Tuned In+Uncategorized | May 4, 2009

The Morning After: Got a Love Jonas

By James Poniewozik

  I didn’t manage to review Disney Channel’s new star-vehicle sitcom JONAS, but really, isn’t the best time to review a review-proof TV show after it airs?   In this new tween sitcom with music, Disney pop stars Kevin, Joe and Nick Jonas play teenagers Kevin, Joe and Nick Lucas. They have a different last [...]

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Tuned In+March 3, 2009

Corporate Press Release Theater: HSM (Kind of) Returning

By James Poniewozik

Disney today announced plans for High School Musical 4—a TV movie again this time, not a movie-movie like HSM3, and with a new cast:  DISNEY’S “HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 4” SET TO DEBUT AS A DISNEY CHANNEL ORIGINAL MOVIE IN 2010   East meets West in a classic love triangle set against the cross-town school rivalry between [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | January 20, 2009

The Morning After: Montana '36!

By James Poniewozik

To get into the spirit for today’s Inauguration liveblog, I decided that I had to watch Disney Channel’s Kids’ Inaugural: We Are the Future (also known as Sasha and Malia’s reward for putting up with Dad running for President). What does that future look like? Look for the election of President Cyrus in about 2036 or [...]

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Tuned In+July 29, 2008

How to Talk to Your Child About the End of Hannah Montana

By James Poniewozik

Well, it may not have come to that yet. But Miley Cyrus, after releasing an album under her own name and totally unintentionally distancing herself from her child-star image in Vanity Fair, has now told E! Online that “We’re thinking this [the upcoming third season] is our last season.” Disney begs to differ, noting that [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | June 23, 2008

The Morning After: YR JONAS REVUS PLZ KTHXBAI

By James Poniewozik

Camp Rock, the Jonas Brothers’ movie / tween excitation vehicle, grabbed 8.9 million viewers on Disney Channel Friday and another 3.6 million on ABC Saturday night. That’s not quite the 17.2 million High School Musical 2 got, but it was better than anything anyone else put on TV all weekend—and considering it was essentially the [...]

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Tuned In+June 20, 2008

TV Weekend: OMG JONAS AGAIN

By James Poniewozik

DISNEY CHANNEL Also in this week’s Time, I have a quick-blurb review of The Jonas Brothers’ Camp Rock, which premieres tonight on Disney Channel: The Jonas Brothers — those three words being all the review the tween audience needs — get a feature that might as well be titled High School Musical 2 II. (Summer [...]

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Tuned In+June 17, 2008

TV Tonight: OMG JONAS JONAS JONAS

By James Poniewozik

There is no escape. / ABC/DISNEY CHANNEL All parents of American tween-aged children, unless they are totally uncool and unfair and hate their kids, have seen to it that they have access to Disney Channel On Demand. (The fact that your cable company doesn’t offer it is no excuse! You could have moved! I never [...]

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Tuned In+June 11, 2008

Tomorrow's Controversy Today

By James Poniewozik

So I was watching a screener of Camp Rock, Disney Channel’s upcoming Jonas Brothers movie—and you think this job isn’t work?—when I saw something that gave me pause. The three boy-bandmates are conferring in an early scene, and Kevin Jonas (below left) has his innocent American neck swaddled in… could it be… a black and [...]

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Tuned In+May 2, 2008

My Last Miley Post, I Promise, I Think

By James Poniewozik

Regular commenter shara says lays down some common sense in the previous thread on the Miley Cyrus brouhaha: If the parents of little kids are upset, then that’s their business I guess, but they can’t expect a young woman to not grow up just because they want a kid-friendly icon or role model. She plays [...]

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Tuned In+April 30, 2008

Outsourcing Disney's Teensploitation

By James Poniewozik

I’m on deadline this morning, working on a (thankfully brief) piece about l’affaire Montana for the print Time. In the meantime, and on a related note, you might want to check out this story in Slate. Even as Disney was outraged over Miley Cyrus’ photos on this side of the Pacific, across the waves in [...]

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Tuned In+April 28, 2008

Did Hannah Jump or Was She Pushed?

By James Poniewozik

In a move that shocked parents and the Disney corporation’s accountants, teen star Miley Cyrus, a.k.a. Hannah Montana, has posed seminude for Vanity Fair’s June issue. In the photo, by celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz, Cyrus appears bare-backed, with a blanket clutched to her chest. (No actual Montanas were exposed.) In the article—and in Vanity Fair’s [...]