Kids

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Family

R.L. Stine offers family frights in “The Haunting Hour”

December 20, 2010 StayTuned Staff

By Stacey Harrison Back when R.L. Stine was known as Jovial Bob Stine and writing joke books for a living, not many people could have foreseen that he would one day revolutionize the young-adult horror genre. Not that there really was much of a young-adult horror genre before he wrote Blind Date back in 1986. One day an editor friend of Stine’s took him to lunch and told him she needed a horror novel for teens. Though he’d always been a fan of the genre, he’d never considered writing it himself, so he researched what was out there and came […]

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Animation

VOD Spotlight: Growing up means learning to train that dragon

October 29, 2010 StayTuned Staff

By Elaine Bergstrom Growing up means becoming your own person, moving away from the expectations of parents who, though they love you, may not quite understand what will make you happy. It’s the theme of some of the greatest animated features, such as The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast and How to Train Your Dragon — a film about a teenage Viking short on brawn but long on empathy, with an independent spirit that changes the relationship between Vikings and dragons.

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Comedy

Nickelodeon’s “Big Time Rush” poised to be a music cash cow

November 4, 2009 StayTuned Staff

Having launched so many showbiz careers (of admittedly variable quality), American Idol and its producers are enjoying success not beyond their wildest imaginations, but exactly as they imagined it. In addition to the usual advertising revenue generated by the show, money is sluicing in via the ongoing synergy with AT&T, album and download sales, licensing and so forth, not to mention the ongoing careers of its participants. In the wake of that kind of success, it was certain that other shows would come along and do their emulation act. Shows like Disney Channel’s Hannah Montana, Nickelodeon’s Instant Star and, most […]