Hot Homes redirect

• March 1, 2025

.

​ Orange County Register 

Santa Anita horse racing consensus picks for Saturday, March 1, 2025

• March 1, 2025

The consensus box of Santa Anita horse racing picks comes from handicappers Bob Mieszerski, Eddie Wilson, Kevin Modesti and Mark Ratzky. Here are the picks for thoroughbred races on Saturday, March 1, 2025.

Trouble viewing on mobile device? See consensus picks

Enjoy the consensus horse racing picks online? Subscribe

​ Orange County Register 

Oscars: A look at how the trend of blockbuster movies continued in 2024

• March 1, 2025

Blockbuster box office

The 97th Academy Awards are Sunday, March 2 in Los Angeles. Here’s a look at how high-grossing movies continue to dominate and whether women are increasing their impact in Hollywood.

Best and biggest picture

As with last year, two best picture nominees stand head and shoulders above the rest in box office receipts. As of late January, “Dune: Part Two” and “Wicked” had grossed $715 million and $710 million, respectively, as the only nominees to break $100 million.

Box office success doesn’t always translate to winning best picture, though. Here are this year’s nominees and what they’ve grossed so far. Some, like “A Complete Unknown,” were released as late in the year as December, giving them less time to earn.

Best picture Oscar nominees

Film/release month Global box office (as of Feb. 1)

“Anora,” October $33 million

“The Brutalist,” December $12 million

“A Complete Unknown,” December $75 million

“Conclave,” October $84 million

“Dune: Part Two,” Feb. 2024 $715 million

“Emilia Pérez,” November $13 million

“I’m Still Here,” November $15 million

“Nickel Boys,” January $1.9 million

“The Substance,” September $76 million

“Wicked,” November $710 million

10 biggest in 2024

Disney was the distributor with the highest box office sales.

1. “Inside Out 2” Disney $1.7 billion

2. “Deadpool & Wolverine” Disney $1.34 billion

3. “Moana 2” Disney $1.05 billion

4. “Despicable Me 4” Universal $970.1 million

5. “Dune: Part Two” Warner Bros. $715 million

6. “Wicked” Universal $710 million

7. “Mufasa: The Lion King” Disney $697 million

8. “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” Warner Bros. $572 million

9. “Kung Fu Panda 4” Universal $548 million

10. “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” Paramount $483 million

“Inside Out 2” surpassed “The Lion King” to become the highest-grossing animated film ever and is currently the ninth-highest grossing film of all time. It reached $1 billion gross faster than any other animated film.

“Deadpool & Wolverine” became the 55th film to gross $1 billion worldwide. It had the highest-grossing opening weekend of any R-rated film and surpassed “Joker” (2019) as the highest-grossing R film.

“Despicable Me” became the first animated franchise to gross $5 billion with the release of “Despicable Me 4.”

“Wicked” became the first musical to gross over $164 million worldwide on its opening weekend, making it the highest opening worldwide gross for a film based on a stage musical since “Les Misérables” (2012).

Women in film

For 23 years, Martha Lauzen, founder and executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, has conducted research on the representation and employment of women on screen and behind the scenes in film and television.

In front of the camera

Lauzen released the report “It’s a Man’s (Celluloid) World: Portrayals of Female Characters in the Top Grossing U.S. Films of 2024” in January. For the first time in recent history, the percentage of top-grossing films featuring female protagonists equaled the percentage of films with male protagonists at 42%, while 16% of films featured ensembles. Protagonists were defined as the characters from whose perspective the story is told.

You can find the full report here.

Behind the camera

Lauzen’s 2024 report noted the following: “70% of films employed 10 or more men in key behind-the-scenes roles, but only 8% employed 10 or more women. Women directed and wrote some of the year’s buzziest films, including ‘The Substance’ and ‘Babygirl.’ But their directors, Coralie Fargeat and Halina Reijn, remain exceptions, not the rule. The stunning successes enjoyed by high-profile women in the last few years — including Greta Gerwig, Jane Campion and Chloé Zhao — have not translated into opportunities for greater numbers of women. Visibility for a few has not generated employment for many.”Sources: Investopedia; Martha M. Lauzen, “It’s a Man’s (Celluloid) World: Portrayals of Female Characters in the Top Grossing U.S. films of 2024” and “The Celluloid Ceiling 2023 Report”; Box Office Mojo; Nielsen

​ Orange County Register 

LAFC gets reacquainted with New York City FC

• March 1, 2025

The Los Angeles Football Club can turn 2025 into the year it ran the table and claimed victories over every team in Major League Soccer.

That attempt starts Saturday at BMO Stadium against New York City FC, which ranks with the Fire, who are on LAFC’s schedule Aug. 9 in Chicago, and expansion San Diego as the one percent of MLS teams that remain unbeaten against the league’s benchmark organization since 2018.

Beginning its eighth year in MLS, LAFC has the most points (392), most wins (113) and scored the most goals (439) over that span, outpacing second-best Philadelphia by a decent margin in each category.

NYCFC sits fourth on the list, 36 points and 15 wins behind LAFC, but thus far the Pigeons avoided Olly the falcon’s talons.

The fourth installment between the clubs comes after a four-year pause. It’s been so long that Spaniard David Villa remains NYCFC’s leader for the most shots on goal in the series with three, all of which came in the first meeting, a 2-2 draw during the expansion year when visiting head coach Patrick Vieira lamented about the lack of a new stadium in New York after experiencing the Banc of California Stadium.

(Currently under construction, that will finally become a reality in 2027, when Etihad Park, a soccer-specific stadium in Willets Point, Queens, opens its doors.)

In 2019, LAFC traveled east and shared points on a crisp spring afternoon at Yankee Stadium punctuated by record-setting Carlos Vela, who celebrated the first of his two goals on the day with a home-run swing standing in center field.

Two years later, Bob Bradley’s last as LAFC head coach, New York City grabbed three points as visitors, rallying late to win 2-1 during their MLS Cup championship season.

In his ninth year with NYCFC, 38-year-old Maxi Moralez is the lone player on the current roster with a goal contribution against LAFC.

The Argentine midfielder started and played 78 minutes versus Miami for the club’s new head coach, Pascal Jansen, in the regular-season opener last Saturday, a gut-wrenching draw at Miami that hinged on the late brilliance of Lionel Messi.

“This team is excellent with some rotation in position and exposing teams in space behind, setting teams up, drawing defenses out, getting defenses caught in what we call no-man’s land and getting stretched between lines to then expose team in behind,” LAFC head coach Steve Cherundolo noted of Jansen’s group.

“I’d love to see our team play with higher intensity and more speed” this Saturday, Cherundolo said.

For LAFC players, the match is their fourth in 12 days, with another pair of midweek games coming after advancing in the CONCACAF Champions Cup over Colorado on Tuesday.

“Going to the next round feels great,” said midfielder Timothy Tillman, who started alongside Tuesday’s series-winning scorer Mark Delgado and Igor Jesus in each match so far.

The heavy schedule has been a bit of a comfort zone for LAFC during the Cherundolo era, as the club learned to thrive with the demands of success.

“I think finding a good mix between building a functioning team but still managing minutes is a very tough part,” Tillman said. “I’m happy I’m not the one who has to decide about that. We all came out of a preseason that was really good. We worked really hard and we knew what was coming towards us, so we were ready for that and trained for that.”

NEW YORK CITY FC AT LAFC

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: BMO Stadium

TV/Radio: Apple TV (MLS Season Pass)/710 AM, ESPN LA App, 980 AM

​ Orange County Register 

Orange County scores and player stats for Friday, Feb. 28

• March 1, 2025

Support our high school sports coverage by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribe now

Scores and stats from Orange County games on Friday, Feb. 28

Click here for details about sending your team’s scores and stats to the Register.

The deadline for submitting information is 10:45 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 p.m. Saturday.

FRIDAY’S SCORES

GIRLS BASKETBALL

CIF-SS PLAYOFFS

Championship finals

DIVISION 2A

Rolling Hills Prep 51, Rosary Academy 49

BASEBALL

5 TOOL FESTIVAL

At Dallas, TX

Ocean View 3, Arlington Heights (TX) 0

​ Orange County Register 

Berkeley children’s book publisher continues surviving in tough market

• March 1, 2025

Founding and leading a small independent children’s book publishing company in today’s Internet-driven, Instagram-obsessed era is not for the faint of heart.

Nor is it for anyone unwilling to fly head-first into the oppositional forces caused by social media, book bans, free speech battles, economics and data-backed evidence of shortened attention spans and decreased reading skills among youth and children.

Even so, author, illustrator and publisher Marissa Moss has successfully helmed Berkeley-based Creston Books since 2013. Backed by a conviction that her independent company will publish only powerful stories told with impeccable craft and including visually engaging, beautiful images, Moss says “I want stories you can read over and over and get something out of them. Our books never talk down to kids. We engage our readers as the intelligent people they are.”

Among the 19 books published by Creston are roughly a third honored with starred reviews from national trade publications, along with many that are Junior Library Guild selections, Eureka Gold Medal Winners and have received many other awards.

Moss, whose more than 70 picture, middle-grade and young adult books include the best-selling “Amelia’s Notebook” series, has been published by her own company and major national publishers. She recently released her newest book, “Ellis Island Passover,” under the Creston imprint.

The book falls into the age-5-to-10 juvenile fiction category, but tells a deeply personal multigenerational story that readers of all ages can appreciate. “Ellis Island Passover” is based on real events and is closely connected to Moss’s actual family history.

In the book, a young child, Miriam, feels overlooked and disgruntled as the family prepares to celebrate Passover. She hears a tale told by her Great-Uncle Ezra about his first Passover in America. Fleeing Russia’s pogroms, Ezra traveled alone as a 9-year-old to meet his brother at Ellis Island.

Circumstances prevented an immediate reunion, and the young boy was reliant on his quick wit and friendly, helpful personality to ensure that he and 27 fellow Jewish Ellis Island visitors enjoyed a memorable, first seder dinner in their new country. Hand-drawn paint-and-pen artwork enriches the narrative and adds visual allure to each spread.

Family stories told by elders are invaluable, says Moss, whose Great-Uncle Sam also traveled to America at age 9. Sam’s journey held more tragic notes and included his parents being killed by East European Cossacks.

Told in an author’s note, it is also a story of courage, victory and humor. A real-life occurrence related to bananas is a delightful, fun detail woven into Ezra’s account of his earliest experiences in America.

“Family stories are close to my heart,” says Moss. “My grandparents’ generation, immigrant stores and World War II survivor stories have huge impact. They lived through things we cannot imagine.

“I wrote the book because my three sons were scrambling to ask questions before they’re gone. We’re a nation that’s woefully bad at teaching history. That makes people who have personal experience in real history all the more responsible for passing it on.”

Moss says family stories also provide vital context for honoring traditions while allowing for progress.

“Young people searching for belonging glom onto ugly identities,” she says. “If they had family stories, they’d have connection and a sense of being part of a bigger whole. It’s not something set in stone, it’s bringing traditions and values into your life in a way that’s fresh and meaningful.”

The first Passover is believed to have happened thousands of years ago, and Ezra’s story relates to religious freedom in America, something she said is “baked into the Constitution” and the primary subject in “A Mitzvah for George Washington,” another Creston publication. Large topics are welcomed by Moss, as are the negative emotions of the young characters and adults in Creston’s books.

“Negative emotions are not necessarily negative. One of my first books involved how anger can make you be strong. How to use it and be forceful, without lashing out or hitting. Anger that causes you to have courage.

“I want kids and adults to listen to their emotions and decide what they mean. Are you sad, or actually scared? Are you angry, or actually hungry?”

Well-structured books based on real history open young children and youths up to a world beyond television, their phones and social media, she says.

“Their whole world has been shrunk down to TikTok, and our phones make it hard to grasp what America once was: an incredible beacon of freedom we stood for in the world. That’s now vanishing.”

This brings Moss to the largest challenges Creston faces.

“Social media is more important, not always fair and easily distorted. We want to be creative, not spend time policing that sort of thing.”

Moss also says book bans have made selling books more difficult.

“We want to give voice to authors less heard by the major publishers. Books coming out tend to look the same and deal with the same issues. One parent can object and make your book irrelevant. The bans affect what is published, as do politics, like the war in Gaza.”

Proving her point, Moss, who is Jewish, mentions one recent book written for another publisher that was canceled a week after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks against Israelis.

“It was before Israel had even responded. People don’t realize that’s happening. ‘Ellis Island Passover’ is a Jewish story, but I’ll take the financial hit because this story has to be out there. You can’t understand other people without conversations about what happens around them and in their histories.”

While considering the hundreds of manuscripts Creston receives each week, Moss says she has no checklist or preconceived ideas. She says she looks for authors who tell substantive stories with passion. Every submission is read, including un-agented manuscripts. Occasionally, a book presented as a picture book is redirected to the midgrade market.

“They try to pack too much in but may have a great subject. I tell them it needs more pages and exploration and an older audience. You need to know your format. I encourage them to join the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, which will give them a crash course.”

In the coming year, Moss says she plans to promote Creston’s “incredibly strong fall list” of four new books and complete a middle-grade graphic mystery novel. The project offers art, action, humor and dialogue, a sure sign Moss continues to write — and publish — timeless, powerful stories.

Visit crestonbooks.co or marissamoss.com online for more details.

Lou Fancher is a freelance writer. Reach her at [email protected].

​ Orange County Register 

Trump administration to slash funding for enforcement of fair housing laws

• March 1, 2025

By JESSE BEDAYN, Associated Press

President Donald Trump’s administration has begun terminating grants to organizations that enforce the Fair Housing Act by taking complaints, investigating and litigating housing discrimination cases for Americans across the country, according to a document and information obtained by The Associated Press on Friday.

The grants are disbursed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to private nonprofits, which act as the frontline enforcement of the federal anti-discrimination law. They educate communities on their rights, test whether a landlord is racially discriminating, investigate complaints, resolve disputes and can fund legal counsel.

Of some 34,000 fair housing complaints lodged in the U.S. in 2023, these private nonprofits processed 75%, according to a report from the National Fair Housing Alliance. The rest were fielded by state and local governments, with HUD and the U.S. Department of Justice working on less than 6% combined.

It’s the highest number of complaints since the first report in the 1990s, and over half were lodged for discrimination based on a disability.

Of the 162 active grants going to the private nonprofits to do that work, nearly half are slated for cancellation, said Nikitra Bailey, executive vice president at the National Fair Housing Alliance. Bailey added that some organizations rely entirely on the grants and may have to shutter, others will have to lay off staff.

“It’s doing it at a time when Americans want to see an end to the barrage of rising housing costs and a lack of housing supply,” said Bailey. “They need increased support and intervention from our federal government, not a withdrawal from basic civil rights.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for HUD said: “The Department is responsible for ensuring our grantees and contractors are in compliance with the President’s Executive Orders. If we determine they are not in compliance, then we are required to take action. The Department will continue to serve the American people, including those are facing housing discrimination or eviction.”

In a termination letter, a copy of which was obtained by the AP, HUD said that the cancellations were at the direction of Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency, called DOGE, run partly by billionaire Elon Musk.

The grants intended for fair housing enforcement are largely worth $425,000, an amount which is typically issued annually to organizations.

The letters caused widespread confusion across the country late Thursday night, as fair housing organizations started communicating through listservs, assessing the potential impacts and trying to find answers.

One of the organizations slated to lose funding, Fair Housing Center of Metropolitan Detroit, fields about 200 to 300 fair housing complaints a year and works broadly to resolve housing related problems, such as disputes with landlords, with a coverage area of some 4 million people.

“It’s a significant threat to the viability of our organization at a minimum,” said Steve Tomkowiak, the group’s executive director. “It can threaten the survival of any of the fair housing enforcement organizations.”

For Kimberly Merchant, CEO of Mississippi Center for Justice, the kneecapping of fair housing groups, or their disappearance altogether, would be “open season to discriminate indiscriminately without having to worry about being checked.”

Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

​ Orange County Register 

Encino home linked to ‘Casablanca’ director Michael Curtiz seeks $5.7 million

• March 1, 2025

A colonial-style mansion, reportedly once part of a larger estate owned by Academy Award-winning “Casablanca” director Michael Curtiz, is on the market for $5.7 million.

Completed in 1939 and attributed to architect Roland E. Coate, the 7,472-square-foot residence includes a main house, an attached guest house and a studio apartment for a total of 10 bedrooms and 10 bathrooms.

An unfinished basement offers extra space.

Six fireplaces, original hardwood floors and brass hardware maintain the charm of the era.

The two-story main house with six bedrooms opens on a grand foyer with a staircase.

A marble fireplace anchors the formal living room, and the formal dining room’s French doors open to a garden patio.

There’s a wood-paneled library with built-in bookshelves, a family room that doubles as a screening room with an attached projectionist cubby and a gourmet kitchen. It features a breakfast nook, high-end appliances and a large island.

Other highlights include a dedicated wine closet, a butler’s pantry and a flower cutting room designed for arranging and storing fresh flowers.

Upstairs, the primary suite has an attached screened-in porch. It’s just off the bedroom with a marble fireplace. Amenities also include a private sauna, a steam shower and two separate dressing areas.

There are three bedrooms in the guesthouse, which has its own entrances and a fenced-in yard.

An attached studio apartment provides additional living space that can serve as a home office.

Spanning over 1 acre, the property features a backyard swimming pool and ample parking, including a three-car and two-car garage that were formerly a horse stable and tack room in Curtiz’s day.

Curtiz and his wife, Bess, bought the Encino ranch in 1946, according to the book “Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film” by Alan K. Rode, but the Southern California News Group could not independently confirm it.

According to the co-listing agent Karen Sandvig of Coldwell Banker Realty, “Originally, the property was approximately 120 acres” and had a different address than the subdivided property today.

She added that the sellers “did a chain of title requests when researching the history of the property.”

One document provided by Sandvig is the grant deed signed by Curtiz’s estranged wife, Bess Meredyth, an actress and screenwriter. The couple sold the house after they separated in 1960, according to Rode’s book.

Sandvig shares the listing with Wendi Lampassi and Taylor Penrod of Coldwell Banker Realty.

Curtiz was a Hungarian director who arrived in Hollywood in 1926 at the invitation of Jack Warner, and he became a legend. His most memorable films include “Casablanca” (1942), “Yankee Doodle Dandy” (1942) and “Mildred Pierce” (1945). He died in April 1962 at 75.

​ Orange County Register