Helena Bonham Carter Steals the Show

She has saved more than one movie like Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella that was about to sink under its own weight before Helena Bonham Carter made a cameo appearance as the fairy godmother, injecting much-needed modern tones into the well-known story.

In Oceans 8 Carter serves with a ensemble cast led by understated Sandra Bullock as Danny Ocean’s sister Debbie, and with the stillness of the “recently incarcerated,” and Cate Blanchett wearing skin-tight leather pants in every other scene. Comparisons to how well a-list actors performed in Oceans 11+ are inevitable, since both movies were produced by Steven Soderbergh and based on characters developed by the late George Clayton Johnson (for Sinatra’s Oceans 11).

A story in three acts, Oceans 8 starts with assembling the team of grifters, the actual jewelry heist, and the later worries about getting away with it that includes a tasty twist.

Bullock sets the tone so other actors must play to her Clutch-Cargo delivery where her face seems frozen with botox. Bullock’s bright moments include a Heidi Klum impersonation in German for stalling the museum guards while Blanchett and friends do the wet work. Viewers noticed that the women had to call in a guy, Shaobo Qin as Yen, the acrobatic “grease man” from the Oceans movies, for the actual heist.

Racial diversity is observed with a hacker (Rhianna), a pickpocket (Awkwafina), and a jewelry maker (Mindy Kaling) rounding out the team. Rhianna has several good moments injecting street humor into the stabilizing shop-lifting worldview of Bullock. Only Anne Hathaway gets to act out as the spoiled movie star and supposed mark for their highly convoluted sting to steal a six-pound diamond necklace called the Toussaint at the Met Gala.

Habit patterns are believable for real women, not apeing the men, or trying to appeal to the men, but pursuing their own interests. Characters live close to the street in NYC so that visiting the fence living in the suburbs (Sarah Paulson), the only happily married character who regularly lies to her daughter about her profession, has the same feel that visiting the suburbs always has.

Spectacle is provided especially for entrances and exits in ball gowns borrowed from Vogue, cameos for aging actresses like Marlo Thomas, and tongue-in-cheek jibes (“the ego has landed”) at the cork-screwed ex-lover played by Richard Armitage. I especially liked Paulson’s infiltration of Anna Wintour’s Vogue operation that managed the Met Gala. The world belongs to women who know how to dress.

Back to Helena Bonham Carter whose dialogue is bright, especially for the bits they throw her way. (“I sweat.”) Carter out-acts Bullock and Blanchett in her first scene as an over-the-hill designer deeply in debt to the IRS. She uses an Irish accent and excellent comic timing in her scene to view the six-pound necklace at Cartier, carrying the plot without having to explain it.

Carter’s costume while she accompanies Daphne Kluger (Anne Hathaway) on the red carpet, matched by the home-made headdress and understated mugging, easily outshines Hathaway.

The story’s third act is saved by a natural performance from James Corden as the insurance adjuster who brings a Brit attitude to NYC that seems to balance the faux-feminist coolness of the team of grifters. He has a history of catching the Ocean siblings for their sins and accuses Bullock of a “two-fer” (the heist and revenge by framing the ex-lover) without the punch of demanding jail time for the heist. “Eventually, you'll have to let go of this [revenge]," he says.

Of course, the story has a big hole in the plot. The fake for the stolen necklace is re-evaluated by Cartier on its return to the vault, prompting the story’s third act about getting away with it. However, the other zircon pieces are not re-evaluated upon return and found to be fakes?

All-in-all, a satisfying chick film that can be watched more than once, if only to savor Carter’s acting skill. Also, Rhianna may have a future in movies. I’m looking forward to several sequels.

Hollywood (Still) Doesn’t Get It

Hollywood has granted quality roles to women more frequently in the new century. Many well-written characters are for a TV series such as Little Big Lies, but we have learned to not complain.

In this decade of movie remakes and gender adjustments, the reboot of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was inevitable, I suppose. Director Roar Uthang moves from developing video games to movies with this outing, so the action sequences are in place.

The race to recover her pack stolen by a wharf street gang allowed a very buff Alicia Vikander (Light Between the Oceans) as Lara to depend on her wits and using some Captain Jack Sparrow jumps with wharf equipment. I especially enjoyed the later sequence for the rotting Japanese bomber that tumbles down the waterfall in a series of responses to Lara’s weight.

Upon analysis, though, my hackles are raised for underlying gender assumption typical of Hollywood archetypes.

Lara’s father (played by Dominic West) has a Stark-like business empire but leaves Lara isolated on the family estate with no business training or martial arts training from a misguided need to protect her. Completely isolated, Lara is forced into a pattern of self-taught skills and chip-on-her-shoulder self-reliance.

Hello, Hollywood!  A son in this situation would be trained for an executive position as the heir apparent. His skills training would include Asian masters and ex-military types on daddy’s payroll.

**spoiler alert**

So Daddy has gone missing, but Lara in her pride doesn’t sign into access to his billions but hones her skills as an East London bike courier. The visual transition from born-to-the-manor supposed shrinking violet to spunky street kid is painful to watch. Lara even pawns her only jewelry, a gift from Daddy, to finance the travel to Asia and her first real adventure.

My complaint is always the same. Where are Lara’s sisters and cousins and aunts and sorority sisters and rich girlfriends who have entered the university or business or the stock market? Where is the aging mentor who happens to be the Asian ambassador’s wife? A good ol’ boy support system exists for the male comic book heroes, but not for Lara Croft.

It’s true that Batman had an aging mansion and inherited wealth. It’s true that Indiana Jones went on at least one adventure following the clues left by his dad. Except both (originally cartoon) characters had a battery of colleagues from the police, university, adventurer sidekicks, foreign traders, foreign laborers -- all old pals who came running with a single phone call.

Lara Croft doesn’t even have a girlfriend travel agent who will spot her the cost of a ticket to the vicinity of the exotic island. The girlfriends are kickboxers whose roles in the story are to find some excuse for a woman’s lack of upper body strength.

The only other woman in the whole movie is an executive secretary type who holds the keys to the vault, played by Kristen Scott Thomas. Her moves are mostly held in reserve because she’s set up as a possible internal nemesis in a sequel, maybe similar to the Jeff Bridges character in one of the Tony Stark movies.

**spoiler alert**

Finally admitting that Daddy is gone, Lara is about to sign the estate transfer papers (in ignorance of how she’s manipulated by the executives) but is distracted by a Chinese puzzle that leads her to a dusky vault. Here is Daddy’s personal legacy to Lara, boxes of unfinished projects that were either unworkable or unprofitable. Throw her a bone.

Typical. And Hollywood doesn’t feel the gender insult, not in the slightest.

It’s true that Spiderman finds his daddy’s research hidden away in a sunken streetcar, but it’s all the research of a lifetime that was prematurely sacrificed and intended for Peter Parker’s advancement in the sciences along with colleagues. Parker’s secret status as Spiderman happens AFTER his parents are gone.

Part of the confusion for who is Lara Croft is a conflicting presentation of who is Daddy, an empire-building (but over-protective) business executive, or an adventurer who is stuck for seven years with this one problem of saving the world from a pandemic. That’s what happens with writing a script on committee.

I have several gripes about the storyline once Lara is in Asia, especially the useless and drunken Asian sidekick who is pressed into a work gang as soon as they arrive on the island. No diversity insult there.

Once they open the tomb, Lara is pushed forward by Daddy and the team of bad guy diggers to lead with solving the tunnel traps, maybe as a sacrifice to them. She is allowed the mental exercise of addressing ancient puzzles from archeological evidence. When the walls begin to collapse, though, Lara can save only herself. She doesn’t save Daddy. She doesn’t save any member of the digging team. She doesn’t save the Asian workers who turn out to be good with guns once they get their hands on some.

At the end the adventure, Lara has not gained a battery of loyal followers, men or women. Her success is achieved in complete isolation.

Women action adventure heroes often operate in isolation. Who can forget Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley in Alien who must fight the monster with only the ship’s equipment as her ally? Women characters in real situations often are forced to side-step gender isolation like Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs.

Where are their sisters or aunts or cousins or sorority sisters or trained colleagues in a good ol’ girl network?

Here’s an insight for Hollywood.  Women mostly look to each other for how to solve today’s problem. Movies that allow the display of this minion are often revenge-on-husbands storylines like Rosanne Barr’s She Devil or Goldie Hawn’s First Wives Club. At least these adventures got it right for who women call first to get it done.

But I’m in danger of sounding like a problematic woman here with my ideas for improving the Lara Croft story. Next outing will be my complaints for women acting how men think women act in Oceans 8.

The Life of Ideas

With the Summer 2018 need for a second Supreme Court justice nominated by Pres. Trump, I’m surprised at the shouting of old rhetoric from the far left. No prisons, no ICE, no school tuition. Like any of those could happen.

One leftist news segment guest (I knew she was leftist from the angry tone of a defeated person) claimed that university students will rise up and achieve what congress cannot with impeaching Trump. 

I remembered my days as a returning adult to art school in Chicago. We were required to take certain gen-ed courses, so I signed up for ten-weeks of post WWII Marxist thought, the latter-day thinkers who came out of the European Marxist dialogue.

I often went horns-to-horns with this teacher who was wholly committed to the idea that Marxism was a better path than decadent capitalism. I asked in class, “Isn’t Marxism disproved by history? What do you expect these art students to take away from these readings?”

The students sat in the back and doodled witch cartoons on their notepads, sometimes a pair of them.

So this teacher played a video of Michel Foucault. You remember him; the guy who thought up the prison round with a center tower that Cuba actually tried.

In the video a young sycophant interviewer lobs softball questions to Foucault in the hotel suite with a bed in it. Foucault in a thin turtleneck and slacks, and wearing slippers I think, languished on the bed and rubbed his bald head before he tolerantly answered.

I remember thinking then that when I get rich and famous, I will never allow anybody to film me in a room with a bed in it.

And that’s what I learned from Michel Foucault.

These days when a student of mine starts with the polished derivative rhetoric about school-to-prison pipeline, I ask if he has read Foucault. His mouth puckers and his eyes go blank.

I’m not too worried that free-and-fair market principles, used as a bludgeon by Pres. Trump to humble trading partners, will risk much exposure of structural flaws from the inquiring minds of college freshmen.

Chicago Tribune article

Author Stella Atrium: An academic inspired by science fiction

http://fw.to/2ZXICsM

Authors of science fiction and fantasy often ground their writing in real-life history and social issues. Star Hall, a Chicago author who writes under the pen name Stella Atrium, became so immersed in her research for a science-fiction novel about six years ago, she created a DePaul University class out of it.

"It grew out of a novel about displaced persons and going into a culture you don't understand," says Hall, whose pseudonym is a Latin translation of her real name. Hall is an adjunct professor at DePaul, where she has been teaching in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric and Discourse since 2005. At the time, she was researching for "HeartStone," the second book in her Dolvia Saga fantasy series. "In it, people are pushed off their land and received onto the savanna."

Hall has since taught her Global Perspectives on Undocumented Workers in America class every spring. "It changes every time I teach it," she says. "The topic itself changes — it's not like accounting."

The novels Hall has written as Atrium are also richly varied, populated by characters, heritages and embattled environments derived from all corners of the globe. Reviewer Bob Brinkman from Goodreads aptly calls her work, "anthropological fiction set against a sci-fi backdrop." The Dolvia Saga, which includes "SufferStone," "HeartStone" and "StrikeStone," will eventually total six novels ("ClearStone" is coming out next year). And she has a new stand-alone fantasy novel out now called "Seven Beyond."

Always a fan of science fiction, Hall says she started writing in part to shake one dominant trend in the genre. "I would read these books and realize that the heroes were (always) boys," she says. "And that didn't make sense to me. Why write in a genre with such wide open space in cultures but still use an orphan boy as the protagonist?"

Providing the science-fiction genre with female protagonists was Hall's first reason to write, but she didn't just populate her books with stock-character heroes who now happened to be women. She approaches all her plots with the intent to show her readers problems women face in the real world and how they uniquely solve them.

Hall, whose favorite authors include Margaret Atwood, Robin Hobb and Elizabeth Moon, says she always puzzled over the solitude of female characters in typical fantasy or sci-fi books. "In the fantasy genre, women are a member of the team," she says. "She is (often) an unusual foreign woman. We know nothing about her." Looking to upend this trend, Hall makes sure her strong female characters aren't singular. "They know aunts, cousins and sisters and other women in community," she says. "I am very interested in women in groups."

"What impresses me most about Stella's writing is her use of rigorous academic research to inform fantasy," says Peter Vandenberg, professor and chair of Writing, Rhetoric and Discourse at DePaul University. "She has a keen sense of the inseparable relationship between inquiry and good storytelling." He says that Hall's love for research is apparent in her novels — and inspiring in the classroom. "Stella's expertise as a fantasy writer, rhetorician and researcher allows her to help students break through some tired old ideas about the 'creative writer.'"

Kristin Kloberdanz is a freelance writer.

"Seven Beyond"

By Stella Atrium, self-published, 295 pages, 99 cents

Copyright © 2014, Chicago Tribune

Blog Archive: Uses for Magic Similar to Playing Chess

When I was a kid, my Daddy taught my brothers and me how to play chess. Only one brother excelled after the first lessons, but the introduction to the game was exhilarating, like the opportunity to make fancy moves (oh, that space is open, so I can move my knight!) and to take the opponent’s queen. What fun!

Later we learned that chess is a game of strategy and the player doesn’t move pieces without a plan. Some strategies are used many times and have names such as a fianchetto bishop or back rank checkmate.  To maneuver into these board structures takes several accepted moves that your opponent will recognize with the very first move.

Magic drives the story:

Some writers are still in the learning stage (from which I never emerged as a chess player) where the intrigue rests with executing exotic moves. The purpose of writing is to explore the uses of magic.

The (often charming) development of magic systems in these stories overwhelms the plot and serves to engage the reader on its own level – sometimes a cloying banquet of magic where the love story or the need for a final battlefield are tertiary.
I place The Last Airbender and Percy Jackson in this category.

Magic enlivens the story:

Some writers have stepped past the stage of fun with magic and use the presence of characters with magic to drive the plot. These writers are similar to chess players who have studied some famous chess strategies and want to employ them in a match. One rule of thumb to recognize this type of writer is that the magic is similar from one series to the next – because the strategies are similar.

I place Eragon and How to Train Your Dragon in this category; formula writing using well-established plot points that delight audience expectation. But we know the outcome by page 60 because we know the strategy with the opening move.

Magic inserted just because we can:

In Theft of Swords by Sullivan, an entire early sequence was about rescuing a wizard from a prison that nobody had succeeded at opening for two centuries. The descriptions were fun and the logical problems intriguing. But when the wizard is free, he says thanks and leaves. I suppose he returns later to return the favor, but I didn’t get that far.

I read (part of) Throne of the Crescent Moon due to a recommendation from Kirkus Reviews. I suppose the readers at Kirkus are jaded and liked the story because the setting, and therefore the magic, was oriental. But the magic was everywhere, in every scene used by every character. I couldn’t follow the story – but I also couldn’t follow Battlestar Galactica, so go figure.

Magic provides a strong ending:

The duel with the basilisk in one of the Harry Potter books is an example of overcoming the raging opponent, after which all questions are settled and Harry can return to Hogwarts or the next term with a fresh slate. And the final duel with Lord Voldemort that winds up the series is a great example of using magic to bring all influences to a conclusion.

Magic is often tamped down in this type of story by the limitations of the user, but serves as deus ex machina in the story climax or end of a trilogy.  I enjoyed The Daughter of the Forest trilogy by Juliet Marillier and cried for the last 60 pages of the first story – something about swans and sacrifice to end a curse.

Marillier’s novels included elements of formula, though, just like with chess moves. A ingénue who is touch by magic but ignorant of its uses, guided by a would-be lover with unwavering devotion, an unrelenting female opponent, along with benign spirits and druids with little to do. Sound familiar?

The third story titled Child of Prophecy repeats these elements for a third generation while the milieu remains static. The climax is a battlefield, of course, where our ingénue enters without a plan, without her magic, and without a weapon, encouraged by spirits to “fake it”. Of course, the gods have a place for her that is not hinted at earlier in the trilogy (that I won’t reveal here), and the gods make all the combatants awestruck while our heroine performs her final farewells to family.

Magic is used sparingly or when necessary:

Some writers use magic to change the story rather than to bolster the story, a subtle difference. I enjoyed reading The Bone Doll’s Twin by Lynn Flewelling, especially the first story that sets up the curse – much like Snow White except the agent of the curse is helpful rather than mean. The reversal of the curse came (close to) the middle of the trilogy and included gender questions for girls-with-swords, so I was intrigued.

The final story Hidden Warrior has an inserted holy man from a different culture who happens along the road at an opportune moment to serve the hero, but he wanders off before the final battle. Once the initial curse was alleviated, the presence of magic was not essential, so the inserted holy man was a maneuver (like in chess) where the reader can see the rationale.

Magic as a developed system:

Brandon Sanderson: ‘nuff said.

The only issue I have with the entire story depending on uses of magic by good guys and bad guys, that Sanderson calls “hard magic”, is that the story becomes predictable, even repetitive. The characters are dependent on skills or discipline to save them and have few other interests.

The Fantastic Four fits this category. Even the bad guy has a power, but must use it in certain ways with specific limitations. The plot revolves around how to trip him up on his own special power.

Magic from a master:

I’m currently reading The Blade Itself (Book I of a trilogy), which is long. Joe Abercrombie uses magic to build the plot and keep the reader engaged. His scenes are episodic (irritating), and too involved with the details of torture (revolting), but the reader feels the cold rain and sword cuts (shows good choices).

Magic is used at surprising moments and differently than a rehash for training dragons. A campfire has a spirit that he can tamp under his tongue to light the next campfire: he, he, he. I’m not but 48% through the book (did I mention that it’s long?), but I have hope that this chess match begins a new strategy that has yet to be named.