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.
 

  

 

Thumbnails Feb 21

by Tony Medley

The Marksman (8/10): 107 minutes. PG-13. Liam Neeson’s almost annual first of the year thriller is here and it is one of his best. He plays a crusty ex-marine who finds himself in charge of a Mexican illegal immigrant boy being chased by the cartel. It’s a tense ride throughout.

MLK/FBI (7/10): 104 minutes. NR. This is chapter and verse about how J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI hounded Martin Luther King, bugged his phones, and set out to destroy him. Unfortunately, the film is forever tarnished by using discredited former FBI chief Jim Comey as one of its main interviewees. It’s a jarring incongruity when Comey actually says that a scurrilous letter the bureau sent to King “represented the darkest part of the bureau’s history,” when it is Comey himself who represents the darkest part of the bureau’s history in his deplorable actions as the Chief. I liked the visual quality of the subtitles, but they were sloppy. For instance, there’s one of LBJ talking on the phone and the subtitles say, “What am I going to do about MLK with all these reports that are coming in on him all night.” What he actually says is “all the time,” not “all night.” This might be a small thing but if I can hear it, why can’t the people doing the subtitles transcribe it correctly? Summing up, it's a scathing indictment of contemptible FBI actions, but it provides few details about MLK’s alleged marital philandering maybe because the FBI’s blackmail tapes remain sealed and classified until 2027. But regardless of what they say, they are irrelevant to MLK’s importance and brilliance.

Tiger (7/10): Two-part series. NR. This is a relatively unrevealing documentary about Tiger Woods. The first half is pretty much all about golf.  While the second half scarcely references his fathering fine children, it gets deeper into him tarnishing his life and reputation by blatant womanizing when married to one of the most beautiful women in the world who was apparently a good wife and mother. It does go into detail with candid interviews with one of his mistresses, Rachel Uchitel, a marriage-breaker who comes across as negatively as Tiger. To its great discredit, it barely mentions the influence of Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley in leading him down the primrose path of Las Vegas. HBO.

Myth of a Colorblind France (7/10): 86 minutes. NR. With interviews with blacks who have lived the Parisian experience since post-WWI, it seems as if all was not the sweetness and light in Paris for them that has been advertised. The most interesting story is that of Josephine Baker. While it touches on her life and what an outstanding person she was, what it says is woefully inadequate and leaves one with the wrong impression of her ending, and that’s a dishonor. Mostly it’s told by and about articulate people like James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Beauford Delaney, Augusta Savage, Barbara Chase-Riboud (who wrote a biography of Thomas Jefferson’s Sally Hemings), and Lois Mailou Jones.

Wonder Woman 1984 (3/10): 131 minutes. PG-13. After suffering through the first one, I swore I would not subject myself to any of the obvious sequels, but there is such a dearth of material out there, I forced myself to endure well over two hours of this nonsense. Whenever Gal Gadot utters a line, I am reminded of Tony Curtis allegedly muttering, “Yonda Lies Da Castle of My Fodda,” in one of his earlier movies (1954’s The Black Shield of Falworth?). But that’s not the worst thing about this movie. It is even more absurd than the first one that grossly distorted history. This just creates the eidos of a fantasy world that never could exist, forget the absurdity of the superhero concept. Fortunately, fans who attend this type of attempt at entertainment do not expect accomplished acting or writing or any thought-provoking content, so they won’t be disappointed.

French Exit (3/10): 105 minutes. R. Without one sympathetic character in this entire movie, the tease says, “An aging Manhattan socialite living on what's barely left of her inheritance moves to a small apartment in Paris with her son and cat”.  Believe it or not, that’s all there is to it! An inane, pointless vapidity.

Recommended Reading: Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway by Michael Riedel: A fascinating history of Broadway and the Shuberts and Nederlanders.

 

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