Rated PG-13, directed by Sharon Maguire, with Renee Zellweger (Bridget Jones), Gemma Jones (Bridget's mum), Hugh Grant (Daniel Cleaver), Colin Firth (Mark Darcy), Celia Imrie (Una Alconbury), James Faulkner (Uncle Geoffrey), running time: 97 minutes.
Bridget Jones is an average British woman struggling against her imperfections. She wants to find the man of her dreams, or at least one that won't prove to be a nightmare. To do so, a bit of lifestyle-changing is in order: quit smoking, cut back on alcohol and shed a bit of weight. She also decides to keep a diary in which she will always tell only the truth. She realizes her efforts are paying off when she wakes up one morning with her boss, Daniel Cleaver. An affair ensues and she is head-over-heels happy. She also keeps running into a childhood friend, Mark Darcy, who she finds quietly attractive. Whatever is a girl to do?
-- staff writer
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May 5 to May 11 What started out as friction between Taiwanese students at Taichung First High School and a Japanese head cook escalated dramatically over the first two weeks of May 1927. It began on April 30 when the cook’s wife knew that lotus starch used in that night’s dinner had rat feces in it, but failed to inform staff until the meal was already prepared. The students believed that her silence was intentional, and filed a complaint. The school’s Japanese administrators sided with the cook’s family, dismissing the students as troublemakers and clamping down on their freedoms — with
As Donald Trump’s executive order in March led to the shuttering of Voice of America (VOA) — the global broadcaster whose roots date back to the fight against Nazi propaganda — he quickly attracted support from figures not used to aligning themselves with any US administration. Trump had ordered the US Agency for Global Media, the federal agency that funds VOA and other groups promoting independent journalism overseas, to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” The decision suddenly halted programming in 49 languages to more than 425 million people. In Moscow, Margarita Simonyan, the hardline editor-in-chief of the
Six weeks before I embarked on a research mission in Kyoto, I was sitting alone at a bar counter in Melbourne. Next to me, a woman was bragging loudly to a friend: She, too, was heading to Kyoto, I quickly discerned. Except her trip was in four months. And she’d just pulled an all-nighter booking restaurant reservations. As I snooped on the conversation, I broke out in a sweat, panicking because I’d yet to secure a single table. Then I remembered: Eating well in Japan is absolutely not something to lose sleep over. It’s true that the best-known institutions book up faster
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