe in her early 30s?  I see Catherine Zeta-Jones here more than the star of the Pirates movie franchise. 
• One key character for me is Levin.   Who's getting to play Levin?  I'm scared to think about it.

I suppose I should be happy that Hollywood is going back to the classics for new material given the lack of movies I thought were worth my moola over the past few years.  Thing is, tho, with a classic there comes the reader's love of the story ... and it feels sorta personal.

We'll see, I guess.