The Skolney Blog

The great Twins teardown of summer 2021 turned out to not be quite as thorough as many expected. Last week the Twins dealt Nelson Cruz to Tampa Bay for a pair of pitchers. By all accounts a very good haul for a rental DH. Today they made the really big move, dealing Jose Berrios to Toronto for the Jays #2 and #4 overall prospects. And somehow they found a taker for J.A. Happ in St. Louis, and Hansel Robles in Boston. In return a few more pitchers. Many other names were either rumored for trades or seemed obvious trade options, but nothing happened with Buxton, Donaldson, Kepler, Maeda, Pineda, Simmons or Rogers. It's irritating that the Twins are never the team making the all-in deadline deals for a Berrios or Cruz. Probably never will be as long as this ownership remains. Ownership that is not motivated by winning a World Series. Ownership that is content to merely contend. This deadline will be looked back on as one of the key moments of the Falvine era. This front of...

In theaters: THE FOREVER PURGE This remains a weird franchise, in which the first one sucked but all the sequels have been good. I guess this is the last one, and given where this ends I guess it almost has to be. Even more than before this is first and foremost an action movie. You can tell this was made with the Trump era front of mind cause of the immigration stuff, but it actually winds up feeling like someone made a Purge movie inspired by January 6th. Cast is solid, with the standout being the badass Ana de la Reguera.  ZOLA The trailer for this gave off some major Spring Breakers vibes, but this thing falls well short of that mark. Frankly no movie can be good with such a set of thoroughly loathsome characters unless something else makes up the difference. It's not like Spring Breakers had likeable characters at all, but the style, music and acting made it great. This has no real style to it. A couple performances are almost okay (Taylour Paige is legit). The story is not go...

1991: When Terminator 2 was coming out as the unquestioned BIG movie of summer 1991...I didn't get it. This was very early in my movie fandom, and I think I knew OF The Terminator, but didn't get the hype. I didn't see the movie that summer. It was rated R, after all. But I saw the Guns n Roses video a million times. Still a banger btw. Finally saw the movie on video. Loved it immediately of course. Routinely mentioned on all lists of the best action movies of all time, and best sequels of all time, T2 deserves all accolades. The film always gets talked about for its then groundbreaking fx, which do still hold up very well, but I think all the talk of James Cameron the technician tends to obscure what a great, compelling story T2 has. Few movies have ever made you really FEEL like the fate of the world is at stake. It's an epic for sure. Even with the fx, the film is loaded with grand, practical action sequences. It's basically as good as this st...

TWINS 5 ANGELS 4 J.A. Happ had given up 4 runs. He had recorded 4 outs. I'm sitting there Friday night at one of the hottest Twins games I've ever been to, and probably the most humid one since 2009 in St. Louis. And I'm lamenting the fact I picked this game to go to, which meant having to see Happ pitch. And in the 2nd inning it's over, both because the Twins already rather feeble bats have only been further weakened by the trade of Nelson Cruz and the shutting down of Alex Kirilloff, but also because with 23 outs to go, this pitching staff certainly will surrender more runs. But Happ, a failed free agent signing who has given up roughly a run an inning for 3 months, never gave up another run in his 6 total innings. Alex Colome, another failed signing, tossed a 0 up in the 7th. Juan Minaya, who has been in St. Paul most of the year, put the 1st 2 on in the 8th but left both stranded. The Twins bats were hardly potent, but they were able to pick away. Trevor Larnach dro...

These NBA finals were a no win situation for folks like me, who frankly are just sick of our Minnesota teams not winning shit. Either the Suns would win a title, which would check one more title-less franchise off the books, while we sit here with 3 of 4 teams never having won. Plus it would give the Phoenix sports market their first title in 20 years.  Or the Bucks win, which would mean their 1st title in 50 years, ending obviously a long drought, and of course giving Wisconsin a title, although the Bucks are not a team I look at the way I do the Packers. The latter occurred. The Milwaukee Bucks won the NBA championship. I feel nothing but frustration these days with nearly every championship won in every one of the 4 majors. We have been in a now 30 year drought. But I used to enjoy seeing certain long suffering teams win. Red Sox. Cubs. Colts. A few others.  Not anymore. I haven't felt anything better than apathy watching a big 4 title won in many, many years. And occasiona...

The first Space Jam came out in my senior year of high school. I saw it. Thought it was okay. It only stuck in my mind because of the soundtrack and because one of my weirdo friends lusted after Lola Bunny. But like many 90s relics it has grown a cult following in the 25 years since it came out. I can see the appeal. It has some goofy Looney Tunes charm. That charm is completely absent from this new Space Jam movie, pretentiously subtitled A New Legacy. Somehow, a sequel to a movie that was based off a commercial spawned a sequel even MORE soulless. This has the same centerpiece, just a different star. Again the Tunes have to play a basketball game, only this time it is with Lebron James. Through a dreadfully long and dull setup, it is established that James has to play to save his son from a sinister A.I. played by a very annoying Don Cheadle (in a career worst performance). The original movie kept it simple. This sequel piles on the plot and a lot of complications. None of it i...

TWINS 12 TIGERS 9    (10 innings) It's why baseball is the greatest of games.  Even amidst this, one of the most disappointing seasons of Twins baseball maybe ever, a season that was over long before the midway point, we get one of the very best of the 150 or so ballgames I have ever personally attended. And almost certainly the wildest.  Where do you even start with recounting what went on Sunday afternoon? Jose Berrios started, and for the first several innings appeared to perhaps be on the way to something special. He cruised through the first 4 hitless innings. If anything it looked like the Twins equally punchless bats were going to cost him a shot at a win. Then the 5th inning happened. Jose got the first two outs, then gave up a single to end the no-hitter. But then he also walked the 8 and 9 hitters back to back to load the bases. Up came Akil Baddoo, a Twins castoff, who on an 0-2 pitch laced a hit to left that scored two. Then Jonathan Schoop, another forme...

It's been a long wait to get back into the MCU on the big screen. Black Widow was supposed to open up the summer 2020 movie season, but there never WAS a summer 2020 movie season. Now, 14 months and change later it is finally here. And it is fucking GREAT! It is probably the first MCU movie since Doctor Strange that actually EXCEEDED my expectations. Taking place shortly after Civil War, this movie follows Scarlett Johansson's Natasha as she is on the run from General Ross and his goons. Pretty soon she meets up with Florence Pugh's Yelena, who like her was a black widow assassin and has also become estranged from that world. The main through line of the story is the two of them teaming up to go take down the Red Room, the place where all the widows are trained and abused, and as we see here, brainwashed and controlled. Along the way the two fugitives meet back up with their old "parents", David Harbour (as Red Guardian) and Rachel Weisz. Harbour in particul...

Summer 1996. My senior summer. The last summer of pure freedom. Movie fandom blowing up. And one of the all time best blockbuster summers (probably THE best in terms of batting average). ID4 was the crown jewel. Everybody was crazy hyped for this movie, myself included. The lore of this movie always includes the Super Bowl teaser. This was maybe the first time a Super Bowl ad for a movie was a big deal. I'm pretty sure this movie was already on my radar by that point. Director Roland Emmerich was coming off of Stargate, which at the time I was a pretty big fan of. So giving him a big alien invasion movie was instant hype. And at this point the big CGI revolution was new and hadn't been used on this kind of movie yet. No doubt the marketing for this flick was all time great. Just try to watch the trailers for this without getting hyped. ID4 just by what it was was set up to be the quintessential summer movie. It takes place on the holiday. It HAD no choice but to be ...