Lori Acken, Author at StayTuned Magazine

Better Call Saul Season 2 episode 2 recap: It don’t mean squat

February 22, 2016 Lori Acken

When I spoke to Michael McKean prior to the start of Better Call Saul Season 2, he promised me that, soon enough, people would have a better understanding of Chuck’s trepidations about baby brother Jimmy. On tonight’s episode, “Cobbler,” we begin to see why. And to see flickers of the Saul that Breaking Bad fans knew — know — and loved, despite ourselves. And feels pangs for all we now know he has to lose. Also, we get a new McGill-ism to add to the BCS vernacular. But more about that later. It’s worth the wait. Pie fans, consider yourself warned. We […]

Better Call Saul Season 2: Has Jimmy chucked Chuck for good? We ask Michael McKean

February 11, 2016 Lori Acken

When we left Better Call Saul’s brothers McGill, Chuck the elder (Michael McKean) had dealt Jimmy the younger (Bob Odenkirk) a one-two punch of heartache, handing over Jimmy’s big nursing home case to Chuck’s own firm, while letting his baby brother know just what he thought of him as a jurist, if not a person altogether. And while Jimmy got a shot at redemption via a job offer from another prestige firm (and some clarity into the real reason Howard Hamlin was such a shmuck to him all these years), a return trip home and the loss of Marco — […]

Interview: Jeff Ward of Lifetime’s Manson’s Lost Girls

February 5, 2016 Lori Acken

Manson’s Lost Girls premieres Saturday, Feb. 6, at 8/7CT on Lifetime. Most of us have seen their pictures. Three pretty young girls walking shoulder to shoulder in a courthouse hallway, looking serene as angels. Look closer and you notice crude swastikas etched by their own hands into their foreheads. They’re Manson’s girls — Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten — a trio of troubled young women seduced into the legendary cult leader’s “Family” by the promise of free love and free rein at the height of the hippie movement. And all three loved their leader enough to kill. Lifetime’s new original […]

Vinyl — Martin Scorsese, Mick Jagger and Terence Winter spin a stunning rock ’n’ roll tale on HBO

February 3, 2016 Lori Acken

We like it, like it, yes we do! Vinyl airs Sundays at 9/8CT on HBO beginning Feb. 14. When Olivia Wilde was a kid, she crashed her journalist parents’ dinner party to demand that one guest vacate her spot at the family table. The interloper? Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger. He told the upstart to go to bed. Several decades later, Jagger would witness Wilde’s mettle once again — on the set of their seductive new HBO series, Vinyl. Since 1995, Jagger had mulled a feature film that would delve deep into what he knew best: the gritty reality of the music […]

Greg Nicotero talks The Walking Dead Season 6, Negan, The Saviors, THAT Glenn scene and more

February 1, 2016 Lori Acken

The Walking Dead Season 6 returns Sunday, February 14 at 9/8CT on AMC You picked a fine time to show up, Lucille! OK, so we’ve yet to see The Walking Dead comic’s infamous barbed-wire baseball bat and its equally insidious owner, Negan (welcome, Jeffrey Dean Morgan!). But we know the pair is out there, courtesy of a sneak peek of Daryl, Sasha and Abraham encountering a contingent of Negan’s acolytes — a.k.a. the Saviors — which aired just after the midseason finale. Atop it, Deanna’s dead, the wall’s kaput and Morgan just had to let that Wolf get away with poor Dr. […]

Madoff on ABC: For Richard Dreyfuss, playing the disgraced financier is personal

January 28, 2016 Lori Acken

The two night miniseries Madoff premieres Wednesday, Feb. 3 and Thursday, Feb. 4 on ABC. • Missed Madoff Part 1? Find out how to watch it online here. In the early 2000s, Richard Dreyfuss had an epiphany. Disheartened by the scarcity of the meaningful, character-driven films he preferred to make, and appalled by the civil and political landscape in which his teenage sons were growing up, Dreyfuss decided to scrap acting and head for England’s University of Oxford to learn how to resurrect the vanishing civics curriculum in U.S. schools. “To me this was such an easy call,” says the Oscar, […]

Is Steven Avery guilty or innocent? Investigation Discovery special looks at the case

January 25, 2016 Lori Acken

Steven Avery: Innocent or Guilty premieres Saturday, Jan. 30 at 9/8CT on Investigation Discovery. RELATED: • Netflix’s Ted Sarandos calls “Making a Murderer” a “remarkable turn of events” • Dateline NBC special looks at the Steven Avery case Odds are, if you have a TV, computer or tablet, you’ve been sucked into the worldwide phenomenon that is Netflix’s original series Making A Murderer. If you haven’t watched it (and maybe even if you have), you probably wish your friends would just … stop … talking … about it. And if you haven’t heard of it at all, well, you’ve won a seriously impressive game of […]

Catching up with Larry Black of RFD-TV’s Larry’s Country Diner and Country’s Family Reunion

January 20, 2016 Lori Acken

It’s near impossible to tune in to RFD-TV’s Larry’s Country Diner and not want to climb through the screen to share some pie and sociability with host Larry Black and his cast of amiable characters as they crack wise, reminisce about classic moments in music and television and generally have a fine time. • MORE: Larry’s Country Diner serves up generous helpings of country greats on RFD-TV. The 70-year-old, Alabama-born preacher’s son turned his love of music and rich baritone voice into a decades-long career as a disc jockey — during its heyday, the Larry Black Show aired on 125 radio […]

Grease: Live — Julianne Hough is the one that FOX wants as its Sandy!

January 19, 2016 Lori Acken

Grease: Live premieres Sunday, Jan. 31 at 7pm ET on FOX Julianne Hough has been hopelessly devoted to Grease since she was a little girl. Growing up in a creative family, the Dancing With the Stars favorite says she and her siblings loved to act out the music-filled 1978 film that starred Olivia Newton-John as good-girl Aussie transplant Sandy and John Travolta as her greaser beau Danny. And though Hough’s three older sisters arguably had dibs on the best roles, she laughs, “I was in my own world, so I was playing Sandy regardless if I was supposed to or […]

Toni Braxton Unbreak My Heart — the soulful songbird brings her own life story to Lifetime

January 19, 2016 Lori Acken

Toni Braxton: Unbreak My Heart premieres Saturday, January 23 at 8/7CT on Lifetime. Most people consider R&B star Toni Braxton an unmitigated success story — model-worthy looks, a two-decade-plus recording career, seven Grammy Awards and a popular WE tv reality show with her four outspoken sisters. Behind the scenes, however, Braxton has dealt with heartache, betrayal, illness and upheaval for most of her adult life, lending additional poignancy to the soulful songs that made her a star. In 2014, the singer released her memoir — titled Unbreak My Heart in homage to her 1996 Billboard No. 1 hit — which chronicled […]