Keira Knightley: Red Carpet Glamour?

What will she wear? Keira Knightley is gearing up for what will surely be the biggest five months of her career (or, at least her acting career thus far) with the American premier of her new flick Atonement and the months and months of ensueing promotional work and the big bang of a very likely second Academy Award nomination and, let's face it, possible WIN. 2007's best actress roster is looking both incredible crowded, yet sparse. Keira's turn as Cecilia in Atonement could very easily be the ticket to Keira becoming the second youngest best actress winner ever (Marlee Matlin was 21 when she won for Children of a Lesser God, Keira turns 23 in March so she would be 22 at the time of the Oscars).

But, I am quite interested in what she is going to be wearing in this very important season. I think she looked quite great at the Venice Film Festival premiere for the film (below, with co-star James McAvoy) win that light pink texture of fairy floss dress. The dress she wore to the Venice photocall (right) was sort of plain though. Something a bit lighter for a photo op on a Venice canal dock may have made more of an impression instead of the heavy navy blue dress she wore.


The reason I am even discussing this however is because DListed had a story about how much Keira hates red carpets.

I hate red-carpet events; I absolutely hate them. I don't like the fact that people write, 'Oh, you look like crap' in print. Or 'I don't like your arms!'

Thing is, Keira has been known to make some, ahem, red carpet monstrosities, but I think we can all remember that absolutely stunning dress she wore to the 2006 Academy Awards where she was nominated for best actress for her role as Elizabeth Bennett in Joe Wright's (the same director as Atonement) Pride & Prejudice. Let's relive that amazing, brilliant, perfect outfit below. It's probably my favourite Oscar dress of the last few years. Classically beautiful in a wonderfully unorthadox colour and, for a girl who is constantly followed by anorexia rumours and quotes of "too skinny!", she actually wore a dress that clung tightly to her body yet actually made her look incredibly flattering and sexy.


So, here's hoping that Keira owns the red carpet in the following months on the way to collecting an Oscar statue. A recent re-watch of Pride & Prejudice made me decide that she deserved the Oscar for that from the list of nominees (with the absense of Joan Allen for Upside of Anger the category was pretty much null and void in my eyes though). I just like the idea of Knightley being an Oscar winner, giving us a chance to laugh at those idiots who are constantly "Keira is an ugly skinny british bitch, if she wins an Oscar I will kill myself she was in King Arthur omgzzzz!" (or whatever).

PS; As long as you keep dressing all fabo-like there will be no cause for "you look like crap" comments from me. I'm really cheering for you, I just like you for some reason. And I don't think the Academy "loses all credibility" by nominating you. It loses credibility by cutting off acceptance speeches and limiting nomination clips to a few brief seconds and then filling in time with pointless sketches and montages thank you very much. I'm done.

James McAvoy is a 12-Year-Old Boy

James McAvoy is a cutie. Despite not thinking that much of him as an actor in The Last King of Scotland, I like him. But whoever designed the latest poster for Atonement made him look like a 12-year-old Yu-Gi-Oh character. At least Keira looks amazing amongst all those flowers (that look like poppies, but I could be wrong).


[click to watch it grow, src]

Completely random, can I just say that I love the word "atonement". It sounds so... lyrical. Or something. I dunno. Feels like a very british word, too.

Hopefully at Trilogy's End, Too

So, thankfully, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is quite good. I also hope it's the last Pirates film for reasons that I can't discuss without spoiling the end (spoiler discussion at the end of this.) It's too long, but so were the other two Pirates movies. It's confusing, but so were the other two Pirates movies. It's a bit full-of-showoffiness, but so were the other two Pirates movies. This one has a handful of very well-done action sequences (I particularly enjoyed the "Up is Down" sequence as well as the entire battle sequence at the end, which is exhaustive to say the least.)

I was also extremely overwhelmingly happy that the two people who come out of this movie most glowingly were Keira Knightley and Geoffrey Rush. Keira has come a long way since the first Pirates movie (including that well-deserved Oscar nod for Pride & Prejudice) and she actually gets stuff to do in this movie! She's actually At World's End's main character if you consider that pretty much all the action revolves around her and she's always there whereas the others (including Depp's Jack Sparrow) disappear at times. And, yes, it was so good having Rush back in the pirate life. He's so good in the role of Barbossa.

I also loved the production design. That opening sequence in Singapore was like a gift for my eyes, as was the Shipwreck Cove set. Delish. The visual effects were also quite amazing and it certainly looks like the crew here will be winning their second Oscar (now that Spider-Man 3 is surely well and truly out of the running and I wouldn't even say is guaranteed for a nod. I mean, Revenge of the Sith didn't even get nommed and everyone assumed that nod was a given.) The costume was also series-best work and I would love to see Penny Rose finally get a nomination for her stellar work on all three films (how has she gone un-nominated?)

On the negative side, the storyline involving Naomie Harris' Calypso was so completely and utterly confusing that I sort of gave up trying to follow it (apparently she's some human-form version of the ocean spirits? I dunno. Surely they could've created the maelstrom out of something else and save all the confusion.) And with so many people backstabbing one another and then backstabbing others and side characters popping up to backstab someone it was all a bit much at one stage.

Overall though I quite liked it and I'm gonna give it a B.

**The following is spoiler stuff for the end of the movie. Don't read if you don't want to know**

I hope this is the last movie they make in the Pirates, because if you stayed until the end of the credits there was that sequence set ten years later! Keira's character doesn't look remotely different - couldn't they have done some sort of makeup job on here? A few wrinkles? Still, it's ten years later. Are they gonna release another one in three years and have all the cast look the exact same? I'm sure that Disney will get another film out of this series at some point (there are new Die Hard, Rambo and Indiana Jones movies coming afterall), so maybe let the franchise rest at three when the story naturally ends and just wait a decade or so before bringing it out of retirement. At least Keira and Orlando might look their age a bit more then.