Lori Acken, Author at StayTuned Magazine

Food Network announces Cutthroat Kitchen Superstar Sabotage cast, schedule!

August 29, 2014 Lori Acken

For three-plus seasons, amused fans of Alton Brown’s deliciously devious Food Network cooking competition Cutthroat Kitchen have watched chefs from around the country struggle to create tasty dishes under comically challenging circumstances. Stuff like handling sharp knives and delicate ingredients while wearing a toy Incredible Hulk fist, or crafting Bananas Foster from teeny-weeny banana candies — hardships foisted on them by fellow competitors, all of whom started out with $25,000 to spend judiciously (or not) on the silly sabotages in an effort to be the last chef standing with their cooking cred intact and a few bucks in their pocket. […]

Gypsy Sisters Season 3 episode 2 recap: Big Fun in the Big Easy

August 28, 2014 Lori Acken

After the girls had all kinds of man trouble (and the usual each-other trouble) in last week’s Gypsy Sisters Season 3 premiere, Kayla, Nettie, Mellie, JoAnn and Annie have decided to make a ladies-only trek to the Big Easy to reconnect and rejuvenate. • RELATED: We talk Gypsy Sisters Season 3 with Kayla and Nettie! We start the episode with Kayla celebrating her newfound freedom with an ice cream date with Danielle and Sissy … and a brand-new white luxury sedan that she proudly notes breaks the Romanichal tradition of driving a trusty pickup. Kayla, temporarily encamped at a hotel while […]

We talk Gypsy Sisters Season 3 with Nettie Stanley and Kayla Williams!

August 21, 2014 Lori Acken

When the beautiful, brawling Stanley sisters and their extended clan return to TLC in tonight’s two-hour Gypsy Sisters Season 3 premiere, Kayla Williams and Nettie Stanley are still working though the issues that boiled over in shockingly physical fashion last season. But Kayla is suffering the worst of the fallout from the cousins’ epic battle and how others in her inner circle responded to the altercation. • RELATED: Gypsy Sisters Season 3 episode 2 recap: Big Fun in the Big Easy I talked with Nettie and Kayla in separate interviews about how the show has impacted their lives, their families and their […]

We talk Who Do You Think You Are? with EP Dan Bucatinsky

August 20, 2014 Lori Acken

On tonight’s all-new episode of TLC’s Who Do You Think You Are? beloved actor Kelsey Grammer explores his grandmother’s lineage in a deeply emotional journey that leads him westward across America. It’s the kind of episode the show’s co-executive producer Dan Bucatinsky says fascinates him most. “I love the episodes that touch on tent poles in history, stuff we studied in text books in school but didn’t have a personal connection with — like the Salem Witch Trials with Sarah Jessica Parker,” says Bucatinsky, the entertainment-industry multi-hyphenate who brought the addictive genealogy series to America with his longtime business partner Lisa Kudrow […]

Mira Sorvino talks BBC America’s Intruders

August 19, 2014 Lori Acken

BBC America is playing its cards close to the vest in revealing details about its spooky new series Intruders, drawn from Michael Marshall Smith’s 2007 novel and directed by Blair Witch Project mastermind Eduardo Sánchez. According to the network, the thriller “is about a secret society devoted to chasing immortality by seeking refuge in the bodies of others” and features Jack Whelan (Doctor Who’s John Simm), a troubled former LAPD cop who escapes to a peaceful new life in the Pacific Northwest with his pretty wife Amy (Mira Sorvino). When Amy goes missing on a business trip, then returns a […]

Clive Owen on The Knick: “I knew it was something I had to do”

August 15, 2014 Lori Acken

Steven Soderbergh’s latest foray into television, The Knick, is now airing Friday nights at 10/9CT on Cinemax. Essentially a 10-episode feature film — gloriously acted, beautifully shot and chock-full of fascinating characters crafted by the veteran writing team of Jack Amiel and Michael Begler — The Knick is the sort of series that begs for binge-watching. And it doesn’t take more than a few episodes to understand why the series has already been renewed for a second season. Clive Owen stars as Dr. John Thackery, chief surgeon of New York’s Knickerbocker Hospital — and yes, there really was one, though […]

Lenny McNab wins Food Network Star Season 10!

August 11, 2014 Lori Acken

And it’s cowboy Lenny for the win! Food Network Star crowned its Season 10 winner Sunday night, and Colorado’s “Gourmet Cowboy” Lenny McNab was the charmer America most wanted to see lasso his own show on the network. The multitalented McNab — a former chuck wagon chef who also has his own honky tonk act — scored the most viewer votes, besting fellow finalists Luca Della Casa and Nicole Gaffney and earning the right to bring a variation of his Cowboy Up pilot to Food Network. McNab, 42 — who launched his Stetson into the air when his picture appeared on the big screen as the winner — […]

Raising Asia recap Episode 3: Oh, Mother(s)!

August 6, 2014 Lori Acken

I’m just going to put this out there, fellow Raising Asia curious (it’s far, far too soon to call myself a fan). The real star of this thing is Bella Blu Ray. I would like Bella Blu Ray on Blu Ray and DVD, just so I can repeatedly watch her freak out with happiness about her dad or say “Asia can sing this much” while making a dime-size circle with her hand and just skip the part where everyone else is cranky with each other. But we start out this episode with everyone feeling generous toward each other. Announcing that […]

Raising Asia recap episode 2: Daddy issues

August 5, 2014 Lori Acken

On tonight’s Raising Asia, Shawn continued to struggle with his role in Asia’s career, Asia continued to struggle with the fact that she’s 8 and not 18, and Kristi continued to struggle with pretty much everything, including the fact that her husband is underfoot an awful lot lately and how just much eye makeup is too much eye makeup. With Asia fresh off what her dad calls the “biggest performance of her career” at World of Dance, Papa Ray is ready to stake his claim as the man who is, in fact, raising Asia —despite the part where her manager/coach/overlord […]

The Knick: Cinemax presents a lively look at race, sex and medicine in 1900s New York

August 1, 2014 Lori Acken

At the turn of the 20th century, New York City’s Knickerbocker Hospital was deeply in flux. As the wealthy patrons who once filled its beds — and its bank account — fled its urban locale for loftier boroughs, replaced by a teeming brew of racial and cultural disparities, the doctors and nurses at the “The Knick” struggled to stay atop the city’s burgeoning medical community. This is the world from which director Steven Soderbergh’s engrossing new fact-meets-fiction Cinemax series The Knick, which premieres Friday, emerges. Created by the veteran writing team of Jack Amiel and Michael Begler, the 10-episode drama sprung […]