The Skolney Blog

It's already surreal what has happened to the movie release schedule. I'm reasonably sure that I have already gone my longest stretch without a single trip to a movie theater in over 20 years. And even if I haven't, I surely will, since nothing will re-open til at least June. The.last time I went movie-less for multiple months? I'm pretty sure I was in elementary school.  But now even if things go well (and they are not going well nationally) I have no earthly idea what will be there to see when theaters re-open. Everything has long since moved out of May. Wonder Woman ditched June for August (don't bet on it). Now both Morbius and the new Ghostbusters have bailed on this summer for next spring. About the only movie worth a damn that is even left before July is the Top Gun sequel. And Tenet is still out there for July. I suppose the thinking with some of these films is that, if theaters do re-open, decreased attendance could be offset just by a lack of options. Unde...

Donald Trump wants you dead. That's a stone cold fact, jack. The so-called president of the United States does not care at all if you die. At every step so far of this COVID nightmare he has taken the action that displays complete disregard for the well being of the American people. He ignored all the warnings from overseas, and from whatever experts he didn't fire, that this virus was coming and we needed to be ready. Until barely a month ago he was still calling the virus a Democrat hoax, a fantasy they invented in order to hurt his allegedly thriving economy. His cult and the Fox News demons repeated these lies ad nauseum, to the point that many people still think this thing is just a cold. Once the severity started to become too obvious to ignore, he briefly took it at least moderately seriously. He didn't do anything to actually help, but his briefings at least gave smart, rational people like Dr  Fauci a forum to get information out there. That is, until Fauci started...

I just don't get people.  We all knew this was going to be a different kind of offseason for the Vikings. The combination of an aging roster and a lack of cap space guaranteed this was going to be an offseason that featured more goings than comings.  But the response by so many has been ridiculous, suggesting that this whole team is falling apart, that they have no direction, and that they will have a terrible 2020 season. Fucking calm the fuck down! I knew the Cousins extension and the Diggs trade were going to be controversial. But in both cases we came out on the good end of the deal. We secured one of the NFL's best quarterbacks for a few more years, while helping the cap. And we dealt a receiver who did not want to be here and play with said quarterback, and had burned bridges with Zimmer too, and we got a haul of draft picks for him. This front office knows what it is doing.  For so long I kept being told that the Vikings were in cap distress. No we weren't. Just a ...

Tom Brady of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. As bizarre as it gets. I never expected it. I've been dead wrong on a few sports things of late (never believed Diggs would be traded), but top of the list was my absolute certainty that Brady was never going to leave the Patriots, that it was basically just a story ESPN and their ilk were using for hype. Sounds like Belichick made it so. So he's the one who blinked. Those 2 have been so intertwined that I doubted either one had the balls to try to win on their own. I can see why. The Patriots were 10-5 without Brady in 2008 and went 3-1 during Brady's Deflategate suspension. Every time the Patriots DID win a title they had an elite defense. Now Brady goes to a Tampa team that does have some offensive weapons, but has a bad defense and is in a tough division. If we have a 2020 NFL season this will clearly be the biggest story to see how Brady does. I think ol' Tommy is in for a rude awakening. His decline last year was sharp, but h...

Last movie reviews for a long time.... Sonic The Hedgehog: I thought this was pretty enjoyable. Sonic is an entertaining and likable character. Jim Carrey is in fine manic form.  Portrait of a Lady on Fire: A beautifully shot female romance that's tbh a bit dull. Good performances, and the film goes more for emotion than titillation (although both actresses are gorgeous), but I expected something better. Seberg: Another excellent Kristen Stewart performance carries this biopic. Too much time is spent on the fictional FBI agent who starts to feel bad about spying on her. The Way Back: One of Ben Affleck's best performances. I liked how this movie truly was a sports movie that was about more than sports. It had literally the exact kind of classic sports movie ending, yet it was only the end of the 2nd act. What follows is a little less effective. It's a rushed finish, but a pretty good film. Emma: Hardly the biggest fan of these types of movies, but I thought this was fairly ...

I'm already emotional over the fall of society and then today happens with the Vikings. First news was the Kirk Cousins extension. Two years added on, through 2022. Saved us about $10 million in cap space. Kirk gets more job security and added guaranteed money. A win win for all.  And the Vikings almost immediately put that extra savings to good use by franchising Anthony Harris. I would guess they work out a long term deal with him.  Also a couple of smaller moves. We resigned CJ Ham and Britton Colquitt. Then the absolute megaton bombshell hit tonight as we traded Stefon Diggs to Buffalo for a haul of picks including a 1st rounder this year. I'm still stunned. I never thought a Diggs trade was ever that likely. It weakens the offense and does not save that much cap space. But clearly the behind the scenes issues were a factor. Diggs was never a public problem after the brief kerfuffle after the Bears game last year. Yeah he still threw out those weird cryptic tweets every so...

Everything sucks right now.  We are only a few days into our new world, a world that isn't just without sports and likely soon without movie theaters, but may also soon be in a virtually nationwide lockdown of everything. It could be a matter of days before we are all basically ordered to stay locked in our homes. It's awful. It's tense. It's depressing. And there is no end to this in sight.  It's become crystal clear over these bleak last few days that all this stuff that, not to be too morose, makes the awfulness of life bearable, is gone for a LONG time.  Every day...hell, practically every hour, there is a new guideline or advisement or whatever to limit or outright ban groups of ever dwindling numbers. It's like The Happening, where the poison kept infecting smaller and smaller groups until nobody was safe. Does anybody honestly think this nightmare is going to suddenly do a 180° in the next few weeks, or even months?  It's all over. 2020 is cancelled. ...

Quite a hoax, huh? The sports world has come to a near standstill.  There had been little bits of virus-related sports news in recent days, but today the dam broke.  The NCAA tournament (both men and women) will be played without fans in the arena. Just essential game personnel and family. The conference tournaments will also all finish with no fans at the games.  And now the NBA is suspending their entire season. It was likely headed that way anyway, but then we had the first player test positive, and the league quickly shut the whole thing down. This will not be the end of this. It's a safe bet the NHL will be disrupted in a similar way, and MLB may also be in jeopardy.  Frankly, at the moment we look headed to a situation where no sporting events get played at all, and certainly nothing with fans in attendance. And with dipshit Trump "leading" us through this, who knows how bad this will get. It might wind up being a total country lockdown soon. Guess it's a good ...

I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary. I would gladly vote for him if he were the dem candidate in November. I think he would be a great president and get a lot of great shit done and move this country in the right direction. But unlike a great number of his supporters, especially seemingly every god damn one of them with access to social media, I am not a petulant child. I am not going to stomp my feet and whine and lash out because my preferred choice did not win.  After Super Tuesday the odds that Joe Biden will be the nominee skyrocketed. It was a bad day for Sanders. It just was. He performed worse than he did in 2016 almost across the board, including Minnesota, where he beat Hillary handily but lost to Biden.  Sanders simply did not get the turnout. As popular as he may be with young voters, they simply did not turn out en masse. And if they won't turn out now, can you really count on them to turn out in November? Are you willing to pin all our hopes to save this co...

The Lodge This movie shares a lot of style and story with various other recent horror movies that I did not like. But I was really into this one. The atmosphere really drew me in. The reveals in this movie are genuinely surprising and interesting, and in the end very darkly comic. The acting is really strong. Riley Keough needs to be a bigger star.  The Invisible Man The trailers for this were really poor, I thought. They undersold this one. The film is incredibly well shot. I wouldn't say it's scary, but it has a fair amount of tension (the opening is excellent, and a later scene features one of the more shocking kills in recent memory). It gets a lot of mileage out of old school technique. I'm still not a big fan of Elisabeth Moss, but she gives her all. The ending could not be more satisfying. 

The coronavirus will be Trump's Katrina. That moment when his galling incompetence and complete disregard for the safety of American citizens is so thoroughly broadcast to the world that he can never recover.  When Bush ignored Katrina as it closed in, then botched the response in every way possible, causing a lot of deaths that did not need to happen, it was over for him. The 2006 midterms were a slaughter and then Obama took the White House 2 years later. The virus has been such a severe crisis that it has basically shut down China for a month, and is doing the same in Japan. It was inevitable that it would come here, and that due to Trump's gross negligence it would affect a lot more people here than it would under a competent administration. He gutted the CDC (of course, it can't make him money so it is of no use) which exists to handle these exact dangers. He defied the CDC's advisement to not fly some infected US citizens back into the country. He dismissed concer...