Lori Acken, Author at StayTuned Magazine

The Casual Vacancy: J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter follow-up becomes an HBO mini

April 23, 2015 Lori Acken

When J.K. Rowling brought her beloved Harry Potter book series to a close in 2007, fans wondered where her unique literary mind might wander next. Publishing the Potter spinoff The Tales of Beedle the Bard a year later, Rowling then turned her attention to a strictly grownup audience with 2012’s best-selling The Casual Vacancy. Now the prolific author has teamed up with the BBC and HBO to adapt the brooding tale of small town discord into a three-part, two-night event of the same name. The Casual Vacancy is set in a fictional and picturesque English hamlet called Pagford, where, behind […]

Dance Moms Season 5 Episode 16 recap: A Tale Of Two Viddies

April 21, 2015 Lori Acken

It’s our last week in L.A., Dance Moms nation (short jaunt, this one) — maybe for a few weeks like last time. Maybe for good. Who knows? We start at Kendall’s military-themed video shoot, which appears to be a cleverly orchestrated opportunity for Abby to wander around amongst a bunch of dudes in uniform, getting handsy. While Kendall and her back-up dancers gets prettied up, Abby rants to Jill about how Holly didn’t even have the common decency to tell her that, well basically, what amounts to that she found more professional folks to do Nia’s video … because Abby would have never […]

Diane Sawyer Bruce Jenner interview — date, time, channel and more!

April 20, 2015 Lori Acken

After months of speculation, Bruce Jenner is expected to talk with veteran newswoman Diane Sawyer about his decision to transition from male to female, his future as a woman, his family members’ reactions to this chapter of his life and more in a special, two-hour edition of 20/20 airing Friday, April 24, at 9 p.m. ET/PT. RELATED: E! TO DEBUT SERIES ABOUT BRUCE JENNER’S LIFE AS A TRANSGENDER WOMAN Described as “far-reaching,” Bruce Jenner: The Interview will feature the 1976 Olympic gold-medal decathlete — now 65 and divorced from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner — revealing to 20/20‘s Sawyer why “my whole life has been getting me […]

The Messengers — The CW’s new drama is Rapture-ous.

April 16, 2015 Lori Acken

A strange occurrence in the New Mexico desert stops the hearts of five strangers, then resurrects them again — as Earth-bound angels. Not the white-robed, harp-toting kind. The “oracles of the apocalypse” kind, in Everyman clothing. As these unwitting emissaries — a scientist, a single mom, a bullied student, an FBI agent and a televangelist — come to grips with extraordinary new powers and how they got them, their lives begin to intersect with one another’s and that of a mysterious figure known only as “The Man” (Diogo Morgado). Meet The CW’s The Messengers. “If Close Encounters and The Stand […]

Who is Neil deGrasse Tyson’s dream guest for StarTalk on NGC?

April 15, 2015 Lori Acken

In March 2014, National Geographic Channel, in partnership with FOX, debuted Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, its sumptuous reboot of Carl Sagan’s groundbreaking 1980 miniseries, Cosmos. Like the original, its successor — hosted by affable astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson — took home multiple Emmys and renewed viewers’ faith that educational, entertaining family television was still entirely possible. On April 20, the network premieres StarTalk, its newest partnership with Tyson and NGC’s first foray into the late-night talk-show landscape. Based on his long-running podcast of the same name (selected by iTunes as one of the Top 10 podcasts of 2014), the weekly […]

Dance Moms Season 5 episode 15 recap: MDP-O’d

April 14, 2015 Lori Acken

Welcome back to sunny L.A., Dance Moms nation. We’re still 3rd Street Dance squatters and this week’s sidewalk discussion is about how pyramid should go well because of last week’s win and how we’re all headed in the right direction. Winning! Videos! Records! Plus we’re getting a visitor! Oh. That’s no visitor. It’s Erin Babbs and the Murrieta Dance Project group, who will be at the same competition this week. They beat us last time we went head-to-head, so oh oh. Inside the girls are stretching and Kendall gives a little a cappella version of the song from her upcoming […]

7 Questions with James Maslow of Lifetime’s Seeds of Yesterday

April 10, 2015 Lori Acken

Last weekend’s If There Be Thorns, fans of Lifetime’s V.C. Andrews film adaptations got their first look at Bart Winslow — a sallow, worried boy whose sibling jealousies got a serious boost from his grandma Corrine and her creepy butler who moved in next door to Bart’s mom, Cathy, and her husband, Chris. Who are also brother and sister. Bart’s real dad is Grandma Corrine’s late husband and … well, you can see why the youngest of Cathy’s surviving sons might have a couple screws loose here and there. Which, says former Big Time Rush star James Maslow, who plays him in Sunday night’s Seeds […]

Dance Moms Season 5 episode 14 recap: I’m havin’ contract-tions!

April 7, 2015 Lori Acken

So we’re back in L.A. Dance Moms nation. Who else got a nice chuckle out of Jill’s “I kind of feel like we never left” remark? Given the amount of recycled footage you guys have pointed out — I really need to learn to pay attention better — who knows if we actually did. But anyway, Jo Jo says L.A. is the best! Melissa says Mack went with Abby to look for studios the other day and it was so much fun! Oh. Uh. Anyhow. The moms just hope the memories from this go-round are much more pleasant than those […]

Better Call Saul Season 1 finale recap: Jimmy returns to Cicero in “Marco”

April 6, 2015 Lori Acken

No one can break your heart — or your will — like kin. And as we reach the Better Call Saul Season 1 finale knowing Chuck sabotaged Jimmy’s law career from the get-go, preferring his baby brother serve as his errand boy and not his equal (and, worse, that Big Brother McGill has every intention of profiting further from the Sandpiper Crossing case), it’s a stinging reminder that no matter how your adult years go, family has a knack for keeping you the kid who crashed the Chrysler right up unto the grave. The revelation leaves Jimmy at a crossroads. The only family member he has […]

HBO debuts Bessie trailer [VIDEO]

April 3, 2015 Lori Acken

HBO released the official trailer for its stunning Bessie Smith biopic, Bessie, which will debut Saturday, May 16 at 8/7CT on the network. Twenty-two years in the making, the project was first brought to a young Queen Latifah — then a successful singer and burgeoning actress — by producers Richard and Lili Fini Zanuck, who had optioned a script from To Kill a Mockingbird screenwriter Horton Foote and director Bruce Beresford. Progress on the film ebbed and flowed until it landed in the hands of writer/director Dee Rees, who was gaining good notices for her coming-of-age story Pariah and leapt at the chance […]