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ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT REPORTS FROM THE TIMES, NEWS SERVICES AND THE NATION’S PRESS.

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POP/ROCK

The Critics’ Choice: Moby’s “Play” is the best album of 1999 and TLC’s “No Scrubs” the best single, according to the Village Voice’s annual poll of 489 music critics from across the country. For “Play,” the 34-year-old Moby created a musical collage of sorts by sampling decades-old recordings of blues, gospel and Southern field songs and presenting them with a bed of electronic music and modern beats. “No Scrubs,” meanwhile, was a major commercial hit for TLC and, like much of the trio’s hip-hop-flavored R&B;, centers on sexual politics and relationships. The full poll appears in the Voice issue hitting newsstands today. Other top vote-getters in the album category: “69 Love Songs” by Magnetic Fields, “Midnite Vultures” by Beck, “The Soft Bulletin” by Flaming Lips, “Mule Variations” by Tom Waits and “The Battle of Los Angeles” by Rage Against the Machine.

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Latin Nominations: Mexican singer-songwriter Marco Antonio Solis garnered a leading six nominations Tuesday for Billboard’s seventh annual Latin Music Awards, which take place in Miami on April 27 and will be broadcast by Telemundo in May. Solis, who scored in categories including best male pop album and “Hot Latin Tracks” artist of the year, will also be inducted into Billboard’s Latin Music Hall of Fame for his “commercial impact and artistic influence on the Latin music industry.” Other nominees included Ricky Martin (five), Enrique Iglesias (four), and Marc Anthony, Jennifer Lopez, Elvis Crespo and Olga Tanon (three each). The awards are based on radio air play and record sales.

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KISS Off: Tickets go on sale today through https://www.vh1.com for reunited rock group KISS’ nationwide “farewell tour,” which includes a March 18 stop at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim. The nationwide tour is presented by VH1, whose Web site will be selling the tickets three days prior to regular outlets. The cable channel will also air related programming, including live coverage from KISS’ opening show, March 11 in Phoenix.

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Clothes by Carlos: Guitar legend Carlos Santana, a front-runner in the upcoming Grammy Awards, is embarking on a new career with “Carlos,” a men’s clothing line. Sales of the sportswear collection, a collaboration with the Dino de Milano company that will arrive in stores in the fall, will benefit the Milagro Foundation, a children’s charity founded by Santana.

MOVIES

All That Razz: Not everything in Hollywood is celebratory this week, with “Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace” and “Wild Wild West” pulling down a leading eight nominations each for the 20th Razzie Awards, an annual anti-Oscar campaign that purports to single out the year’s worst films, actors and filmmakers. Joining those two films in the worst picture category are “Big Daddy,” “The Haunting” and the popular “Blair Witch Project.” Award “winners” will be named March 25, on the eve of the Oscar show.

QUICK TAKES

CBS is pulling its Dick Clark-hosted game show “Winning Lines” from the schedule due to low ratings, returning “Early Edition” to its former Saturday 8 p.m. time slot starting this weekend. . . . Fox has picked up the Wednesday night drama “Get Real” for an additional five episodes, with the series set to return to its 9 p.m. berth for eight weeks starting March 8. . . . Kenny Loggins will give his first public performance of “Your Heart Will Lead You Home,” from Disney’s new “Tigger Movie,” today at 4 p.m. at Disneyland, as part of the park’s celebration of its new “45 Years of Magic Parade.” . . . Martin Short will host his entire syndicated talk show today (airing at 11:30 p.m. on KCOP-TV) in character as portly entertainment reporter Jiminy Glick. The premise will be that Short has walked off the series to protest his producers censoring a racy Pokemon joke. . . . Grand Performances, the performing arts program at downtown’s California Plaza, has received the Assn. of Performing Arts Presenters’ William Dawson Award for Programmatic Excellence, given to those who “develop exceptional, innovative and high-quality programming through . . . new structures, relationships or approaches to presenting artists.” . . . Kids will soon have more fashion-doll choices: Plans were announced this week for a set of “Charlie’s Angels” dolls based on the upcoming movie starring Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu, as well as for dolls based on Pamela Anderson Lee’s syndicated TV series “VIP.” . . . Darrell and Juanita Buschkoetter, the Nebraska farm couple whose struggles to save their marriage and their farm were chronicled in PBS’ popular “Frontline” documentary, “The Farmer’s Wife,” have separated. More than 15 million people watched the three-night documentary in 1998. . . . Former Smashing Pumpkins bassist D’Arcy Wretzky has agreed to take drug-prevention classes in exchange for the dismissal of cocaine possession charges. However, Wretzky, accused of buying crack cocaine on Jan. 25, told a Chicago court Monday, “I didn’t do it.”

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