| 
         
        
          
       | 
      
        
        The first edition of Complete Idiot's Guide to Bridge 
        by H. Anthony Medley was the fastest
selling beginning bridge book, going through more than 10 printings.
        This updated 
        Second Edition includes some modern advanced bidding systems and 
        conventions, like Two over One, a system used by many modern 
        tournament players, Roman Key Card Blackwood, New Minor 
        Forcing, Reverse Drury, Forcing No Trump, and others.
        Also included is a detailed Guide to 
        Bids and Responses, along with the most detailed, 12-page 
        Glossary ever published, as well as examples to make learning the game 
        even easier. Click book to order. | 
      
          | 
    
  
    
      |   
	  New in Town (7/10) 
	  by Tony Medley 
	  Run Time 97 minutes. 
	  Charmingly directed by the Danish Jonas Elmer, 
	  Lucy Hill (Renée Zellweger) is an ambitious corporate VP who is assigned 
	  to try to get a plant in a small  
	  Minnesota town back to 
	  profitability. After a dismal introduction, she starts a friendship with 
	  the local union boss, Ted Mitchell (Harry Connick, Jr.). Her secretary, 
	  Blanche Gunderson (Siobhan Fallon Hogan) is the most appealing character 
	  in the film. J.K Simmons gives another delightful performance as the 
	  laborer’s leader, Stu Kopenhafer. Hogan and Simmons speak in accents that 
	  are enchantingly reminiscent of William H. Macy and Frances McDormand in “Fargo” 
	  (1996). 
	  The only people who don’t like simple, feel good 
	  movies like this are critics, and they have been nearly unanimous in 
	  castigating it (18% on Rottentomatoes). But critics often get the disease 
	  that if a movie is entertaining there must be something wrong with it.
	   
	  This is nothing you haven’t seen before, and it 
	  is certainly formulaic. But most stories follow similar lines, so to 
	  condemn this as being derivative prompts the response, “Name me a film 
	  that isn’t derivative.” 
	  Derivative or not, I enjoyed it. 
	  
	  February 4, 2009 
	     |