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Play like a pro with expert knowledge from a champion of the game
If you don't know the ins and outs of play, bridge can seem like an
intimidating game--but it doesn't have to be! Armed with the techniques
and strategies in the pages of this book, you'll be bidding and winning
hands like a boss! A good book for beginners, it has lots of advanced
techniques useful to experienced players, too. This is as close to
an all-in-one bridge book you can get.
About the Author
H. Anthony Medley holds the rank of Silver life Master, is an American
Contract Bridge League Club Director, and has won regional and sectional
titles. An attorney, he received his B.S. from UCLA, where he was sports
editor of UCLA's Daily Bruin, and his J.D. from the University of
Virginia School of Law. He is the author of UCLA Basketball: The Real
Story and Sweaty Palms: The Neglected Art of Being Interviewed and The
Complete Idiots Guide to Bridge. He was a columnist for the Southern
California Bridge News. He is an MPAA-certified film critic and his work
has appeared nationally in Good Housekeeping, The Los Angeles Times, Los
Angeles Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, and other publications. Click
the book to order.
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CATS (3/10)
by Tony Medley
108 minutes.
PG.
When I saw the Broadway musical CATS, it was at the
old Shubert Theater in Century City and I was in the front row. The main
thing I remember positive about the experience was that during
intermission, one of the cats in the cast was crouched under an alcove
just in front of my seat and just looked at me throughout the
intermission, as a real cat might do.
I love the old Broadway musicals. But when that
charming interlude is what I remember it should be clear that one of the
few musicals I didn’t like was CATS, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s least melodic
of all his musicals, because of the bland music (except for “Memory,” a
great song, deserving to have achieved the status of a standard), so had
no anticipation of liking this movie and I wasn’t
disillusioned.
For just one thing, for those who enshrine Elaine
Paige's and Betty Buckley’s iconic performances of “Memory” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gd_ohoPzYc)
in the original London and Broadway productions respectively, Jennifer
Hudson’s prelude rendition is a horror. Hudson does a little better with
the reprise, but not much. Just watching Paige's performance linked
above is more entertaining than this entire film.
Lloyd Webber wrote the music, teaming with Taylor Swift
(also in the cast) for the lyrics, of a better than mediocre new song
for the film, “Beautiful Ghosts.” In order to fit in with the rest of
the lackluster music in this play, it is not what you would call
hummable, although the melody is really not that bad. Tellingly, it was
left off of the Academy’s short list of 15 songs for nomination as
Original Song for the Oscars®.
As an aside, my bridge friend, the late concert
pianist Leonard Pennario, held Lloyd Webber in low regard, claiming that
his melodies were derivative of earlier works. And, in fact, some have
claimed that "Memory" is strikingly similar to the main melody in
Ravel's "Bolero." But that doesn't make "Memory" any less, well,
memorable.
Directed by Tom Hooper who also has a writing
credit on the script by Lee Hall based on T. S. Eliot’s poetry
collection "Old Possum's Books of Practical Cats," there is a
magnificent ballet halfway through. That’s about the only good thing
that I can say about this.
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