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.
 

  

 

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by Tony Medley

Intelligence (10/10): 2 seasons TV series, 26 episodes, 44 minutes/episode. This is a brilliant Canadian production (2007-09) that I happened to click onto on Netflix who bought the show in 2017. The story of the cooperation of the Vancouver Organized Crime Unit (OCU) headed by Klea Scott with drug lord Ian Tracey to achieve mutual goals won multiple awards in Canada. The acting, especially by Scott and Tracey, is incomparable, but the one who really stands out for me is Pascale Hutton who plays a gorgeous undercover operative in the last seven episodes.  The script is compelling and realistic, the story adult and complex. Apparently it was cancelled by CBC because its theme of political corruption cut too close to home. According to John Doyle of Canada’s “Globe and Mail,” “The fact that it was superb TV, widely praised, was less important than fear of government criticism.” I was mesmerized by each episode and felt devastated when it suddenly ended with a scene that clearly contemplated another season. Streaming on Netflix.

The Hunt (7/10): 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, Betty Gilpin is a capturee of Hilary Swank in a vicious game of hunt and kill, but turns the tables. Despite its violence, it’s actually a feel-good film with comedic undertones when each bad guy gets his comeuppance, unless you happen to identify with the loonies.

The Way Back (7/10): 108 minutes. R. Ben Affleck stars in a biographical role about an alcoholic who is recruited to coach his old high school basketball team, which is a chronic loser. Ben’s self-destructive alcoholism dominates the movie, which is fortunate because while the scenes of his team playing are well done, one would think that they would want to show him coaching something…anything, and to spend some time on that, like director David Ansbaugh did in Hoosiers (1986). Instead, about all we see him doing is yelling and swearing at his players, and kicking one off the team for being four minutes late. Suddenly, voila! they are beating everyone! Nonsense; nothing he does in the movie would result in turning a bad team into a good team.

The Whistlers (6/10): 95 minutes. NR when reviewed but I would rate it R. Not to be confused with the 1940s-era radio show, this is a convoluted thriller that keeps you guessing throughout. At the expense of being trite, things are not as they appear. Director Corneliu Porumboiu's idea was to make this kind of a noir-like movie of strong women manipulating weaker men. It’s advertised as “comedy/crime,” but I didn’t see much comedy. If it's noir, it's minor league noir, maybe Triple A. Although it apparently does exist on the island of La Gomera where the film is set, the whistling gimmick isn't very convincing and diminishes what could have been a good story. In Romanian, English, and Spanish.

The Last Thing He Wanted (3/10): 115 minutes. R. If you can figure out what the heck is going on in this convoluted, jumpy, incoherent effort, you’re a better man than I am, Gunga. Anne Hathaway is an ambitious reporter in 1984 who gets waylaid by her father, Willem Dafoe, to help him somehow in a shady deal in which he’s involved. It descends further into incomprehensibility jumping from one character to another (including Ben Affleck as some sort of government agent), and one disjointed episode after another as Anne travels to Costa Rica and gets involved in things that are beyond the ken of anyone watching this terminally opaque movie.

Spenser: Confidential (3/10): 111 minutes. R. Here’s a losing idea: make a movie based on a series of 40 bestselling books by Robert Parker about a private eye (Spenser, played by Mark Wahlberg) full of beloved characters and totally change them so they are unrecognizable to the author’s legion of devoted readers, of which I am one. It’s such a bad idea that it’s no surprise that the casting stinks, the script weak, and the story an amalgamation of formulaic platitudes. After viewing, I read Parker’s 1973 introductory novel about Spenser, The Godwulf Manuscript, to get rid of the bad taste this movie left.

Recommended reading: The Godwulf Manuscript, and the other 39 Spenser books by Parker.

 

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