Podcast / Now Playing

Now Playing is a movie review Podcast first launched in 2007, released on a weekly-schedule for most of the years since. The show has a revolving set of a total of seven hosts but each episode is only hosted by three at a time in a roundtable discussion. The hosts being Arnie, Stuart, Jakob, Brock, Majorie, Jerry, and Justin.

The format of the show tending to be retrospective deep-dives into franchises in anticipation of the release of a new installment of said franchise. For example reviewing every live-action movie (including T.V. movies) based off a Marvel Comics property in the anticipation of The Avengers (2012). Though retrospectives revolving themes are also common (ex. the films of Quentin Tarantino, films based off Stephen King books, or horror films released in 1986). Along with the occasional one-off episode that doesn't tie in to anything also popping up.

The types of episodes the show does can be broken down into three;

• Tuesday Episodes: The main feed where most of the episodes can be found that are ad-free, most often the show where a new release will be discussed. Free to listen to.

• Donation Drives: Episodes behind a paywall at various donation levels released on Fridays, usually also meant to tie-in to a new release but also covers older, "dead", franchises. Primary means of funding the show, similar to NPR or PBS donation drives and keeping the main episodes ad-free.

• Patron Episodes: Episodes only available by becoming a monthly patron, also released on Fridays but usually one a month. Covers movies requested by patrons who donated at a certain level.

As of 2020 the show has recorded over 1000 episodes.

Series covered by show include:

• Alien
• Back to the Future
• Bill & Ted
• The Bourne Series
• The Chronicles of Riddick
• The Conjuring Series
• Child's Play
• Cornetto Trilogy
• DC Extended Universe
• Death Wish
• Die Hard
• Dirty Harry
• The Dollars Trilogy
• The Fast and the Furious
• Final Destination
• Friday the 13th
• The Fly (1986)
• Ghostbusters
• The Godfather trilogy
• Halloween
• The Hannibal Lecter films
• Harry Potter
• The Hunger Games
• Indiana Jones
• James Bond
• Jaws
• Jurassic Park
• The Karate Kid
• King Kong
• Leprechaun
• Lethal Weapon
• Living Dead Series
• Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogy ^note  Including the animated films
• Mad Max
• Marvel Cinematic Universe
• The Matrix
• Men in Black
• MonsterVerse
• The Mission: Impossible Film Series
• A Nightmare on Elm Street
• Ocean's Eleven
• The Omen
• Pirates of the Caribbean
• Planet of the Apes
• Predator
• The Purge
• The Psycho series
• Rambo
• Return of the Living Dead
• RoboCop
• Rocky
• Saw
• Scream
• Sleepaway Camp
• Star Trek
• Star Wars
• The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films.
• Terminator
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre series
• The Toy Story series
• Transformers
• The Transporter series
• The Twilight Saga
• Universal Horror
  • Dracula (1931)
  • Frankenstein

This Series Contains Examples of:

• The '80s: All the hosts grew up and came of age in the decade, with many of their retrospectives centering around not just franchises from the era but also themed ones such as "Summer of 1989" or ''Horror of 1986".
• Animation Age Ghetto: Invoked. The main hosts all admit that animated movies aren't really their thing but do make exceptions for Pixar.
• Author Appeal: Stuart and Arnie are both avid Horror fans. Much of the retrospectives in the early years of the show covering horror franchises in anticipation of then-upcoming remakes.
• The Big Rotten Apple: A particular favorite genre of Stuart's. Both he and Arnie having grown up thinking New York was one of the most dangerous places in the world due to the popularity of this type of setting 80s fiction.
• Broke the Rating Scale: When coming across a "so bad, it's good"-type of movie the hosts will give it a "Brown Arrow" recommendation rather than the standard Green or Red arrow.^note  It will still shows up on the episode's page as a red arrow however
• Childhood Friends: Arnie and Stuart have been friends since they were kids.
• Critic Breakdown: Arnie considered Alone in the Dark II so bad he made a video for the show's YouTube channel burning a copy of a DVD, imploring people not to watch it.^note  And Stuart humorously roasting marshmallows over the remains
• The Cynic: The three person review team for each retrospective usually has one host who has either never seen the series being reviewed or dislikes it.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first episodes were only around 15-20 minutes long and were hosted only by Arnie and Majorie. In addition they only discussed recently released movies with no retrospective buildup. It wouldn't be until the Friday the 13th retrospective that show found it's formula, but even that had a tacked on "epilogue" episode discussing the entire series that no other retrospective since as had.
• Freudian Trio: Three hosts always make up the roundtable for each episode. The general idea being one host will be a fan of the movie or series being discussed, one will only be a casual, and the other will either be someone who hasn't seen it or doesn't like it.
• Power Trio: Three hosts always make up each episode with Arnie, Stuart, and Jakob being the most common one (Arnie also being the most frequent host of the entire rotation). The only episode which had more than three was the 1000th episode, a review of The Breakfast Club, which had all seven hosts.
• Self-Applied Nickname: Stuart's call-sign intro for years was "Stuart in L.A." before dropping it when he moved back to Illinois.
• Stuffed into the Fridge: Stuart dubs it "The Mel Gibson Effect".
• Spin-Off:
  • Now Peaking a show with mostly the same formula but applied singularly to the Twin Peaks franchise. It was also in conjunction on Now Playing's end with a retrospective on all of David Lynch's filmography.
  • Books and Nachos, later rebranded Now Playing Book Reviews, would review the books that films they covered were adaptations of, such as those of Stephen King or the Ian Fleming James Bond books.
• Thematic Series: Retrospectives based around a theme are about as common as ones based around more standard movie franchises.
  • An early fan-voted one was a trilogy of episodes looking at Steven Spielberg Alien movies; Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and War of the Worlds (2005)
  • One of the show's longest running examples of this being reviewing all live-action movies (including T.V. movies) of the works of Stephen King ^note  released in book publication order. It started back in 2013 with a review of the remake of Carrie (1976) and remains ongoing.
  • Adaptations of Philip K. Dick stories.
  • Now Playing Arcade where they review every Video Game movie adaptation (including sequels) and Video Game-adjacent movies like The Wizard or Pixels.
  • In addition to reviews of The Godfather trilogy, this retrospective was supplemented by two separate ones covering Al Pacino "Cop" and non-Godfather "Gangster" movies.
  • One covering Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese collaborations.
  • A Christopher Nolan-themed one covering all his non-Batman directed works in the leadup to Interstellar
  • A retrospective covering every Quentin Tarantino directed-movie, along with ones he was creatively involved with like Four Rooms, True Romance, and Natural Born Killers.
  • 80s Tom Cruise movies in anticipation of Top Gun: Maverick
  • The COVID-19 pandemic saw them do a "Viral Outbreak"-themed retrospective where they covered one movie from each decade, starting with the 50s, that was about some sort of viral pandemic.