Worst of 2023 Movies #1: Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey
One of the things I did mention this year was that both TV and music had 2 very easy choices when it came to the worst of the year.
Movies on the other hand, that’s where you have to dig.
And luckily for us, a Disney icon this past year suddenly became not exclusive to Disney.
AA Milnes iconic Winnie the Pooh has had the red shirt and Hunny love for a long time.
But now that he’s no longer tied into the silly old bear lifestyle any method can be used.
Hence here we get him and Piglet going feral after being abandoned by a maturing Christopher Robin.
When he returns with his wife he’s quickly captured and forced to watch his former friends figuratively rip his heart out.
Only the focus would become standard slasher fair with a switch to 5 college students renting a cabin nearby the 100 acre wood and becoming fodder.
If not tied to the iconic figure, this would have been an interesting premise.
But public domain or not there are certain aspects you just don’t mess with. Pooh is one of them.
Now that we have more pd character movies on the way, the new Bambi from the same studio looks like the same boat.
Only keep a certain person away from it.
SUM 22: The Public Domain claims an icon that gets warped into something that shouldn’t have manifested. The Silly Old Bear doesn’t belong here.
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okay so I've been spending a lot of time thinking about Harry Potter recently and trolling the wiki for reasons and I have the weirdest observation about the series.
What is JKR's deal with Ravenclaw women?
I mean consider our main Ravenclaw girls: Luna Lovegood and Cho Chang (and Marietta Edgecombe). Luna in the movies is portrayed as whimsically queer, and that's not inaccurate to the books, but in the books she is more often a punchline than anything. She's a parody of the Ravenclaw ideals of creativity and openminded-ness to the point where she believes crazy conspiracy theories.
But she's our most positively portrayed Ravenclaw. Which is more than I can say for Cho and Marietta. Cho is portrayed as a pitiable character, someone so emotional and loyal that she is sympathetic, but the narrative portrays her overemotional nature and loyalty as bad traits. She's so emotional she'll blow up over perceived threats, and dwells on trauma, and it makes her a drag to talk to. And her loyalty is a bad thing because she chooses to be loyal to Marietta. Marietta is ESPECIALLY treated awfully. Marietta is scared for her mother's job that she rats out the DA and for her choice she is forever branded a traitor at 16, and this is completely justifiable. Like, if Hermione can jinx a paper to disfigure a person's face than couldn't she just jinx the paper to make it physically impossible to reveal the DA, except perhaps under the influence of veritaserum? Like the film did? But no, Hermione is instead more preoccupied with punishing than preventing (an insane thing for me to say, I'm sorry Hermione it's not your fault that your author is kinda insane about women).
(And just as a sidebar but Marietta is also given an illustration that makes it clear she was kinda ugly before the pimples which is so rude, but also so like JKR.)
Then you have very minor characters like Padma who are just generally portrayed as kinda bitchy. Padma gets off better than her sister in terms of being treated as bitchy, but it seems like Padma always carries the stigma of being disappointed by Ron at the Yule Ball.
But this goes back even FURTHER, to the oldest Ravenclaw student we are introduced to, Helena Ravenclaw.
In the films, again, Helena's scene with Harry is haunting. She's treated with respect and tragedy (almost all of the dialogue in the film is original). But in the books, yes we actually get her tragic backstory, but she is portrayed as haughty, vain, and prideful.
You can also add in Trelawney there as a Ravenclaw who is treated like a joke (crazy* and alcoholic).
And consider that the two women we know were almost in Ravenclaw, Hermione and McGonagall, end up going to Gryffindor and are portrayed as better off for it.
And like there is more to explore here. The four Ravenclaw men we really get to know are Filius, Ollivander, Xenophilius, and Lockhart. Xenpohilius is a conspiracy theorist (and a death eater sympathizer I just know it) and Lockhart is a buffoon who only really upholds the Ravenclaw wit and is skilled at memory charms.
(There's this crazy part of the Ravenclaw wiki page that actually compares Lockhart to Cho Chang because they both wanted to be popular. WHAT.)
Meanwhile you have Ollivander who is a positive Ravenclaw character, but is also barely in the books and Filius Flitwick. And Filius is a positive character but it is also canon that the Sorting Hat almost put him in Gryffindor, which seems like a pointed attempt to make it clear he's better than most Ravenclaws. Because he's got something of a Gryffindor edge to him.
I don't really know what the whole point of me going on this rant was about, other than just to point out that JKR is weird about Ravenclaws and the women in general. Almost all of them aren't allowed to actually uphold the actual values of their house: Wisdom, Intelligence, Learning. The only traits they ever really uphold is Wit if they are popular and Creativity, which seems to be a nice way of saying they're crazy conspiracy theorists. The only characters that really get anything good out of the house are Minerva and Hermione, and them being hatstalls is only meant to emphasize their intelligence in comparison to their Gryffindor peers. Otherwise Ravenclaw seems to just be JKR's go to bitchy/we need a villain who isn't Slytherin house.
*When I say "crazy" in this post I am referring to how JKR treats the characters. Babbling, loony, conspiratorial, and not in their right minds.
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Watched Marriage Story today, for the very first time, and had a lotta thoughts about EDTS Ice and Mav, especially their divorce-era. Wondered whether they would’ve genuinely gotten a divorce, if they’d somehow been married at that point. Charlie kinda reminded me of Ice: the benign belief in his own intellectual superiority, the self-pity, the willful blindness towards the reality of his relationship, the selfishness—not in the sense that Ice wasn’t kind or warm or loving, but in the sense that he really needed things to go his way (for them to not talk about anything). Of course Mav was no Nicole, he definitely shared his half of the blame, but I could totally imagine the two of ‘em having a huge fight that devolved into: “I can’t believe I have to know you … forever!” ‘Cause they kinda did: being in the Navy, moving around in the same circles, sharing an estranged kid they were both hoping to make-up with…
ok so part one of this ask not having seen marriage story: yeah i am 100% sure if they’d codified their relationship in words they would’ve broken up. like forever. letting all that anger simmer instead of boiling over is sometimes a blessing in disguise—if you say you’re together, you’re together. if you say you’re over, you’re over. no take-backsies on something like that. whereas if you don’t talk about any of it, the boundaries are a lot less definite. a blessing in disguise. i did (for mental torture purposes, and also for a prompt fill i [sorry to whomever sent it in] didnt hate myself enough to write) brainstorm that Bad Ending—if, say, Mav HAD been reckless and decisive and told ice “get the fuck out of my house obviously this isn’t gonna work you betrayed my trust & bailed on me at the second lowest moment of my life & conspired with a dying woman who is in love with you to ruin our son’s life in the exact same way MY life was once ruined and you blame me for turning you gay but you were already gay to begin with and You Fucking Killed My Best Friend And We Never Talk About It so fuck you we’re done” and went no-contact and threw ices shit out into the street and never went back to the hangar and changed all the locks and his phone number etc. and… say ice is like decimated for a few years straight, like numbingly and crushingly depressed, & then he meets not-his-sister-sarah and tells her the truth (that now he can realize with the benefit of hindsight & grief & loss—funny how loss always makes everything real clear all of a sudden): that he was in a long term relationship with a man with whom he was raising a child & with whom he was probably in love, and she marries him anyway, and obviously she’s not maverick and she doesn’t make him as happy as he did and she knows that but at least she stops him from being actively su*cidal and at least they can be open about their relationship in public and maybe they have a kid or two, and maybe he completely shifts his strategy and relocates to Virginia and moves his AOR to the atlantic instead of the pacific so he can get as far away from San Diego and maverick and home as possible, and maybe it works, and maybe there are some days he doesn’t even think about maverick or Bradley or goose, and when people mention the 1990s he grimaces and tries to forget, and he’s not ashamed of it so much as he is hurt by the memory of his own carelessness, and maybe he cries often and very very quietly, and maybe he gets his life back on track and before he knows it he has four stars on the opposite coast from the one he’d originally planned, and of course he’s not happy, but he’s never happy, so whatever.
Until. some event he can’t get out of. A mutual friend’s change of command ceremony or retirement ceremony or funeral. first thing he sees (like always) is captain Mitchell shining in his dress blues (like always). they avoid each other all evening, why bother trying? until someone forces them together, “weren’t you two at TOPGUN together? didn’t you guys kill all those soviets together?” and on and on, yes, we were, this is very very uncomfortable, until eventually they’re alone, and maverick asks, “can i buy you a drink sir?” but he’s staring at ice’s left hand and staring and staring, and it’s been over a decade but still ice doesn’t know how to say no to him, so they leave this joint and get a drink somewhere else, and maverick says, “how long have you been married,” and ice says, “eight years next march,” and you can see maverick doing the math in his head 2016-8=2008 okay, “what’s her name,” “sarah,” maverick laughs but feels bad for laughing, ice says, “we have a couple kids,” maverick stops laughing. “shit,” maverick says. ice says, “it was very difficult for me for a very long time;” maverick says, “what did you tell her;” ice says, “the truth;” maverick waits a second to respond and then says, “and what was the truth?” ice tells him the truth which is “well that i was in a long-term relationship with another man and we were raising a kid together and most likely we were in love with each other but it didn’t work out.” maverick takes a long time to respond to that and is blinking a lot and if you put your ear to his chest you’d hear that he is struggling to breathe. he says “and she married you anyway.” “she did.” he says “and You married Her anyway.” “i did.” Ice pauses then says “it was very difficult for me for a very long time.” he pauses some more and drinks and watches disinterestedly as maverick blinks and blinks. then ice says “so uh are you…?” maverick says “ive had a couple… a couple flings… nothing. nothing like.” and ice understands. maverick says, “why didn’t you tell me?” “tell you what?” “that you. that you and i were. that you felt that way about me.” ice says, “i did. i tried. i left you voicemails & sent you postcards & tried for half a decade to get in touch with the kid. did you not get my—did you not get my voicemails or my letters?” maverick blinks and blinks and says “i did get them but i didn’t open them;” ice says “well that’s that then.” and drinks. maverick says “how long after me did you meet her;” ice says “a couple years, i was deployed for O.I.F.” maverick says, “yeah, me too.” and he almost starts crying. he says “ice I’m sorry but you’re telling me ive completely wasted the last decade of my life and i don’t know what to do. do you love her? does she make you happy?” ice says “yes” and “yes.” maverick says “does she make you as happy as you were with me?” ice doesn’t care enough anymore to be dishonest and says “no. Of course not. but she made life easier when it was very difficult for me for a very long time.” maverick says, “run away with me. fuck it. let’s try again. let’s start over. no one else understands. come on. you and me. we always come back to each other. let’s try again.” and it is very very tempting. One of those watershed moments when life goes crystal clear and you can see through it. but only for a moment. ice is so tired and too old for that kind of adventure anymore. he says, i have kids, and i have a wife, and i have the navy and my four stars to think of, and i— he can be honest about this: “i want to. you know i do.” he pauses. doesn’t think he wants maverick to touch him. that can’t possibly end well and historically has not ended well. flinches away when maverick reaches out. he says “but i can’t.” maverick says, “i miss you more than anything. i want—even still!—i—please…I can’t…” another pause. ice says, “Let me get the bill, Mav.” so ice pays mavericks tab and they go their separate ways.
and maverick goes out to the desert to fly the sr-72 darkstar and pushes it beyond its limits on purpose and he doesn’t intend to survive but it’s his stupid too-good instincts that have him popping the cockpit escape pod ejection handle, and he lives by accident, like always, and destroys several billion taxpayer dollars in an instant, and without admiral Kazansky on his six backing him up admiral Cain has everything he needs to dishonorably discharge captain mitchell from the navy, so after 33 years of service to his country and 3 air to air kills maverick is unceremoniously dishonorably discharged and they kick him out without a second thought, and the Dagger special mission command goes to someone else and Bradley gets team leader and probably fails and probably dies, and atlantic fleet commander Tom Kazansky is offered the promotion to chief of naval operations and takes it, and doesn’t live long enough to meet his grandchildren, and that’s about all i have to say about that.
Now im going to go watch marriage story to answer this ask educatedly so hold on.
ok coming back the next day post marriage story and yeah you’re right i think it would look like that
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