The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 42

4 CALIFORNIA FEATURING Calendar Arts and Entertainment The best of the rest of today's report begins on Page D2 TUESDAY DECEMBER 22, 1998 he Just Makes It Look Easy OnJV BRIAN LOWRY Actress Emily Watson finds grueling roles and intense preparation have their rewards. NBC Still Looking for Right Sein' Posts BY DAVID GRITTEN SPECIAL TO THE TIMES UBLIN, Ireland-No one could accuse English actress Emily Watson of trying to duck While not the sort of anniversary NBC is likely to celebrate, Wednesday marks one year since Jerry Seinfeld plopped a lump of coal in the network's Christmas stocking, informing NBC brass that his top-rated sitcom, "Seinfeld," would finish its epic run that spring. Some might trace NBC's current ratings woes including a 16 decline in its audience this fall directly to fallout from Seinfeld's bombshell. On closer examination, however, that's an overly simplistic analysis of the miscalculation, creative misfires and uncontrollable events that have conspired against the network, including a more general shift in the TV business as a whole. Seinfeld's announcement wasn't bad news for everybody, benefiting many of those associated with NBC.

Facing the double whammy of lacking TV's biggest hit and giving up NFL football to CBS, NBC saw "ER" and "Mad About You" as prizes the network couldn't afford to lose. Studios and stars behind those programs cashed in handsomely, as did "Frasier" and Kelsey Grammer once NBC named that show "Seinfeld's" heir apparent. Others were less fortunate. With its substantial audience drop, NBC now ranks behind CBS in total viewers. Hoping to keep profits up, the network resorted to cost-cutting measures and layoffs.

A management change at the entertainment division followed. In a more nebulous sense, NBC's esprit de corps and cockiness be-Please see Lowry, D6 DAVID APPLEBY "I felt I didn't have the right to tell her story without preparation," Emily Watson said of the tormented musician she portrays above. Below, Watson in the 1996 film "Breaking the Waves." out of intense, difficult, demanding roles. That was apparent from her very first film, last year's "Breaking the Waves," in which she played a naive, God-fearing young woman from a Scottish village. She takes lovers at the behest of her husband, an oil rig worker paralyzed in an accident, and is ostracized as a whore in her community.

The grueling role landed Watson an Oscar nomination. Her latest film has required equal reserves of stamina and discipline. In "Hilary and Jackie," which opens Dec. 30, she plays the virtuoso English cellist Jacqueline du Pre whose stellar international career was overshadowed by periods of stress and discontent before being terminated by multiple sclerosis. In order to play Du Pre Watson undertook three months of intense preparation before shooting started; she was taught to play the cello and visited London hospitals to research the effects of MS on patients.

Her efforts may once again pay off in award season; she received a Golden Globe nomination last week for best actress in a drama. Watson is staying true to form in her next film. She has been in Ireland since September starring for director Alan Parker in a film of "Angela's Ashes," Frank McCourt's Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir of an Irish childhood marked by appalling poverty; the work also won the Los Angeles Times book award. Watson plays the Angela of Please see Watson, D6 i raiiiiiiiiiiiwiiririnrrt a'iminnriimiirtrn-ri WWiW.wiiii'iB.iT;iiir -irimiiiTiiTirrtiriraiiii'lr, iii MITSU YASUKAWA los Angeles Times Look what's happened to NBC in the vear In the world we live in, people gather round celebrities and geniuses, signed off. and with a talented and vulnerable person, there's a cost to that.

If ROBERT GAUTHIER Los Angeles Times ACTRESS EMILY WATSON On her role In 'Hilary and Jackie' riTiTrnnri'ii iMiirrr-mriiirfBiinT rrrrviifflfflir mniifflr if utri" ji fiuM 1 i Making a Pitch for the Sake of Animals BY CANDACE A. WEDLAN TIMES STAFF WRITER Lan Samantha Chang, on Santa Monica Beach, draws on family stories to describe the immigrant experience. i 'fi I CON KEYES Los Angeles Times BY SCOTT MARTELLE TIMES STAFF WRITER Put a man for all seasons that would be home-run guy Mark McGwire on a calendar cover and just maybe itll fly out of the ballpark. That's what Tony La Russa, manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, is hoping will happen with his 1999 celeb 'n' canine calendar to benefit his Animal Rescue Foundation.

(McGwire, who works for La Russa as Cardinals first baseman is pictured for June. The slugger is a hugger whose great arms are wrapped around a great Dane. Other featured celebs include Oprah Winfrey, Martha Stewart and Wayne Gretzky.) "I think the comprehensiveness of what we're doing is pretty unique," La Russa said about the ARF programs over lunch recently at the Summit Hotel in Bel-Air. Some of the programs include Operation Fix (neutering and spaying); emergency vet care; animal rescue (they're sheltered, not euthanized); and adoption. Some resident animals work-visiting patients in hospitals and making home visits to senior citizens.

"I think people feel better that they are not only contributing to an organization that helps animals," La Russa explained, "but animals that help people. I think it's been really important to our organization." Please see La Russa, D5 family history, in which everyday items serve as the touchstones of shared experience. It's the curse of many immigrant families, said Chang, whose own parents grew up with war in their native China. Generations of blood history are severed for the sake of the future, the past discarded because it holds too much pain. And in many of those cases, the family stories go untold, leaving children without a reservoir of family lore from which to draw personal context.

"My parents are so reticent about the past that I had to create a set of stories that would let me work through a whole lot of questions Please see Chang, D4 Lan Samantha Chang likes to browse through antique stores and secondhand curio shops, examining strangers' discarded mementos. She wants, she says, to absorb the images and textures of what she finds. Old framed photographs of someone else's ancestors. Teacups around which families gathered for conversations now long forgotten. The trinkets and baubles of invisible lives.

Chang browses not as a buyer, but as a voyeur, trying to glimpse an element she says is missing from her own life a knowable Tales Lan Samantha Chang's writing explores universal aspects of personal upheaval and forgotten dreams.