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.
 

  

 

Little Women (9/10)

by Tony Medley

Runtime 135 minutes.

PG

The term “chick flick” is generally used as a pejorative, demeaning a film from the outset. There is no doubt that this is a chick flick, but there is nothing in it that deserves demeaning. It's an engrossing tale well told. Despite the long runtime, this has exceptionally good pace.

Written and directed by the immensely talented Greta Gerwig, based on the novel by Louisa May Alcott, this had me from the opening moments. Performed by a terrific cast, highlighted by an Oscar®-quality performance by Saoirse Ronan as fledgling writer Jo March (Alcott’s alter ego), it tells the pretty much biographical story of author Alcott and her rise to prominence.

Portraying Jo’s sister Meg, Amy, and Beth March, are Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, and Eliza Scanlen, with Timothée Chalamet as their neighbor Laurie, who pines after Jo, Laura Dern as their mother Marmee, and Meryl Streep as Aunt March in what is a thankfully brief cameo.

While the four March sisters are beautiful women, the men in their lives are not movie-star hunks. There are no Brad Pitts or Bradley Coopers here. They are, for the most part, just guys who would not merit a second look. Gerwig clearly wanted this to be a woman’s movie.

Gerwig handles the novel, which was published in two iterations, the first about the girls’ growing up and the other showing them as adults, by jumping back and forth. This is the great weakness of the film because the seques are so abrupt and seamless it leaves the viewer momentarily confused. One of my favorite films, Two for the Road (1967), had time warps that jumped in and out non-sequentially, but in that film director Stanley Donen handled the changes in a way that was charming, immediately apparent, and caused no confusion. Gerwig’s approach was jumbled and confusing and was a detraction.

But this is the movie’s only weakness, except for the ending; I agreed with Jo, not her publisher, but that’s up to you to decide. However, it does keep you thinking and that’s a good thing.

 

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