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Bestsellers List Sunday, March 20

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Bestsellers List Sunday, March 20

SoCal Bestsellers

Hardcover Fiction

1. The Paris Condominium by Lucy Foley (Morrow: $29) A girl hoping to remain at her brother’s flat will get tangled in a thriller when he goes lacking.

2. Run, Rose, Run by James Patterson, Dolly Parton (Little, Brown: $30) The A-list writer and A-list singer collaborate on a novel set on the earth of nation music.

3. Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (Scribner: $30) Intertwined tales of youngsters within the 1453 siege of Constantinople, at an assault on a library in present-day Idaho and aboard a starship in deep area.

4. Name Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman (Viking: $25) A group of poems from the youngest presidential inaugural poet in U.S. historical past.

5. The Lincoln Freeway by Amor Towles (Viking: $30) In Nebraska in 1954, a juvenile parolee inadvertently helps two convicts escape and will get blended up of their plans.

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6. One Italian Summer season by Rebecca Serle (Atria: $27) Shortly after her mom’s dying a girl goes on the holiday that she and her mom had deliberate to take collectively.

7. A Thousand Steps by T. Jefferson Parker (Forge: $28) On this thriller set in 1968 Laguna Seashore, a young person’s older sister goes lacking.

8. Violeta by Isabel Allende (Ballantine: $28) Born in 1920, a girl lives via 100 years of historic upheaval.

9. Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Ballantine: $28) In 1983, a Malibu occasion spirals uncontrolled on this novel from the writer of “Daisy Jones & the Six” and “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.”

10. The Stranger within the Lifeboat by Mitch Albom (Harper: $24) The writer of “The 5 Individuals You Meet in Heaven” imagines God showing to shipwreck survivors adrift at sea.

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Hardcover nonfiction

1. Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (Knopf: $27) A memoir from the Korean-born singer-songwriter of the band Japanese Breakfast.

2. Atlas of the Coronary heart by Brené Brown (Random Home: $30) A take a look at human feelings and experiences and the language we use to know them.

3. In Love by Amy Bloom (Random Home: $27) The writer chronicles her husband’s analysis of Alzheimer’s illness and his resolution to finish his life.

4. The Fantastic thing about Nightfall by Frank Bruni (Avid/Simon & Schuster: $28) The journalist chronicles having a stroke that broken his sight in a single eye, and dealing with the danger of utterly shedding his imaginative and prescient.

5. Atomic Habits by James Clear (Avery: $27) The self-help skilled’s information to constructing good habits and breaking dangerous ones through tiny modifications in conduct.

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6. Style by Stanley Tucci (Gallery: $28) The actor reveals his life via tales of memorable meals and favourite dishes.

7. And the Class Is… by Ricky Tucker (Beacon: $26) An introduction to Ballroom, the thriving LGBTQ African American and Latino subculture that started in Harlem over 100 years in the past.

8. Nina Simone’s Gum by Warren Ellis (Faber & Faber: $28) The writer describes gathering a really private relic from the enduring activist/musician, after which, years later, working to protect and perceive it.

9. The Intersectional Environmentalist by Leah Thomas (Voracious: $25) The activist illustrates the hyperlinks between defending the surroundings and the wrestle for social justice.

10. Travels With George by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking: $30) The writer retraces the journeys of the founding father as he visits all 13 states of the younger nation.

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Paperback fiction

1. Klara and the Solar by Kazuo Ishiguro (Classic: $17)

2. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Washington Sq. : $17)

3. Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion (FSG: $17)

4. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (Grand Central: $18)

5. Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Ballantine: $17)

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6. Circe by Madeline Miller (Again Bay: $17)

7. The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier (Different Press: $17)

8. Dune by Frank Herbert (Ace: $18)

9. No One Is Speaking About This by Patricia Lockwood (Riverhead: $17)

10. The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern (Anchor: $18)

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Paperback nonfiction

1. All About Love by bell hooks (Morrow: $16)

2. Educated by Tara Westover (Random Home: $19)

3. Ladies Can Kiss Now by Jill Gutowitz (Atria: $17)

4. Maus I by Artwork Spiegelman (Pantheon: $17)

5. Slouching In the direction of Bethlehem by Joan Didion (FSG: $17)

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6. The White Album by Joan Didion (FSG: $17)

7. The 12 months of Magical Considering by Joan Didion (Classic: $17)

8. Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake (Random Home: $18)

9. Desert Oracle by Ken Layne (Picador: $18)

10. Maus II by Artwork Spiegelman (Pantheon: $17)

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Movie Reviews

Review | Dreams, chilling film with Jessica Chastain about US-Mexico ties

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Review | Dreams, chilling film with Jessica Chastain about US-Mexico ties

3.5/5 stars

“I want to take care of you,” coos Jessica Chastain’s wealthy American in Michel Franco’s latest film, Dreams, playing in competition at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival.

It is another sparse, clinical work from the Mexican-born Franco, who last gave us 2023’s sublime Memory – which co-starred Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard.

In his new film – which will leave you dazed and disquieted, and is likely to rattle around your head for days after watching it – Chastain headlines as Jennifer, a San Francisco socialite whose father’s foundation has been funding arts initiatives in Mexico City.

There she met Fernando (Isaac Hernández), a dancer working for the foundation – although we only learn this in flashback.

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The film begins as Fernando – who was deported from the United States in 2013 – crosses from Mexico into the US in a truck filled with other illegal immigrants.

Dreams director Michel Franco addresses fraught US-Mexico relations in his new film. Photo: Teorema
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Entertainment

Review: 'Old Friends' pay tribute to Sondheim in a luxurious pre-Broadway celebration at the Ahmanson

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Review: 'Old Friends' pay tribute to Sondheim in a luxurious pre-Broadway celebration at the Ahmanson

Our love of Stephen Sondheim is approaching the “Beatlemania” phase.

One wonders what the Broadway maestro would have made of “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends,” which opened Thursday at the Ahmanson Theatre in preparation for its move to Broadway in the spring. A greatest-hits revue, devised by producer Cameron Mackintosh, the celebratory show is a true embarrassment of riches.

Mackintosh has spared no expense on an extravaganza that seems to have everything but a good editor.

Sondheim, who died in 2021, admitted to me in a 2010 interview that he found these birthday concerts and tribute shows “thrilling and embarrassing.”

“There’s an up- and downside to being venerated,” he said. “You start to believe your own notices, and that’s very dangerous. At the same time, it does feel like it’s gold-watch time. It’s ‘Thanks so much for coming to the party.’ They’re nails in the coffin, is what they are.”

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Well, there’s no longer any worry about how all this public fanfare will affect his creativity. But could all this ballyhoo sap interest in his work? It would be an irony worthy of Sondheim if, after a lifetime of being dismissed as too highbrow, his posthumous career suffered from commercial overexposure.

Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga in Stephen Sondheim’s “Old Friends.”

(Matthew Murphy)

Lea Salonga, who headlines “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends” alongside fellow Tony winner Bernadette Peters, is the brightest star of a production overloaded with majestic singing talent. There’s a purity to Salonga’s lyric soprano, which fills the Ahmanson with the distinctive glow not just of the song she happens to be singing but of the musical from which it derives.

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In “Loving You” from “Passion,” a medley from “Sweeney Todd,” “Somewhere” from “West Side Story” and most unforgettably, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” from “Gypsy,” Salonga allows us to momentarily inhabit the space of each show, intuitively conveying what I can only describe as the spiritual architecture of these musical landmarks.

The format of moving from one number to the next in TikTok fashion encourages some of the performers to overplay their hands. There’s a little too much mugging, italicizing and elbow-nudging, as if we might not be able to enjoy Sondheim’s unsparing wit on our own.

Salonga, however, is a model of restraint, allowing the lyrics to speak through her careful attention to Sondheim’s scores. Matthew Bourne seems to have lavished all his genius as a director on the elegant musical staging, leaving the actors to their own devices. But Salonga proves that less is indeed more when backed by trust in the material and guided by the artistic precision of a naturally gifted wonder.

Actors dressed as the Big Bad Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood, singing onstage

Jacob Dickey and Bernadette Peters perform “Hello, Little Girl” in Stephen Sondheim’s “Old Friends.”

(Matthew Murphy)

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Peters wasn’t in strong voice at the opening-night performance, and I wondered if she might be struggling with a cold. When she came out at the top of the show with Salonga, the two elegantly decked in the deep red of a Broadway stage curtain, the connection with the audience was instantaneous. The ovation that erupted threatened to derail the show.

Part of the original Broadway casts of “Sunday in the Park With George” and “Into the Woods,” Peters is one of the great Sondheim interpreters. (I still rank her performance in “Gypsy” up there with the best.) There’s no one like this kewpie triple threat, and even at half-mast she was able to summon some of the old magic.

“Into the Woods” occasioned Peters’ best work, including a duet with Salonga of “Children Will Listen” and a coup de théâtre involving Little Red Riding Hood’s costume. A clumsily set-up “Broadway Baby” from “Follies,” in which Peters cheekily name-checks herself, eventually was redeemed when she was joined by other veteran troupers in leggy kick-line.

“Old Friends,” which was originally produced in London by Mackintosh, has a title that shouldn’t be taken too literally. The company brings together different generations united by their devotion to Sondheim. But the more seasoned pros get two of the biggest showstoppers. Beth Leavel delivers a defiantly louche rendition of “The Ladies Who Lunch” from “Company” and Bonnie Langford leaves it all out on the stage in a gorgeously guttural “I’m Still Here” from “Follies.”

The banquet of beautiful singing is too abundant for a complete inventory. But Jeremy Secomb and Jacob Dickey’s exquisite rendition of “Pretty Women,” a lilting melody amid the murderous machinations of “Sweeney Todd,” deserves special commendation. Jason Pennycooke makes a memorable impression in “Live Alone and Like It,” a song Sondheim wrote for the film “Dick Tracy” that was the only one I didn’t know all the lyrics to.

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There were a few disappointments along the way. Peters had only intermittent success with “Send in the Clowns” from “A Little Night Music” and “Losing My Mind” from “Follies.” Her flickers of brilliance fell short of a flame.

Beth Leavel, Bernadette Peters, Joanna Riding perform "You Gotta Get a Gimmick" in "Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends."

Beth Leavel, Bernadette Peters, Joanna Riding perform “You Gotta Get a Gimmick” in Stephen Sondheim’s “Old Friends.”

(Matthew Murphy)

Mackintosh, who made his greatest-hits selection favoring those shows he had a hand in producing, goes heavy on the comic numbers. The second act begins to drag with slapdash vaudeville showcases that seem like sops to the performers.

Sondheim always insisted that his book writers be given equal due. Songwriting for him was an act of collaborative playwriting. His harping on this point could come across as doctrinaire. But as “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends” unwittingly betrays, songs taken out of their context don’t have the same power as when dramatically embedded.

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Mackintosh and Bourne mitigate the damage by grouping some songs together and presenting them in an ingeniously suggestive dramatic fashion. Matt Kinley’s shapeshifting scenic design, combined with Warren Letton’s hypnotic lighting and Jill Parker’s swank costumes, allow scenes to emerge like an impresario’s dreamscapes.

The irreplaceable Barbara Cook put her interpretive stamp on Sondheim’s songbook in her concert tributes, reanimating musical treasures through her own introspective moonlight. The cast of “Old Friends” is too numerous for that level of personal intimacy, so we’re left in a kind of limbo that’s neither cabaret nor full-scale revival.

But in addition to Salonga’s radiant example, there are group numbers that bring us closer to the sublime heights that Sondheim reached. “Sunday,” the culminating hymn of “Sunday in the Park With George,” closes Act 1 to magisterial effect. And “Being Alive” from “Company,” led by Dickey with soaring vocal accompaniment, takes us into the production’s rousing final stretch.

There are glimpses of Sondheim onscreen, but this isn’t another biographical show. It’s an overstuffed yet always stylish homage. While no substitute for the musicals themselves, the production will be cherished by those fans who need to worship regularly at the altar of their Broadway god.

‘Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends’

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Where: Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Avenue, L.A.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays. Ends March 9.

Tickets: Start at $52

Info: (213) 628-2772 or centertheatregroup.org

Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes

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Movie Reviews

‘Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy’ movie review: Renée Zellweger returns as our favourite singleton in a film that’s strictly for fans

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‘Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy’ movie review: Renée Zellweger returns as our favourite singleton in a film that’s strictly for fans

Renée Zellweger in a scene from ‘Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy’
| Photo Credit: JAY MAIDMENT

One thing Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, taught me was that some clothes were indestructible. Bridget’s (Renée Zellweger) closet still has the red, printed pyjamas, the see-through top and granny underwear from the first movie, Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001). You could say yay for Bridget’s environmental consciousness while wondering about hygiene.

Though director Michael Morris and Zellweger said they have carefully introduced the callbacks to the earlier movie so that it appears organic to the story, that does not seem to be the case. Scenes and bits of dialogue and characters have been bunged in willy-nilly, usually dragging one out of the movie.

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (English)

Director: Michael Morris

Cast: Renée Zellweger, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Leo Woodall, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant

Runtime: 125 minutes

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Storyline: Four years after Mark Darcy’s death, Bridget plunges once more into the world of dating

Among all these hit-and-miss callbacks, is one that is hugely welcome — Bridget’s former boss and lover, the roguishly charming Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant). The movie starts with Daniel listening to a beauteous Geminita (Elena Rivers) spouting rather alarming poetry when Bridget calls. His conversation on the phone while explaining to the disapproving crowd that it is his mum on the line, is hilarious and undiluted Daniel. 

It is four years since the death of her beloved husband, human rights lawyer, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) in Sudan. Bridget is now a 50-something single mother with two children, Billy (Casper Knopf) and Mabel (Mila Jankovic). Bridget is encouraged by her family and friends, including Shazzer (Sally Phillips), Jude (Shirley Henderson) and Tom (James Callis) to start dating again. Daniel is now a family friend called upon to babysit Billy and Mabel.

Bridget’s adventures in dating in the time of dating apps are mildly amusing and being a single parent in the face of terrifyingly efficient tiger mums is somewhat amusing. This time around the beautiful toy boy Roxster (Leo Woodall) and the gruff science teacher Mr. Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor) form the two sides of Bridget’s love triangle. There is a Christmas concert, a heartfelt song, camping and conversations over blue drinks with friends.

Hugh Grant, left, and Renée Zellweger in a scene from ‘Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy’

Hugh Grant, left, and Renée Zellweger in a scene from ‘Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy’
| Photo Credit:
UNIVERSAL PICTURES

Bridget suffers a double dose of grief as her father, Colin (Jim Broadbent) is no more. Her mum, Pamela (Gemma Jones) lives in a care home with her best friend, Una (Celia Imrie) and still calls Bridget at inopportune moments. Bridget returns to work at the television studio where her former boss, Richard Finch (Neil Pearson) makes her feel welcome.

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Based on Helen Fielding’s 2013 novel of the same name, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy does not have the warmth, wit, energy or singular vocabulary of the first movie. All the cast seems just that one beat out of step, which ends up in a disjointed movie experience. Nothing, including Wallaker’s switch from grumpy science teacher to hopeless romantic, feels organic. And just in case one did not get all the callbacks, the end credits feature stills from the first movie. It is only the scenes with Grant’s Daniel that sparkle, and those are the ones that help us overlook the shortcomings of the rest of the movie.

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is currently running in theatres

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