Lori Acken, Author at StayTuned Magazine

Animal Kingdom — TNT releases new trailer for its summer sizzler (VIDEO)

April 18, 2016 Lori Acken

Summer just got a whole lot hotter! Today, TNT released a new trailer for its smoldering, action-packed summer series Animal Kingdom. The ten-episode drama, based on the critically acclaimed 2010 Australian film starring Guy Pearce, Jacki Weaver and Blindspot’s Sullivan Stapleton, will air Tuesdays at 9/8CT, beginning June 7. The two-minute montage offers viewers a tantalizing look at the family-centric crime story, which moves the tale from Melbourne to Oceanside and stars a sexed up Ellen Barkin as Janine “Smurf” Cody,” matriarch of a (literal) crime family made up of her sons — scruffy, smart-mouthed testosterone cases Craig and Deran (Vikings’ Ben Robson, Pretty […]

Confirmation — HBO and Kerry Washington revisit a real-life Washington scandal

April 11, 2016 Lori Acken

Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill. Their names are synonymous with the very public hearings about very private matters that led Americans to rethink our collective perspective on race, workplace equity, sexual harassment, victims’ rights and adjudicating in the public eye. And to side-eye our Coke cans in the process. In 1991, more than 20 million TV viewers were riveted as the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by then-Senator Joe Biden, investigated claims that controversial Supreme Court nominee Thomas sexually harassed Hill when the ambitious young attorney worked for him a decade before. Twenty-five years later, HBO’s Confirmation — starring Scandal’s Kerry Washington […]

Sue Aikens talks Life Below Zero Season 4 and reclaiming her life after injury

April 7, 2016 Lori Acken

Sue Aikens is one tough cookie on National Geographic Channel’s Emmy-nominated hit, Life Below Zero — risking her life and sometimes ruining her body to maintain the solitary Alaskan lifestyle she loves at her Kavik River Camp 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. But you’d be hard pressed to find a more charming coffee date and conversationalist when Aikens does venture down from the 49th state, which she did to take part in a January press tour. I found her relaxing with a pair of the show’s producers in a Pasadena hotel restaurant, enjoying her time in the warmer climes — and greeting reporters she […]

Where to find Merle Haggard tributes on TV

April 6, 2016 Lori Acken

His mom and dad were the Okies from Muskogee — not their Bakersfield-born boy — but the loping tune about small-town pride made Merle Haggard a country music icon. Today, radio stations around the world are playing the song — which spent four weeks in the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart in November and December of 1969 — to honor Haggard, who died today on his 79th birthday. Haggard’s manager, Frank Mull, confirmed that Haggard succumbed to the pneumonia that had plagued him for months, forcing him to cancer recent tour dates — a foreboding sign to Haggard’s multi-generations of fans. “When I quit […]

Fear the Walking Dead Season 2: The survivors set sail with Strand

April 6, 2016 Lori Acken

Season 2 is upon us, Fear the Walking Dead fans, so let’s take stock. Liza’s a goner — but Travis (Cliff Curtis) and Madison (Kim Dickens) are that much wiser about walkers. An already defiant Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie) only knows that his dad shot his mom. The wounded Ofelia (Mercedes Mason) is also mourning her mother and doubting her dad. And Nick (Frank Dillane) just got elevated from epic screwup to Strand’s second in command as everyone prepares to board his yacht, the Abigail. We’ll come back to that last one in a minute. Fear’s co-executive producer Dave Alpert […]

Nothing Left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt & Anderson Cooper — The famed mother-son duo look back with love

March 24, 2016 Lori Acken

Nothing Left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt & Anderson Cooper premieres Sunday, April 9, at 9/8CT on HBO. The documentary will encore on CNN April 29. Famed fashion icon Gloria Vanderbilt — looking decades younger than her 92 years in a bright coral tunic, slim pants and oversize gold earrings — smiles at rapt reporters from a Pasadena hotel ballroom stage. On either side, giant screens beam her beloved youngest son, CNN newsman Anderson Cooper, into the room from Fairfax, VA., where, later, Cooper will host a town hall at President Obama’s request. Though he was supposed to be here beside her, his […]

The Catch — Mireille Enos talks being the newest ShondaLand diva

March 24, 2016 Lori Acken

The Catch premieres Thursday, March 24 at 10/9CT on ABC. Shonda Rhimes — TV’s own Queen Midas — has made primetime empresses of Ellen Pompeo, Kerry Washington and Viola Davis via her ABC Thursday night trifecta Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder. Now, it’s time to welcome a new lady to the ShondaLand court. Mireille Enos — the stunning Texas redhead with the very French first name (say “Mee-RAY”) — plays savvy private investigator Alice Vaughan in The Catch, which takes over HTGAWM’s time slot this month. “Everybody around me was like, ‘You understand what’s happening to […]

The Story Of God’s Morgan Freeman: “The biggest question we ask is about resurrection”

March 18, 2016 Lori Acken

The Story of God With Morgan Freeman premieres Sunday, April 3 at 9/8CT on National Geographic Channel. By his very nature — the soulful eyes and regal bearing, legendary voice and sonorous delivery — when Morgan Freeman tells you something, you believe it. You just do. Hence, the Oscar winner is frequently tapped to play noble sorts — doctors, lawmen, statesmen, even revolutionaries like Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X. Even God. And God is the reason Freeman is here today, seated beside his Revelations Entertainment partners Lori McCreary and James Younger in a Pasadena hotel suite. Not because he’s portraying God. […]

Better Call Saul Season 2 episode 5 recap: Kim hustles, Jimmy struggles and Mike makes a new “friend”

March 14, 2016 Lori Acken

Welcome back, Better Call Saul fans. And thanks to those of you who are helping me scrape off my considerable Breaking Bad rust. I’ll do my best to shape up, swears. Accept this Beanie Baby as my make-up gift. We start tonight’s episode, “Rebecca,” at with a persistent electric hum and Chuck with a lightbulb — a lightbulb! — in his mouth. His mouth. It’s a jarring sight to say the least. Is this flashback Chuck? His eyebrows do look a dab darker. It’s flashback Chuck — changing a bulb in the chandelier that now goes unused in his home. He has a […]

HBO debuts Body Team 12, Ebola trilogy tonight

March 14, 2016 Lori Acken

“We’ve moved away from calling it a treatment center, because little treatment is available,” says Dr. Javid Abdelmoniem, one of the unsung heroes of the 2014 West African Ebola pandemic who is spotlighted in tonight’s HBO documentary short Ebola: The Doctors’ Story. The film is part of the network’s trilogy of short films offering an multi-perspective examination of the outbreak that devastated Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia — and terrified the world — which premieres tonight at 9/8CT. Ebola: The Doctors’ Story, Body Team 12 (a 2016 Oscar nominee) and Orphans of Ebola chronicle the devastating health crisis over an 8-month timeframe, telling the stories of the doctors, response […]