The Skolney Blog

In theaters: THE HOLDOVERS What a cozy gem of a film! Alexander Payne's film set at a boarding school in the early 70s over Christmas break is maybe his best work. It might even be a new Christmas classic. Terrific, Oscar worthy performances by all 3 leads, especially the pitch perfect Paul Giamatti. Really funny, and the best kind of sentimental.  PRISCILLA  Sofia Coppola's film about Priscilla Presley's relationship with Elvis boasts a couple solid lead performances, but also is quite boring and shapeless, particularly its 2nd half. And frankly it is also one note "Elvis bad" to the point of character assassination. NEXT GOAL WINS A very low scale sports comedy from Taika Waititi, a by the numbers underdog story (marginally true) where soccer coach Michael Fassbender is hired to lead the lowly American Samoa team. It has a few laughs in it, but it is entirely formulaic. I'd have thought Waititi would find a fresh approach to something like this.  THANKSGIVIN...

1983: You can run and hide from A Christmas Story, but it's gonna find you.  I am not sure I can remember a time before this was the most ubiquitous of all the holiday movies. I mean, you can NOT avoid this movie. And every year for I don't know how many, I definitely have spent at least some time watching the 24 hour marathon. And it's worth it. It's a really good movie, definitely one of the best Christmas movies. Since I always end up watching bits and pieces of it, I probably had not simply watched the complete movie start to finish in ages before this particular rewatch. I think the reason the movie plays so well to just pop in to is that it is so episodic to begin with. Yeah there are through-lines to the plot, but mostly it's just a bunch of scenes that play just fine on their own.  The film oozes nostalgia. Even the hazy look to the film gives off the feeling of looking back at childhood. And really, that's kind of how I think back to my Chri...

BEARS 12 VIKINGS 10 I have attended probably 100 or so Vikings games in my life. Seen a lot of classics. Seen plenty of stinkers. Not sure I've ever been to such a wretched, disgusting game as the one that took place Monday night:  A humiliating, season-destroying loss to a terrible Bears team that the Vikings will never recover from. Early on I dubbed this Vikings season "the season from hell". And that was before Kirk Cousins tore his Achilles at Lambeau Field. Just an excruciating season in which nearly everything that could go wrong did. But then we had Dobbs Mania. Joshua Dobbs briefly became one of the best stories in sports, practically coming in off the street and helping the Vikings to a pair of wins that put the Vikings at 6-4 and firmly in position to not only still make the playoffs, but make a genuine run at the division title. But I was fooled. A season cannot be hell unless we are also teased. Teased with promise. Teased with hope. Only to then have it snat...

Thanksgiving: PACKERS 29, LIONS 22 The Lions resumed their great tradition of getting beat on Thanksgiving. Unlike the Bears last week, the Packers were able to hold on and not choke. The Packers have slithered back into wild card contention, and the fraudulent Lions (still the media darlings though) continue their downward trend.  COWBOYS 45, COMMANDERS 10 A reasonably close game got completely out of hand late with a bunch of scores, including a record 5th pick six this season by DaRon Bland.  49ERS 31, SEAHAWKS 13 The 49ers were in control the whole way. Seattle is falling out of the playoffs quickly.  Friday: DOLPHINS 34, JETS 13 Miami with another easy win over a bad team. The Tim Boyle era of Jets football began with a hilarious 99 yard pick six on a hail mary.  Sunday: FALCONS 24, SAINTS 15 Atlanta moved back into 1st place in the comical NFC South, which has no winning teams right now.  STEELERS 16, BENGALS 10 The 1st start for Jake Browning ...

Thursday: RAVENS 34, BENGALS 20 A big divisional win for the Ravens, and a major loss for the Bengals, who lost Joe Burrow for the season and now must rely on former Viking Jake Browning.  Sunday: LIONS 31, BEARS 26 Gross. The Bears should have won this game. Jared Goff spent most of the game trying to lose it. The Bears were up 12 with 3 minutes left. But of course the Lions just get everything this season, so the Bears just give it away completely.  PACKERS 23, CHARGERS 20 The Chargers choked this one away with a littany of major dropped passes. BROWNS 13, STEELERS 10 A battle of inept offenses ends with the Browns getting a late field goal for the win. It cost the Steelers OC his job.  DOLPHINS 20, RAIDERS 13 Closer than expected, as the Dolphins explosive offense was largely kept in check. Vegas is definitely playing better since the coaching change.  JAGUARS 34, TITANS 14 Jaguars bounced back from their blowout loss to the 49ers, by crushing the Tita...

BRONCOS 21 VIKINGS 20 There is the emotional, and there is the realistic. Realistically, the Vikings were not going to run the table after their 1-4 start. That's 12 straight wins. Even getting to 5 without Justin Jefferson and the last couple without Kirk Cousins was a hell of an accomplishment.  Emotionally though, fuuuuuck is it frustrating to see the win streak end in such a gut punch fashion as what happened on Sunday night.  The Vikings, riding a 5 game win streak, went to Denver to face an also hot Broncos team that had won 3 straight, including back to back wins over the Chiefs and Bills. So they're no pushover. And the Vikings unceasing barrage of injuries claimed Jordan Hicks and Akayleb Evans. So I actually picked the Vikings to lose. They still shouldn't have. This absolutely should have been win #6 in a row.  I suppose the opening drive was an omen. On their 1st set of downs all night, Kevin O'Connell decided to get cute on 3rd and short. TJ Hockenson took ...

In The Zone marked the end of the "good times" eras of Britney. It was the last album released before the stalkerazzi really went off the deep end, before the K-Fed mistake, and still years before the conservatorship. This era had another massive marketing blitz. It began way back at the NFL kickoff concert, where Britney debuted Me Against The Music (then still Madonna-free). Then there was the instantly iconic VMA performance with the Madonna kiss. She appeared on SNL. She had that fabulous ABC special. She did all the talk show rounds. And there was that now infamous Diane Sawyer interview (which makes your skin crawl to watch today). And then finally came the album. I never found ITZ to be as good as her previous 3 albums. But oh the highs.  Lead single was Me Against The Music, re-done with a Madonna guest appearance. Honestly, I always thought this was a pretty weak lead single. It's an album filler song, with a high profile guest star. Britney obviously...

Thursday: BEARS 16, PANTHERS 13 The Bears get the rare chance to both win a game and improve their draft position. Bryce Young increasingly looking like the latest proof that drafting a QB at the top of the draft is not a cure-all.  Sunday: COLTS 10, PATRIOTS 6 The Germans deserved to have to sit through this game after WW2.  STEELERS 23, PACKERS 19 A little closer than expected, but the Packers again failed at making a comeback.  49ERS 34, JAGUARS 3 The 49ers woke back up in a big way after their bye and obliterated the also hot Jaguars.  BROWNS 33, RAVENS 31 A big statement comeback win for the Browns. Kind of a baffling loss for the Ravens just as they were looking like an AFC power.  TEXANS 30, BENGALS 27 A big surprise, as the surging Bengals suddenly get burned at home by another big CJ Stroud game. Houston sits in a playoff spot atm.  BUCCANEERS 20, TITANS 6 Will Levis with his 2nd straight dud after his big debut. Tampa staying alive in ...

VIKINGS 27 SAINTS 19 Last week, Joshua Dobbs orchestrated one of the most improbable wins in recent Vikings memory, an exhilarating last minute comeback led by a QB who had been with the team less than a week.  So what do you do for an encore? Was last week just a fluke, and this week would be the great comedown? It's no fluke. Small sample size and all that, but Dobbs is the real deal, and he was even better against the Saints than he was against the Falcons.  Well, for a half. This game was kind of a tale of two halves. The first was electric, and dominant. The second was conservative, and needlessly tense. But oh that first half. The Vikings scored on 4 of their 5 possessions, and the crowd was as juiced as I have ever heard it in that building. The excitement over Dobbs was palpable, and every time he scrambled or made a big throw it was like a rock star playing the hits. After a slightly slow start where the teams each had a field goal, the action got going. Dobbs led a 7...

It was just 4 years ago that Captain Marvel came out, enraging the incels to such an unprecedented degree that many of them decided to devote their entire lives to hating on Brie Larson, and developing insane conspiracy theories to explain away the movie's billion dollar box office. Now the character is back for The Marvels, a team-up movie that looks like it may wind up being a bona-fide box office bomb. You can't go anywhere online these days without seeing 100 people insisting the Marvel is over. So it's almost like people have bought into this narrative that they can't watch the MCU anymore. And you just know that if the film does bomb, it will only embolden the grifters. But to the surprise of not me, The Marvels is a lot of fun. It's inferior to the original, and is definitely a lower tier entry in the MCU, but we are talking about a 30+ film franchise (not even counting adjacent stuff like Spiderverse) that really doesn't have anything in it that is below...

Thursday: STEELERS 20, TITANS 16 Another Steelers game where their offense stinks, then Kenny Pickett leads a late GW drive. Rough encore for Will Levis.  Sunday: CHIEFS 21, DOLPHINS 14 The Chiefs went up 21-0, then held on in Germany. Miami again loses to a good team.  SAINTS 24, BEARS 17 The Saints needed 5 Chicago turnovers to get the win. PACKERS 20, RAMS 3 The Rams started Brett Rypien at QB and had no chance, even though the Packers were typically unimpressive.  RAVENS 37, SEAHAWKS 3 When on their A game, no team is as good this year right now as the Ravens, who massacred the 1st place Seahawks.  TEXANS 39, BUCCANEERS 37 In an unexpectedly wild game, CJ Stroud threw for 470 yards and a last second TD to beat the fast fading Bucs.  BROWNS 27, CARDINALS 0 The Cardinals traded away Joshua Dobbs for not tanking hard enough. No such issue with something called Clayton Tune at QB. COMMANDERS 20, PATRIOTS 17 Wow, Belichick couldn't even win a home gam...

VIKINGS 31 FALCONS 28 Joshua Dobbs's 1st 2 series as a Minnesota Viking on Sunday ended with a sack in the endzone for a safety, and an unforced fumble that was almost returned for a touchdown. A couple hours later, Dobbs was a hero for engineering one of the most improbable wins in recent memory. Dobbs, acquired from Arizona last Tuesday in the wake of the Kirk Cousins Achilles tear, was of course not even supposed to play yet. This was going to be Jaren Hall's big moment. Hall lasted two series. The second was the solid one, as Hall led a nice drive, hitting a nice deep shot to Alexander Mattison (really) and a few more throws, before the 1st and goal problems struck again. And on a 3rd down scramble, Hall went for the endzone, was stopped short, and the back of his head hit the turf on the tackle. Hall had a concussion and his day was done. On came Dobbs, and pinned deep on his 1st series things got ugly fast, with Dobbs taken down for the safety.  After the free kick, Atlan...