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Oscar season begins with film festival.

“Anna Karenina” (opening in November): Keira Knightley and director Joe Wright have enjoyed great success at TIFF in the past with “Pride and Prejudice” and “Atonement,” and they have scored again with this innovative reimagining of Leo Tolstoy’s tale of illicit love in 19th-century Imperial Russia. Tom Stoppard’s sharply observed screenplay gives a first-class framework and Wright’s decision to present the story in a boldly theatrical setting (comparisons were made to Baz Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge”) works exceptionally well, underscoring the story’s potent themes without overwhelming them.

There's a way to make Anna Karenina feel new.

Granted, not everyone will be thrilled with director Joe Wright's take on Tolstoy's classic, but you have to give the man credit for trying something beautifully inventive. This production, starring Keira Knightley, Aaron Johnson and Jude Law, is like a musical without the singing. The action often takes place on stage, the movements beautifully choreographed as if the entire film were one exquisite dance. Oh, and the costumes are stunning.

The Hollywood Reporter has learned that Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner, the Brits who co-run Working Title Films and are the producers of the upcoming awards contenders Anna Karenina and Les Miserables, will receive the Hollywood Producers Award at the 16th annual Hollywood Film Awards -- the first awards show of the 2012 Oscar season -- when its gala ceremony is held Oct. 22 at the Beverly Hilton.

There are a few possibilities in "Anna Karenina," including Jude Law, Domnhal Gleeson and Matthew Macfadyen, but this film is looking more like a tech and costume category movie than anything else.

8. Anna Karenina

No film has been more unfairly written off as a dumb blonde since Marie Antoinette. Similar to Sofia Coppola's misunderstood marvel, Joe Wright's take on Tolstoy is a layer cake, its frosting-thick artifice not antithetical to substance but integral to it.

He said that the director of Anna Karenina, Joe Wright, had got the best out of the cast and crew on the film.

"I've been very lucky to know him and for him to trust me with the job of lighting and photographing his movies," he said.

"He creates a whirlwind of images and ideas, whether you think they work or not emotionally, and I think they do, they are singularly unique and from an artist's eye."

Eye on the Oscars 2013: The Cinematographer

“What we wanted to express in the theatrical realm was a kind of ossified fading Czarist Russia," he says. "What we wanted to express in the landscapes was a more positive hopeful future, in line with the book and Tolstoy’s socialist cradle – a kind of hopeful view of an agrarian future.