The Skolney Blog

1999: Of all the great, iconic, formative movies of the 1990s, many of which I know the opening day by heart, few of those days stick in the brain like the single most important DUAL opening day of the decade. November 12, 1999 As we neared the end of one of the greatest movie years of my life, two of the biggest releases of the year (at least for me) beckoned. The headliner was clearly Anywhere But Here, because in 1999, there was nothing on earth that mattered more (in a movie sense) than a new Natalie Portman movie. The undercarriage was Dogma, the 4th movie from Kevin Smith, whose first 3 movies had established him as one of my absolute favorite filmmakers. I saw both on day one, of course.  Anywhere But Here, well, it was a new Natalie movie at basically the peak of my head in the clouds fandom. It blew me away. There are some embarrassing writings about my feelings about the film. By comparison, Dogma had no chance. And on first viewing it definitely w...

In Theaters: ANORA One of the year's awards frontrunners, and I think it would be very deserving of it. Billed as a darker Pretty Woman, the film kind of fits that but is way better, starting out as a wild fever dream romance before turning into a farcical comedy for a while and then hitting you with a gut punch ending you don't see coming. Throughout, the film rests on the shoulders of the absolutely ravishing and vibrant Mikey Madison, who might even walk home with the best actress Oscar in a few months.  YOUR MONSTER Look, Melissa Barrera possibly CAN do wrong, but I have yet to see it. Once again, she is impossibly cute (she even gets adorable socks) and captivating in this silly little romcom where a woman gets dumped and then falls for the monster that used to live in her closet. That old yarn. It's not a great movie, but Barrera makes it a fun watch.  HERE Robert Zemeckis' gimmicky film in which the camera is fixated on a single space in time, spanning hundreds o...

VIKINGS 30 BEARS 27 OT Every single year, the Vikings trip to Soldier Field winds up being a grind, and getting out of there with a win is like pulling teeth. But this year's edition managed to carve out its own unique memory, a loony game that went, in a blink, from a solid win to a potentially unfathomable and embarrassing loss, and ultimately a gutty win. Right off the bat, the goofy Soldier Field crap got going. Aaron Jones ripped off a couple of long runs to get the Vikings close to an opening drive touchdown, but that score never came as Jones was stripped of the ball at the 1. The Bears later drew first blood, after a preposterous play where Caleb Williams looked to be being pressured into a throwaway became a huge completion. It set up a short TD run, and the Bears led 7-0. The quarter also ended with us down 2 starters due to injury, Ivan Pace and Cam Robinson. But the resilient Vikings responded quickly to the Bears score. Sam Darnold launched a deep shot that hit to Jord...

VIKINGS 23 TITANS 13 The Vikings won 7 games last year. A whole lot of people, including me, picked them to win about 7 again this year. They won their 8th game out of 10 on Sunday, a third straight triumph over an inferior opponent from the woeful AFC South. The victims this time were the Tennessee Titans, bumbling their way to another losing season, with a rookie head coach and a young QB who looks like a bust. And the Vikings got it done, behind good games by the quarterback and defense, and that rarest of help from the officials.  The Vikings 1st series ended ominously, where Sam Darnold pitched the ball to Aaron Jones, who couldn't corral the ball, and the Titans recovered. It led to a field goal. The offense quickly responded, as Darnold hit a wide open Jordan Addison on a crossing route for a long touchdown. The next drive was an 89-yard marathon. It concluded with a Darnold TD sneak, but this only came after the previous 4th and goal play, where Darnold fired incomplete to ...

It wasn't just Pulp Fiction that arrived in the fall of 1994 that re-wired the way I looked at movies. There was also, crucially, Clerks, the debut from Kevin Smith. And this one may have proved more personally influential.  The story behind the making of this film is well known. Smith scraped together roughly 30k to make Clerks, shot almost entirely at the little convenience store that he himself worked at. He took it to festivals, and through one of those lucky breaks got it seen by, uh, Harvey Weinsten(😬) who picked it up for Miramax. The movie did get released in theaters, albeit a tiny release that never made it to the multiplexes that were my sole moviegoing destinations at the time. I knew it existed, but it wasn't really on my radar that much. I actually knew about Mallrats coming out before I ever saw Clerks. I looked it up, and Clerks actually hit video right at the end of my sophomore year of high school. So that is roughly when I saw it for the first ti...

VIKINGS 12 JAGUARS 7 The Vikings improved to 7-2 with their win in Jacksonville in Sunday, due to the contributions of many, and in spite of the near sabotage of their own quarterback. In my many years of watching the Vikings, I can't think of any other games they won despite such a pitiful performance by the starting quarterback. Usually, an effort like the one by Sam Darnold in this game dooms you to not just a loss, but an ugly one. As with last week against the Colts, the Vikings played a first half marred by squandered scoring opportunities.  The first drive ended with a Darnold misfire in the redzone. We settled for a field goal from Parker Romo, our temporary kicker with Will Reichard on IR. The Jaguars, led by Mac Jones instead of Trevor Lawrence, delivered their one good drive of the day to go take a 7-3 lead.  Then the Vikings quickly moved into Jaguars territory before Darnold stared down Justin Jefferson on a throw, and his pass was picked off. The next drive was a...

Trump won. Fuck America.  Every horror that is in our future is richly deserved.  I wish I could leave. 

So I begin this post at about 11:30 PM on election night, and it hasn't been an encouraging night. Thinking Harris was going to win in some huge landslide may have just been a fun fantasy anyway. And who cares? Just win is all that matters. But she might not win. It is all coming down to the swing states, and while we could very well have that late blue surge that we had in 2020, it shouldn't be this close.  I'm not sure we can ever have an election in which the scum of this country get crushed again. There are simply too many horrible people in America. Too many for the country to survive. You can't have a country in which tens of millions of people are this gleefully stupid, proudly racist and sexist and xenophobic, and clearly perfectly okay with women being raped. Trump is a rapist. And tens of millions support him for it. This isn't 2016. Trump has shown everyone in the world what he is for years now. And it is just accepted. This is what America is. Harris may...

I will always remember the moment I found out that Joe Biden, relentlessly badgered by a garbage media, had decided to drop out of the race for re-election. It was stunning, and frightening. In that moment, it felt like Donald Trump had just been handed back control of America. But then I saw what a rush of energy this brought to everybody. The polls, for whatever they're worth, massively swung towards Kamala Harris. When she picked Tim Walz as VP, the roll continued. Harris crushed Trump in the debate so thoroughly that the rapist felon chickened out and never did a 2nd debate. Walz spanked the couch fucker in the VP debate. Trump kept on with his grievance tour, faking a couple assassination attempts along the way to try to gin up sympathy.  The corporate media, embarrassingly still in love with the Trump circus, did the same thing they did in 16 and 20, jumping on any excuse to trash Harris (and still trash Biden whenever possible) while always whitewashing every insane thing Tr...

VIKINGS 21 COLTS 13 I'm not gonna lie. Things were looking pretty bleak.  Coming off two frustrating losses, the Vikings went out there on Sunday night and proceeded to play another stumbling, bumbling first half against the Colts.  They only trailed 7-0 due to the defense having a big bounceback game. But there were points left out there on nearly every drive. The Vikings appeared to be proving themselves an unserious team. But hey...we've been here before, right? Just two years ago, we played a bad first half against the Colts...so bad that it took a historic comeback to win. What's a measly 7 points compared to that?  But anyway, that first half. The Colts botched a handoff on their opening drive, giving us the ball. And the Vikings opening drive in response looked good. The ball was spread around to 5 different receivers, including TJ Hockenson in his season debut, and they methodically drove into the redzone. But then Sam Darnold made one of his worst decisions of th...