You can unpin them from the start screen. Or go to settings, applications,background task,block the app.
Also most app do have live tile settings if they have live tiles maybe hard to find but may be there.
blocking does nothing.
i want them on my screen, but just as icons.
some have the option within the app and some don't.
i wish there was a built in manager for live tiles.
in windows 8 you can choose "turn live tile off" regardless of the app options.
So you just want them to be a static icon not live, sorry there is no way to do that. Blocking does saving the battery by not allowing the apps to update information in the background. There are tile apps you can have on start screen you can set a picture to but not able to open apps you might want to check out.
You could just make the tiles as small as possible. They should at least remain static - whether or to you get notifications through them or not is another question.