1999’s Faces: Where Are They Now?

Here’s an update on last year’s Faces to Watch.

Movies

Jason Schwartzman: He garnered numerous critical nods for his “Rushmore” performance as a theatrical prep school misfit who vied with Bill Murray for the affections of a teacher. He signed with United Talent Agency, which also represents the film’s director, Wes Anderson, and co-star Owen Wilson. Anderson and Wilson are writing an untitled comedy for Disney with the “Rushmore” stars in mind. As for Schwartzman’s musical career, his band Phantom Planet plays at the Troubadour and other local clubs. The band’s first record, on the Geffen label, has sold 7,100 copies. Keep watching.

Mike Tollin and Brian Robbins: The duo’s “Varsity Blues,” directed by Robbins and produced by Tollin, was one of the surprise hits of 1999, taking in nearly $53 million at the domestic box office. In the wake of that success, the twosome (who created such small-screen hits as HBO’s “Arli$$”) signed an exclusive long-term television deal with Warner Bros. to create and develop series. Robbins also directed the film comedy “Ready to Rumble” (due from Warner Bros. in April) which is set in the world of pro-wrestling and stars David Arquette and Oliver Platt. And Tollin will soon take the helm of “Summer Catch,” a teen romance for Warner Bros. scheduled for an August release (Tollin will also produce with Robbins and Sam Weisman).

Malcolm D. Lee: Lee’s first movie, “The Best Man” was a modest hit in 1999, showing some crossover appeal to earn more than $33 million since it opened in October. The movie, which he wrote and directed, cost $9 million to make. It took in that much its first week when it was the nation’s highest-grossing movie. The Universal release was touted as an African American “Big Chill,” had a hit soundtrack and dominated the year’s NAACP Image Awards. It earned nine nominations, more than any movie in the awards’ 31-year history and more than all other 1999 movies combined. Lee, who is Spike Lee’s cousin, had written six scripts before he went behind the camera to direct “Best Man.” He says his goal is still to make mainstream movies with black casts that reflect the middle-class lifestyle with which he is familiar.

Thandie Newton: She co-stars with Tom Cruise as a cat burglar in Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible 2,” which is scheduled for a Memorial Day release. Newton had been tapped by Columbia to star, along with Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz, in “Charlie’s Angels,” but she dropped out reportedly because of scheduling conflicts. In 1999 she starred in Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Besieged” with David Thewlis, continuing a string of major roles after her attention-getting performance in “Beloved” in 1998. She recently signed with Creative Artists Agency.

Theater

Adam Guettel: A co-production of the composer’s musical “Floyd Collins” played San Diego (the Old Globe), Philadelphia and Chicago to generally favorable reviews, and other productions cropped up in three additional U.S. cities and in London. Guettel drew raves as a performer as well as a composer for his recording “Myths and Hymns” and in “An Evening With Adam Guettel” at New York’s Town Hall in May.

Chungmi Kim: Her “Hanako,” about Korean comfort women, opened at East West Players in April; although most of the reviews weren’t favorable, Variety called the play “searing.”

Mark Ruffalo: The actor rode his theatrical fame into television, where he’ll be starring in the UPN series “The Beat.” He also appears in two movies that await release--”You Can Count on Me” and “Committed.”

Music

David Robertson: The young conductor from Santa Monica not only lived up to his reputation for possessing a superior technique and an inquiring mind when he made his dual local debut conducting the Paris-based Ensemble Intercontemporain and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, but he proved a great communicator as well. And 1999 was the year he won over not just his hometown. His debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra immediately put his name on the list of candidates to be that august ensemble’s next music director, while Musical America magazine bypassed the usual established names and heralded Robertson as conductor of the year.

Dwayne Croft: The rising American baritone, who is one of the Metropolitan Opera’s most reliable if not yet stellar regulars, was Los Angeles Opera’s effective and elegant Don Giovanni. He will surely win more fans in January when the Met televises its all-star production of “The Marriage of Figaro,” in which Croft is joined by Cecilia Bartoli. But perhaps his most impressive accomplishment was the creation of the role of Nick Carraway in John Harbison’s “The Great Gatsby,” which had its premiere at the Met during Christmas week.

Enrique Arturo Diemecke: Having been called a Mexican Leonard Bernstein, Diemecke had a lot to live up to in his concerts here with the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico, of which he is music director. Too much, perhaps, but he did demonstrate plenty of podium charisma and got some really rousing performances of first-rate Mexican works, especially by Revueltas.

Dance

Pina Bausch: This icon of deep, dark European dance-theater revealed her lighter side in the West Coast premiere of her 1982 theater piece “Nelken” (Carnations) at UCLA. Our reviewer called the work “a complex but often sweetly whimsical and ultimately triumphant . . . artistic testament.”

David Rousseve: A creator of acclaimed autobiographical dance dramas, Rousseve tried in “Love Songs” to heat up a cotton field melodrama based on “Romeo and Juliet” with music from grand opera. It didn’t work. We described the result as “feverish gush . . . Theater of Opportunism 101.”

Ethan Stiefel: This Pennsylvania-born American Ballet Theatre principal earned praise in these pages as “a tireless virtuoso dancer . . . with no deep Romantic drives but enormous ease whenever he took to the air” as the lead pirate in “Le Corsaire” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Art

Bruce and Norman Yonemoto: After their collaborative retrospective exhibition that inaugurated the new Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo, the video artists (and brothers) each began to embark on independent projects, signaling a new phase in their respective careers.

Sidney B. Felsen: Six months after the Cal State Long Beach show of his photographs of artists, one of the founding partners of the revered Melrose Avenue print workshop Gemini G.E.L. turned 75 at a birthday party where dozens of guests were dressed as Felsen look-alikes, complete with his trademark Panama hat.

Raymond Pettibon: His drawing survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art featured something new and surprising from the artist: a series of full-scale wall paintings, which sacrificed none of the loopy verve of his smaller works on paper.

Architecture

Daniel Libeskind: With the opening of Berlin’s Jewish Museum, his first major work, the 44-year-old Libeskind instantly established himself as a major architectural talent. The brooding, zigzag-shaped building accomplished what many thought was impossible--it captures, in architectural form, the whole range of Jewish experience in Germany, from the horrors of the Holocaust to the hope of spiritual renewal.

Richard Rogers: Despite being maligned in the British Press for its $1.2-billion price tag, Rogers’ Millennium Dome was to open in London on the eve of the new year. The verdict? The Dome--which houses scores of exhibits on the human body, mind and spirit--is a wonderful example of Rogers’ high-tech aesthetic. Its sweeping, tent-like roof and elegant structural system evoke the machine-inspired buildings that made Britain a center of architectural thought in the 1970s.

Norman Foster: The massive new glass dome of Foster’s Reichstag renovation has already become a Berlin landmark. Embedded in the neoclassical stone shell of the old German parliament building, its lightness and technical bravura symbolize the rebirth of German democracy and its emergence as the center of a new Europe.

Morphosis: With the opening of the Long Beach International Elementary School, the Santa Monica-based firm completed the first of three remarkable school buildings it is designing in the L.A. area. The Long Beach school’s dramatic internal courtyard and rooftop playground surrounded by a shimmering metal screen make it a stunning prototype for a new kind of school building, one that reflects the city’s increasingly dense urban fabric.

Pop Music

Allison Moorer: The country singer received an Oscar nomination for “A Soft Place to Fall” (with co-writer Gwil Owen) from “The Horse Whisperer,” and she performed the song on the awards telecast. Moorer spent most of the year writing and recording a new album slated for a summer 2000 release.

Ricky Martin: Lived la vida loca--i.e., became one of the hottest pop music arrivals in years. Though his breakthrough on the 5.5-million-selling “Ricky Martin” album came with mainstream, English-language pop, he’s become the figurehead of the so-called Latin pop explosion.

Chris Cornell: The former singer of Soundgarden made a bold step away from that Seattle group’s rock with “Euphoria Morning,” a debut album that exhibited a notable mix of artistic maturity and musical diversity.

Silkk the Shocker: The New Orleans rapper racked up two hit albums: his own “Made Man,” which has sold nearly 1 million copies, and “Da Crime Family” by the group TRU, consisting of Silkk, C-Murder and Master P.

Jazz

Danilo Perez: His “Central Avenue” recording was nominated for a Grammy, and his composition commission from the Chicago Jazz Festival was premiered in September. On his summer European tour, Perez appeared on bills with Herbie Hancock, Al Jarreau, Ray Charles, Pat Metheny and others. Two new recordings have been completed for release in the spring of this year: his own trio album with Roy Haynes and John Patitucci, and a prominent appearance on the next Wayne Shorter CD.

Stefon Harris: He won debut artist of the year awards from the New York Jazz Awards and the JazzIz Critics Poll in 1999. He performed on “Saturday Night Live,” “Good Morning America” and CNN’s “Showbiz Today,” and his CD, “Black Action Figure,” reached No. 1 on the Gavin Jazz Radio chart. Harris will be in Los Angeles in January to do a fashion layout for Code magazine, and is scheduled to be on the cover of JazzIz in March. He is composing a full-length jazz suite and has been making guest appearances on recordings with jazz artists Kenny Drew Jr. and Greg Osby, German pop artist Klaus Doldinger and rapper Common.

Radio

Renan Almendarez Coello: The broadcaster, whose show airs from 5-11 a.m. weekdays (and 6-10 a.m. Saturdays), remained in first place in morning drive. He is now heard in eight markets across the nation--up five from a year earlier.

TV

Doug Herzog: The president of Fox Entertainment Group endured a rocky first year in television’s jumpiest hot seat, as most of Fox’s new fall series--among them the envelope-pushing “Action”--were canceled. The recent promotion of Sandy Grushow to become his boss fueled rumors about Herzog’s future at the network, though Fox officials say they intend to be patient, citing high hopes for the upcoming “Malcolm in the Middle.”

Suzanne Daniels: The entertainment president of the WB network has had a mixed freshman year, introducing a number of dramas, with “Roswell” and “Angel,” the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” spin-off, the most promising. She had less success with “Safe Harbor” and “Jack and Jill.” Comedy, which Daniels put as a priority, remained an elusive proposition.

Seth MacFarlane: As the creator-executive producer of Fox’s “Family Guy,” the kid with the multimillion-dollar deal producing the animated series went close to bust. Audiences haven’t shown up in big numbers since the show’s post-Super Bowl premiere a year ago, though tough time slots, including Thursdays up against NBC’s dominant lineup at the start of the season, didn’t help. The show’s been shelved for now, but at 26, no one’s giving up on MacFarlane’s potential--yet.

Carol Marin: The veteran news anchor, who made headlines herself in May 1997 when she resigned from NBC-owned WMAQ-TV in Chicago after the station hired Jerry Springer for on-air commentaries, began last year as a contributor to “60 Minutes II.” Her on-point interviews earned her a correspondent spot, and next month she will take on additional duties for CBS as a news anchor at its Chicago station, WBBM-TV.

Comedy

Brandon Bowlin: After hooking up with longtime comedy talent manager Bernie Brillstein, Bowlin continued to branch out with his one-person show, “Darkroom Gallery,” in which he weaves social commentary, satire and jazz. The show had a limited engagement at the Tiffany Theater in Hollywood. In February, he’ll take his solo skills to the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colo., showcasing his talents to TV and film industry scouts.

Mitch Hedberg: His development deal with 20th Century Fox Television expired without a pilot, and the slacker-like comedian with the Steven Wright, one-line witticisms has since returned to the road. Hedberg did appear on “Late Show With David Letterman” and has released a new CD, “Strategic Grill Locations.” Hedberg’s management is in discussions with VH1 about getting Hedberg a vehicle for his comedy on cable.