The Skolney Blog

The Twins just got swept. By the Royals.  The Royals who were 29-75 entering the weekend. I just need this mockery of a season to end. The Twins sucked heading into the all star break. Then out of the break they faced some awful teams and got some wins, tricking the rubes into thinking they had fixed things. And now whatever momentum they were pretending to build has been wiped away. When the pitching was good, the hitting was atrocious. Now that the hitting has improved some, the pitching has regressed badly. Classic.  This is such a tiresome team. They haven't had their last mirage of a win streak. They haven't had their last awful week.  This isn't going anywhere. They probably can't not be in a September division race, but their ceiling is maybe eeking out an awful division and maybe eeking out a playoff win before being dispatched by a real team. 30 years of failure has so broken this fanbase that many would be thrilled by that outcome. The trade deadline is this w...

Mariners 8 Twins 7 The last Twins game I went to, Joe Ryan threw a complete game shutout. Things did not go nearly as well on this steamy Wednesday afternoon. Joe Ryan was pretty awful facing the Mariners, and that was the main factor that cost the Twins a game and a series, and once again any sense of momentum. Ryan has actually been pretty bad since that shutout. A big issue has been early runs, and Seattle did tag him for one in the opening frame here too. Then in the 2nd the low-100s hitting Dylan Moore hit a laser homerun. Julio Rodriguez blasted a 2nd decker in the 3rd. The Twins took advantage of the humid air and hit a pair of solos from Christian Vazquez and Edouard Julien to get in the game.  Then Ryan's 4th was an ugly affair. A double, walk and single loaded the bases. Then another single scored a run. Ryan actually struck out the next 2 batters, but he had thrown 48 pitches in the inning, and got replaced by Jordan Balazovic. Balazovic got the 3rd out, which at the tim...

Yes, I celebrated Barbenheimer, our new national holiday.  And the no brainer was to see Oppenheimer, the latest from Christopher Nolan. Nolan is the best filmmaker of the 21st century not named Tarantino as far as I'm concerned. Yeah I was a bit let down and more than a bit perplexed by his last film Tenet, but even that film was crafted beautifully. Oppenheimer is much more straightforward. In many ways this is a classic biopic, about the man most responsible for the creation of the atomic bomb. But in Nolan's hands it feels anything but routine. Amongst a cast filled with some big stars, the main role went to Cilian Murphy, who is one of those actors who spends a long time being good in a lot of things, but without a lot of acclaim. I certainly expect his intense performance here to change that. There is a little bit of Oppenheimer's story as he is studying physics at university, but the bulk of the story is his work on the Manhattan Project developing what would become ...

Tom Cruise first did a Mission Impossible movie way back in 1996. I was still in high school. And we have never gone more than about 5 years between installments, so this franchise has really spanned my whole adult life. And with no signs of stopping.  We are now on to the 7th movie, Dead Reckoning Part One. Yes, this is another half movie in a summer of them, following Fast X and Across The Spiderverse. Part Two is, I believe, set for next summer. And Cruise will probably keep going after that. I will probably get killed for saying this (well, if I say it elsewhere) but I liked those other two half films better. Dead Reckoning is the 3rd straight MI film to be directed by Christopher McQuarrie. The franchise began with each installment bearing the distinct imprint of its director. I kind of miss that, even if MI2 went a little goody with all the John Woo slo-mo and doves and all that. McQuarrie is a solid director, but these last 3 movies all feel a little bit bland.  Not to ...

Aces 113 Lynx 89 Sunday night provided a nice litmus test for the resurgent Lynx. Following their miserable 0-6 start, they had won 9 out of 12, including 5 in a row. Napheesa Collier has been playing MVP level ball. Diamond Miller and Dorka Juhasz have been shining as rookies.  But, to be fair, 8 of the 9 wins were all against teams with losing records. Sure the Lynx can beat teams at their level, but the Las Vegas Aces are something else entirely. Defending champs, 16-2 record, 4 all stars. I wasn't even going to this game expecting a win. But how would the Lynx fare? Well, not too well as it turns out. The Lynx didn't even play that poorly, and it was still a rout. A Kayla McBride 3 opened the scoring, but this one and only Lynx lead was quickly buried under a shooting avalanche the likes of which I don't know I've ever seen.  Vegas hit their first 7 shots. It felt like they never missed all night. They quickly built a double digit lead. They were just throwing dagge...

1983: Few movies better represent the 1980s comedy than National Lampoon's Vacation. I watched this movie a ton in my long ago youth. In my early days of movie watching, all my favorite people were the comedy stars. Chevy Chase was definitely right there in that group, and this was his quintessential role: befuddled family man Clark Griswold. Clark is gathering up his family for a cross-country trip to Wally World, which is just like Disney World except the mascot is a moose, not a mouse. And everything that can go wrong on the trip does go wrong.  Clark is a great character, because he genuinely cares about his family and wants them all to have a great time, but he also has a crazy streak. It plays perfectly to Chase's strengths. When his cheerful facade breaks it is always funny.  Along the way, we get introduced to Randy Quaid the cousin. I don't think any joke with Quaid in either of the proper Vacation movies fails to land. Shame he's such a real life p...

In theaters: PAST LIVES  This is getting a lot of very early Oscar buzz, and it's pretty warranted. Two Korean kids are separated at age 12 but re-connect years later. It's a very bittersweet film that maybe doesn't have quite the emotional gut punch ending it needed to get over the top. Very good performances though and a couple of the best written scenes in a long time.  JOY RIDE Kind of a miss for me, this hard R comedy with 4 Asian women on a road trip. The main cast (including Stephanie Hsu from EEAAO) has good chemistry and there are some laughs. I just didn't laugh that much. I don't know if the cultural specificity of some of it was a barrier or what. We get so few comedies anymore so it kind of sucks when one misses.  BARBIE The other half of Barbenheimer, this will probably end up being the biggest movie of the summer (who saw that coming?). I enjoyed it. Greta Gerwig commendably just makes this whole movie increasingly weirder as it goes on. The cast is g...

The 1990s were the glory days of the summer blockbuster. And for me, nothing more perfectly fits what that era of movies was than Michael Bay's Armageddon.  As mentioned once before on this award winning blog, 1998 was a summer with 2 big movies built around asteroid coming towards earth. Deep Impact was the more serious and realistic version. Armageddon though was not interested in realism or even in being that serious. 1998 was THE summer. It was just such a glorious time in my life, and this movie sits 25 years later as one of the most instantly transporting movies to a time and place. It is just perfect to me. The hype for this got started early. It had one of those true teaser trailers late in 97. Didn't even have any footage from the movie, just naming Bruce Willis as the star and highlighting the director/producer team of Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer. That was sure all I needed. Bay was red hot after Bad Boys and The Rock, and Bruckheimer was in the midd...