HBO Archives - Page 5 of 27 - StayTuned Magazine

‘Divorce’: The DuFresnes Move on in Season 2 of HBO’s Relationship Dramedy

January 8, 2018 Lori Acken

If you had trouble knowing who to root for as Divorce Season 1 came to a close, you weren’t alone. Frances (Sarah Jessica Parker) cruelly kiboshed estranged husband Robert’s fledgling business. Robert (Thomas Haden Church) dispatched Frances’ erstwhile lover Julian to her gallery opening and falsely reported her to the cops for “kidnapping” their kids. So where are the feuding exes as Season 2 dawns? Blessedly over it. And getting on with it. “Everybody made a committee decision that we’re just gonna get those documents signed and stamped in the first five minutes and be done with it and move […]

The Deuce Begins on HBO

September 8, 2017 Lori Acken

What Was Times Square Really Like in 1970? Deuce Gives the Unflinching Details Emmy winner David Simon, who also teamed up with Deuce co-creator George Pelecanos on the acclaimed series The Wire and Treme, calls their newest unflinching drama — which begins Sunday, Sept. 10 at 9/8c — “a critique of market capitalism and the marginalization of the people who labor.” Which, in this case, are the pimps, hookers, bar workers, hamstrung cops and other seeking souls who populated Times Square (“the deuce” is local speak for 42nd Street) in the gritty early ’70s. James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal, who […]

Isaac Hempstead Wright on ‘Game of Thrones’ Season 7, Bran’s New Role and Why You Really Need to Get Over Hodor

July 14, 2017 Lori Acken

Now that he’s Game of Thrones’ omniscient Three-Eyed Raven, the rise of Isaac Hempstead Wright’s Bran Stark as a Westeros power player seems all but assured as the HBO hit heads into its penultimate season. With clans Lannister, Targaryen and Stark — and all their trusted and dubious allies — preoccupied with the Iron Throne, young Bran knows best the bigger threat that looms. Dialing in from the U.K., the 18-year-old Brit shared some knowledge of his own about Season 7, the Starks’ future as a family — and why we need to get over Hodor. I promised myself I […]

HBO’s ‘If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast’: We Talk With Carl Reiner!

May 27, 2017 Lori Acken

Carl Reiner is 95. I’m 51. I forget everything, including most appointments, where I put my purse and how to brush my teeth. Reiner — the Bronx-born comedy legend responsible for a lifetime of laughs, including The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Jerk and, well, his comic-genius son Rob — remembers everything. As we chat about If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast, HBO’s delicious homage to aging with grace and a large dose of humor, Reiner treats me to a bit from his and longtime bestie Mel Brooks’ iconic 2000 Year Old Man, then the theme song to […]

‘The Wizard Of Lies’: HBO Reveals the Human Toll of the Madoff Scandal

April 27, 2017 Lori Acken

In a pivotal scene in HBO’s The Wizard of Lies, disgraced financier Bernie Madoff (Robert De Niro) and his devoted wife Ruth (Michelle Pfeiffer) don their pajamas and climb into bed — just as the couple did most every night of their 49-year marriage. A Judy Garland film flickers on the television and a bowl rests on the nightstand. It doesn’t contain a late-night snack. It holds every pill the pair could scrounge up in their opulent Manhattan apartment. “Our last night on earth will be you, me and Judy Garland. How romantic,” Pfeiffer drones in Ruth’s distinctive Queens accent, […]

‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’: HBO and Oprah Turn the Bestseller into a Must-See Film

April 9, 2017 Lori Acken

You may not know of her, but your life has been directly, enormously impacted by Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta, a stout and pretty rural Virginian born in 1920, was the devoted mother of five, including a disabled eldest daughter on whom she doted. She looked after friends and neighbors, too. Henrietta accepted the hard work of tobacco farming, though she knew she might have accomplished much more. She loved to dance and tended her looks, particularly her nails, which were perfectly polished nearly to the day she died at age 31. And Henrietta suffered an agonizing and possibly preventable death from […]

‘The Leftovers’: The End is Near for the Thought-Provoking HBO Chiller

March 30, 2017 Lori Acken

The Leftovers fans are a hearty lot. The spooky HBO drama’s first season — based on Tom Perrotta’s 2011, rapture-esque bestseller — drew mixed critical response, middling ratings and a whole lot of “What on (or off) Earth was that?” But the network — and viewers who obsessed over the Justin Theroux starrer’s thought-provoking supernatural bent — hung on, resulting in a second season that defied description, but made for one of 2015’s most satisfying television experiences. Then the wait began anew. Though the Season 2 finale suggested a (mostly) satisfying series finale, too, fans hoped that there might be […]

Big Little Lies: How Nicole Kidman And Reese Witherspoon Turned the Bestseller Into An Equally Addictive HBO Mini

January 26, 2017 Lori Acken

Best girlfriends. Nothing like ’em — right, ladies? They’re our playmates, fashion consultants, de facto therapists and there’s nothing we can’t tell them. Except there always is. Australian novelist Liane Moriarty became a best-selling author with her humorously direct-hit observations about what really goes on behind our closed doors — and how hard we work to edit the story, in public, on social media, in our own minds — including 2014’s instant hit Big Little Lies. The irresistible tale of a trio of struggling moms in an affluent seaside town caught producer Bruna Papandrea’s (Gone Girl, Wild) attention as a […]

The Young Pope: Jude Law, Diane Keaton Are Heavenly In HBO’s Bold Event Series

January 1, 2017 Lori Acken

The titular character in Paolo Sorrentino’s new HBO limited series The Young Pope is a 47-year-old Brooklyn-born orphan named Lenny Belardo who earned his place in the Vatican by learning to play the system. Because there is always a system — even in the mother ship of Catholicism. And Lenny — now Pope Pius XIII — isn’t the least bit apologetic about how he earned his pristine white cassock and zucchetto. Or his plan while he has them. For an American audience — Catholic or otherwise, and at least in the first two episodes — it’s hard not to liken […]

Tracey Ullman Talks HBO’s “Tracey Ullman’s Show,” Grandma Camilla, Getting (Literally) Duded Up and More

October 28, 2016 Lori Acken

Try to imagine Dame Judi Dench — all elegant wardrobe and perfect platinum pixie — gleefully jamming rolls of bathroom tissue down a hotel commode. Or German Chancellor Angela Merkel as a gossipy, singing “total hottie frau.” Or Dame Maggie Smith auditioning for a sci-fi spectacle (“I believe there is a special name for Star Trek fans: Idiots.”). If you’re having some trouble — or even if you aren’t — let Tracey Ullman do the job for you. The 56-year-old Brit, who became a sensation in the late 80s on Fox’s Emmy-showered The Tracey Ullman Show, returns to HBO tonight as the network debuts her […]