Drama

Sharp Objects HBO Clarkson Adams Scanlen
Drama

‘Sharp Objects’ on HBO: We Talk With Gillian Flynn, Amy Adams, Patricia Clarkson, Eliza Scanlen!

June 30, 2018 Lori Acken 0

Sharp Objects premieres Sunday, July 8 at 9/8c on HBO Ask anyone who grew up in a small town. Change rarely amounts to a lick of good. Family businesses make local royalty of the generations who run them. Know your place and mind your own business. Except when you don’t, because gossip does so soothe the grinding sameness. And strangers? Well, they’re best welcomed with a healthy dose of suspicion. Particularly if they’re native sons or daughters who turned their back on their roots, then came back unrecognizable. Or if you think they might be a killer. This is the […]

Drama

‘Girlfriends’ Guide To Divorce’: Cast Members Talk the Sexy Bravo Series’ Goodbye Season

June 13, 2018 Lori Acken 2

In 2014, Buffy the Vampire Slayer producer/scribe Marti Noxon introduced audiences to a group of women unlike any we’d seen before on TV. Ladies with oft-wobbly careers, rubbled relationships, an ironclad friendship and hopeful hearts wrapped by turns in whipped cream and barbed wire. Ladies who weren’t shy about effing up or letting their angst fly. And so, anchored by Lisa Edelstein’s struggling self-help author Abby McCarthy, the titular girlfriends of Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce let the rest of us frazzled females grab a glass and commiserate, even as we coveted their fab digs, wardrobes and ability to cry pretty. […]

Yellowstone Kevin Costner
Drama

‘Yellowstone’: Kevin Costner Talks Paramount Network’s “Wild West Meets Big Business” Epic

May 31, 2018 Lori Acken 4

Kevin Costner is dancing with television audiences once again. In his first TV project since his Emmy-winning role in History’s record-breaking Hatfields & McCoys, the 63-year-old actor — who ascended from movie-star heartthrob to bona fide power player when he helmed and starred in 1990’s Oscar-winning Dances With Wolves — returns to his favored frontier sensibility for Paramount Network’s sweeping drama series Yellowstone. Costner plays widower John Dutton, proprietor of the modern-day Yellowstone Dutton Ranch, his family’s Rhode Island-sized Montana sprawl of big business, modern technology and Wild West skill sets. Invulnerable to outside forces for generations, the estate’s prime […]

Dietland AMC Joy Nash
Drama

‘Dietland’ on AMC: Star Joy Nash Talks Marti Noxon’s ‘Feminist Revenge Fantasy’

May 29, 2018 Lori Acken 0

Check out the website of any celebrity rag and you’ll see the problem. Here’s a story about the latest woman to call out a high-profile male colleague for behavior that’s Neanderthal at best and felonious at worst. Right next to it? Twenty-year-old models tell us how to rock Daisy Duke shorts! And here’s where to buy every last bit of a former Spice Girl’s thousand-dollar skincare routine. Raise your hand if you enjoy being a girl! The heart of Dietland, Marti Noxon’s new satirical dramedy (based on the critically acclaimed 2015 novel by Sarai Walker), is aspiring journalist Plum Kettle’s […]

Succession HBO Jeremy Strong Brian Cox
Drama

‘Succession’: HBO’s Riveting Family-Dynasty Drama is Your New Summer Obsession

May 26, 2018 Lori Acken 0

Famous families. They enthrall us (say, the royals) and often infuriate us (you, Kardashians) with their power, wealth and privilege — and their ability to emerge unscathed from scandal or misstep. But what is it really like to be part of one? To have your forebears and family name be inescapable reminders of all you must live up to? Or try to live down? HBO’s stellar, slyly funny new family dynasty drama Succession — from comedy veterans Adam McKay (Saturday Night Live) and Jesse Armstrong (In the Loop) — examines the inner workings of the fictional Roy family, proprietors of […]

Drama

‘Sweetbitter’: Stephanie Danler’s Coming-of-Age Book Becomes a Sensual Series on Starz

May 2, 2018 Lori Acken Comments Off on ‘Sweetbitter’: Stephanie Danler’s Coming-of-Age Book Becomes a Sensual Series on Starz

Like a well curated menu, Starz’s new dramedy Sweetbitter has something scrumptious for all tastes. Foodies and wine lovers will swoon over luscious images and discussions of eat and drink. The mighty legions that serve us when we dine out at long last have a scripted restaurant show that honors them. Scenesters get the New York that only New Yorkers know. And everyone can relive our own brink-of-adulthood reckoning via the show’s 22-year-old heroine Tess, winningly played by Churchill’s Ella Purnell. Tess — the not-quite alter ego of Sweetbitter screenwriter Stephanie Danler, who also penned the bestseller on which the […]

Drama

‘Vida’ on Starz: Home Is Where Your Secrets Are

May 2, 2018 Lori Acken Comments Off on ‘Vida’ on Starz: Home Is Where Your Secrets Are

Though she’s worked on high-profile series with diverse casts and bold storytelling, writer/producer Tanya Saracho knew something was still missing in the modern TV landscape: a series that reflected her own life and lineage. So Saracho, who proudly identifies as queer and prefers the gender-neutral term Latinx over Latina/Latino, created Vida, a gutsy dramedy about estranged Los Angeles sisters whose return home forces them to confront myriad truths about their mother, their past and their own self-images as Americans of Mexican heritage. “Most of our department heads are female,” said Saracho of the show’s proudly female and inclusive pedigree, at […]

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Drama

‘Howards End’ on Starz: Hayley Atwell Talks the Schlegel Sisters’ Bond

April 8, 2018 Lori Acken Comments Off on ‘Howards End’ on Starz: Hayley Atwell Talks the Schlegel Sisters’ Bond

In 1992, famed filmmakers James Ivory (a 2018 Oscar winner for Call Me by Your Name) and Ismail Merchant and their trusted screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala debuted a lush film adaptation of the E.M. Forster masterpiece Howards End. Beautifully rendered and perfectly cast — Emma Thompson, Anthony Hopkins, Helena Bonham Carter and Vanessa Redgrave starred — the tale of economic class, family bonds and social conventions in turn-of-the-century England became an instant classic, earning Oscars for Thompson and Jhabvala. Twenty-five years later, the BBC revisited the epic as a four-part miniseries, which makes its American debut this month on Starz. […]