PBS Archives - Page 5 of 17 - StayTuned Magazine

Andrea Bocelli sings songs from the cinema on Great Performances

November 25, 2015 Lori Acken

Andrea Bocelli: Cinema premieres Friday, November 27 at 9 p.m. on PBS If you need a boost after Black Friday shopping — or are just a fan of the sounds of the cinema — the PBS arts series Great Performances invites you to celebrate some of filmdom’s best-loved songs with Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli in a soaring special filmed Sept. 18 at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre. Andrea Bocelli: Cinema reunites Bocelli with legendary music producer David Foster, who arranged the concert, and features actors John Travolta, Ryan O’Neal, Ali MacGraw, and Andy Garcia joining Bocelli onstage to speak about the films from which the songs are culled. Bocelli will […]

Tally ho! Imagination runs wild with “Nature Cat” on PBS Kids

November 18, 2015 Ryan Berenz

Brothers David and Adam Rudman have long worked on Sesame Street (David is Cookie Monster’s puppeteer and Adam is a writer), and they’ve created Nature Cat, an animated kids series for PBS inspired by their own adventures playing outside as kids. “We wanted to do Looney Tunes with a nature curriculum,” David says. “And we felt like that’s a great way to get kids interested in going outside and inspired to go out in nature.” Nature Cat (premiering Nov. 25 on PBS; check local listings) is about an exuberant housecat who goes outside with his animal pals to explore the outdoors […]

Great Performances brings ‘Billy Elliot the Musical Live’ to PBS

October 21, 2015 Lori Acken

That’s me musical! Billy Elliot fans, get out your dresses — or your jammies, if you’re so inclined — and prepare to enjoy the rollicking, inspiring tale of a boy who wants to boogie instead of box from the comfort of your sofa. • Purchase Billy Elliot the Musical Live! at the PBS online store here! On Friday, Oct. 23, the ten-time Tony winner Billy Elliot the Musical comes to the PBS staple Great Performances as Billy Elliot the Musical Live, part of the PBS Arts Fall Festival. (Check local listings to confirm channel number and air time in your area.) Based on […]

American Masters: The Women’s List on PBS is an uplifting celebration of women

September 25, 2015 Lori Acken

If you are a woman, love a woman, are raising a woman-in-the-making or teaching them, tonight’s American Masters: The Women’s List on PBS is can’t-miss TV. The latest of filmmaker/photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ List documentary series (The Boomer List, The Black List, The Latino List, The Out List), The Women’s List features intimate and inspiring interviews with Madeleine Albright, Gloria Allred, Laurie Anderson, Sara Blakely, Nia Wordlaw Margaret Cho, Edie Falco, Betsey Johnson, Alicia Keys, Aimee Mullins, Nancy Pelosi, Rosie Perez, Shonda Rhimes and Wendy Williams — all of whom share their own experiences and advice on making it big as a woman in what remains a […]

A Chef’s Life Season 3: Vivian Howard talks success, struggle … and the Avett Brothers!

September 2, 2015 Lori Acken

Vivian Howard, whose Emmy-winning PBS show A Chef’s Life enters its third season this fall, is in the midst of her first Television Critics Association Press Tour, doling out freshly made parfaits to — and taking questions from — sugar-buzzed reporters at an afternoon reception. Afterward, Howard relaxes in the PBS green room to talk frankly about success and struggle and what she believes is the real meaning of “farm-to-table” dining. And — less frankly — about The Avett Brothers, who perform the show’s theme song and drop by to say hi this season. A Chef’s Life Season 3 finds the fresh-faced North Carolina native juggling […]

PBS’ “Big Blue Live” billed as “one of nature’s great reality shows”

August 28, 2015 Jeff Pfeiffer

PBS has aired live events before, usually of the performing arts or concert variety. But the three-part live event Big Blue Live is unique for the network. A co-production with the BBC, the miniseries brings together scientists, filmmakers and photographers, animal behaviorists and other experts for two weeks to document the rejuvenation of the once endangered, but now thriving, ecosystem of Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary in California. Creatures as varied as humpback whales (like the one pictured below), blue whales, sea lions, dolphins, elephant seals, sea otters, great white sharks and more converge in a once-a-year confluence in late […]

PBS celebrates the arrival of “Go Set a Watchman” with American Masters: Harper Lee

June 12, 2015 Lori Acken

Harper Lee’s fans were stunned — and then thrilled — by recent news that a rumored early manuscript by the beloved To Kill a Mockingbird scribe was unearthed and being readied for publication. With Go Set a Watchman set for release on July 14 (and in celebration of To Kill a Mockingbird‘s 55th anniversary on July 11), PBS will present an updated edition of Mary McDonagh Murphy’s glorious documentary Harper Lee: Hey Boo, which aired on the network in 2012. American Masters: Harper Lee will premiere July 10 at 9/8CT (check your local listings to confirm the air time in your area). According to the book’s publisher, HarperCollins, Watchman takes […]

American Masters honors 75 years of the ABT with Ric Burns’ American Ballet Theatre: A History

May 15, 2015 Lori Acken

At the very start of Ric Burns’ duly masterful American Masters documentary American Ballet Theatre: A History, which premieres tonight on PBS, dance historian Jennifer Homans offers up this assessment of the dancer’s experience: “If you are a dancer and you stand at the barre in these positions which have been prescribed for over 400 years and you go through this ritual — it’s a ritual of repetition, a ritual of physical discipline — you have to focus purely on the body. On what’s going on inside you. As you do that, you sort of end up letting go of all […]

40 years after fall of Saigon, “Last Days in Vietnam” looks at final days of the war

April 24, 2015 Jeff Pfeiffer

Forty years ago this month, the last stage of the Vietnam War took place as the remaining American presence was chased out of Saigon, the capital city of South Vietnam. Although most U.S. military forces had left the country in 1973 in the wake of the Paris Peace Accords, by 1975, the communists of North Vietnam had broken that peace and initiated an invasion into the south, leaving the remaining groups of military, intelligence and embassy personnel scrambling for an escape plan as North Vietnam encircled Saigon by late April. The chaos that ensued in those final days is probably […]

Restored version of Ken Burns’ “The Civil War” will air on PBS around series’ 25th anniversary

April 9, 2015 Jeff Pfeiffer

As America marks the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, this year is also the 25th anniversary of Ken Burns’ superlative and iconic documentary on the conflict, 1990’s The Civil War. To this day, the documentary stands as the highest-rated PBS series broadcast; it attracted 38.9 million viewers during its September 1990 debut. Now, 25 years to the month that the film series originally premiered, PBS will re-air The Civil War over five nights, Sept. 7-11, 2015, at 9pm ET (check local listings). The rebroadcast of The Civil War will present for the first time a newly restored high-definition version. Over the course of two […]