The Skolney Blog

The WNBA has entered a new world, of fatter contracts and expansion teams. And it's TEARING ME APART!  Well, okay, I'm fine, but it has been quite a week and change for Lynx fans like myself.  It started with the expansion draft. I hated how they did this before free agency, cause the Lynx (as did all teams) had to protect players who were actually free agents. I still don't really understand it.  The 1st pick to the Portlan Fire was Bridget Carleton. I figured she was gone anyway, and she did have a disappointing 2025, but I was still sad to see her go.  The Toronto Tempo (atrocious name) took Maria "Masha" Kliundikova from us.  Then, the actual free agency came, and it was a bloodbath of departures. Alanna Smith to Dallas. Jessica Shepard to...also Dallas. Natasha Hiedeman to Seattle. Dijonai Carrington to Chicago. Everybody was leaving. I get that this was the 1st chance for these players to get the kind of money they got. Lan and Shepard got max deals. I get...

TWINS 13 RED SOX 6 My 1st Twins game of 2026 was to see a ballclub that entered the game with the best record in the American League. But it wasn't the Red Sox.  Somehow, the Twins, who entered 2026 with rock bottom expectations, and then began to live up to them with a largely listless 3-6 start, swept a 4 gamer from Detroit and took 2 of 3 in Toronto heading into Monday's game. And yes, that made them a modest 9-7, which tied them with Cleveland for the best in the league.  Make it 10-7, after the most stunning win of the young season, a demolition of Sox ace Garret Crochet. The Twins' resurgent bats began teeing off right away. 4 hits, a walk, an HBP, and an error led to a 4 run 1st.  The 2nd was even more of a bloodbath, with a bases loaded Josh Bell double, a 3 run Victor "The Great" Caratini homerun, and then a Ryan Kreidler solo shot as the cherry on top. Finally, Crochet was pulled. At 11-0, I was hoping the Twins would set a new record for most runs score...

1996: The 90s was a golden age of movies made in Minnesota. My personal favorite is Beautiful Girls, but a movie being made here at the same time is pretty much the unquestioned most significant film of the era. Fargo, written and directed by local boys Joel and Ethan Coen, is widely acclaimed as one of the best films of the decade. Somehow, I didn't see this in theaters, at least not at the time (I did see a 25th anniversary screening). I have no idea how that happened. I knew the Coens. The movie got a lot of attention. Siskel and Ebert raved about it. The very beginning of the movie says it's based on a true story. It's not, but that's the kind of thing you could still get away with in 1996. It's a whole complicated kidnapping plot, where William H. Macy hires a pair of crooks (Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife, to ransom money from his father in law. Everything goes haywire, and people die, and in comes police chief Frances McDormand ...

In theaters: WUTHERING HEIGHTS Emerald Fennell started the decade with the great Promising Young Woman, but that's starting to look like a bit of a fluke. She no doubt takes a big swing with this film, and it's not some standard stuffy literary adaptation. But it is entirely a style over substance situation, and at well over 2 hours, it becomes quite dull. Margot Robbie tries.  THE BRIDE Speaking of a big swing by a female director that winds up way more style over substance, we have Maggie Gyllenhaal's Frankenstein movie. Jessie Buckley is a wonderful, now Oscar winning actress. But the wild overacting she does in this is just not in her wheelhouse. It's a film that occasionally comes to life (ha ha), but too often is just obnoxious.  READY OR NOT: HERE I COME Really liked the original Ready Or Not, one of those movies that makes it look easy. This belated sequel goes the John Wick route, expanding the lore in a big way. I'm not sure this is a case where the lore i...

1976: I may be old, but there's a whole history of film that took place before I was born. Even to this day, I have not seen a whole lot of what are considered the greatest films made, if they came out prior to 1979.  There ARE some films made before then that I am a big fan of, and often my go-to choice as my favorite film that existed before me is Martin Scorsese's 1976 masterpiece Taxi Driver. I think I might have actually watched this for the first time in my college film class. Before that, I knew the basics. I knew the "you talking to me" scene. I knew Jodie Foster played a teenage prostitute. In arguably his most famous role, Robert Deniro is Travis Bickle, a New York City cab driver, roaming the streets of that seedy, dangerous 70s New York. He appears like a decent enough guy on the outside, but he's an isolated person with no family and no close friends.  The episodic film finds him attempting a romance with Cybill Shepard, but their first re...

In theaters: SHELTER The latest Jason Staham movie is generic even by his standards (this is half Safe, half Beekeeper), but it's an okay watch.  SEND HELP Sam Raimi's super entertaining dark comedic thriller where mousy office worker Rachel McAdams and her douchebag boss Dylan O'Brien crash land on a deserted island. The comedy is very funny, led by McAdams in the kind of full bloom, going for it movie star performance she has been so rarely afforded.  GOOD LUCK, HAVE FUN, DON'T DIE My favorite film of the year to this point, a super creative, weird, wacky time travel sci-fi comedy. A well cast Sam Rockwell leads a cool ensemble that also has Zazie Beetz and the always terrific Haley Lu Richardson. This thing is like 12 Monkeys if it was made by the Rick and Morty team. Shockingly, it was directed by Gore Verbinski, a filmmaker who has been doing big projects for over 20 years, but few I have liked at all.  CRIME 101 We used to get these big star-driven crime movies a ...