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.
 

  

 

The Current War: Director’s Cut (6/10)

by Tony Medley

113 minutes.

PG-13.

Biopics have a difficult task. They must tell the story faithfully, capturing the ambience of the times and recreating the characters in a believable way.

This is the story of the development of electricity and the battle among Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch), Nicolai Tesla (Nicholas Hoult), and George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon). It definitely has a POV, showing Edison as prickly and rigid in his defense of Direct Current (DC) vs. Tesla’s Alternating Current (AC). Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon from an original script by Michael Mitnick, while educational, it is convoluted and necessarily superficial considering the topic.

Edison started the battle by perfecting the electric light bulb. He then goes about the job of electrifying America but Tesla upsets the apple cart by proposing that AC would be far more efficient than DC. He actually works for Edison for a time, but Edison was adamant that DC was the only way to go, so Tesla takes his idea to Westinghouse, who takes the ball and runs with it. The battle is joined. And it gets nasty.

Alas, at no time during the almost two hours did I really believe I was watching anything but a Hollywood movie. I’m not sure why, but the film never did grab me like, for instance, A Beautiful Mind did in 2002. I believed the character in that film. Of the three main characters, only Nicholas Hoult as Tesla presented a performance that rang true. I simply could not picture Cumberbatch or Shannon as Edison or Westinghouse, respectively.

Still, the movie seems a fairly accurate presentation of what really happened and for that it might be worth seeing.

 

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