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.
 

  

 

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (7/10)

by Tony Medley

Runtime 100 minutes

PG

This is pure fantasy; surprise, surprise! However, the surprise is that two people who don’t like fantasy, my assistant and me, liked it…a lot! Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) is a creation of Charles Perrault, a 17th Century Frenchman who wrote many of the fairy tales that have come down to us through the ages, like Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Little Red Riding Hood.

In the first film (2014) Maleficent, who protects magical creatures of the Moors, curses a princess, Aurora (Elle Fanning) to sleep forever.

However, now we meet Aurora and she has been raised by the inscrutable, feared, and seemingly unlovable Malificent, who has come to love her, and has become queen of the Moors courtesy of Malificent. Aurora, however, has fallen in love with Prince Phillip (Harris Dickinson), who is the son of King John (Robert Lindsay) and Queen Ingrith (Michelle Pfeiffer). King John and Aurora want to bring peace between humans and fairies, but Queen Ingrith is having none of that, and Malificent is equally dubious.

Director Joachim Rønning has taken the work of writers Micah Fitzerman-Blue, Noah Hapster, and Linda Wolverton and woven it into a cohesive tale that is gripping. He is aided by exquisite CIG that creates the magical land these characters (and the characters themselves) occupy. The CIG alone is worth the price of admission. There are hundreds of credits for visual effects; the amount of work that went into putting this together must have been mind-boggling.

But the special effects, exceptional as they are, do not overwhelm the story, which is quite good, due in large part to the deliciously evil performance of Pfeiffer, which is not to discount the fine performances of Fanning and Jolie.

My only caveat is the rating. This is pretty dark and violent for young children. I would give it a PG-13. That said, I think Walt would have been pleased with this production. Bambi (1942) wasn't lacking in darkness and violence, either.

 

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