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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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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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