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 Hunt (7/10)

by Tony Medley

96 minutes.

R.

This is an unusual Hollywood film that makes the politically correct loonies the bad guys and the “deplorables” the good guys. Unfortunately, while it is abundantly violent, it is also watered down. Very loosely based on the short story “The Most Dangerous Game” (aka "The Hounds of Zaroff") by Richard Cannell in Collier’s on January 19, 1924, while the short story’s protagonist is kidnapped and taken to an island owned by a lunatic who gives him a good dinner and then turns him out with a few hours headstart and then chases him down to kill him, Hilary Swank kidnaps people from around the country and turns them loose on her estate while her rich friends hunt them down and kill them.

The first movie made of the short story was 1932’s The Most Dangerous Game. It was followed by remakes A Game of Death (1945) and Run for the Sun (1956). It was also the inspiration for films like Cornell Wilde’s The Naked Prey (1965; written and directed by Wilde who also starred and was in virtually every scene), Burt Reynolds & Co. in Deliverance (1972) and The Hunger Games franchise (2012-2015), among others.

This one is different, too. Hilary doesn’t just kidnap one person at a time; she gets a whole crew from different parts of the country. Mystifyingly, Hilary gives them some weapons, including guns, with which to defend themselves. As I recall the short story, that protagonist only got a knife, if that.

One of the victims, however, is Betty Gilpin who is a one woman Green Beret type who turns the tables on Hilary and her gang. Directed by Craig Zobel from a script by creators Damon Lindelof and Nick Cuse, there’s not a lot of philosophizing or politicking here. It’s just action and violence.

Gilpin is an unemotional killing machine and, naturally, the people she disposes are begging to be sent on their way. There’s not a lot of subtlety here.

It’s not as stupid as the superheroes movies because they take themselves oh, so seriously. Nobody takes anything seriously in this film except surviving to kill the next bad guy. Despite the violence, in the end it’s just a feel-good movie, comedic in nature, as one bad guy after another gets what everyone in the audience thinks is deserved.

 

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