Now Playing Podcast Presents: The Fast and Furious Retrospective Series

Strange things are afoot at Now Playing!  For the next three weeks Jakob, Stuart, and Arnaldo Carvalho, Esq. are catching up on the cinematic exploits of SoCal slackers Bill and Ted, starting with their 1989 Excellent Adventure. Can these clueless metalheads pass their history final by hopping in a time-traveling phone booth, and bringing legendary figures like Socrates and Napoleon Bonaparte to a 20th Century mall?  And how accurate was this film’s prediction that Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter would change the future?  Listen Now and Party On!

Johnny Depp has trouble telling fact from fiction after hayseed stalker John Turturro shows up on his porch, and accuses the New England writer of stealing his short story Secret Window.  But is Stephen King the real plagiarist by presenting another tale of a tortured author using plot points cribbed from The Dark Half?  And can Depp flip the script on his bitter divorce once bad things start happening to his cheating ex-wife (Maria Bello, not Amber Heard)? Find out if the seeds planted early in this narrative bear fruit or corn at the twist ending when you Listen Now!

Cancelled TV stars Bronson Pinchot (Perfect Strangers), David Morse (St. Elsewhere), and Patricia Wettig (thirtysomething) fight becoming a thing of the past after traveling through a rip in time in The Langoliers. Is this 1995 ABC miniseries a ticket back to prime time relevance? Or are the has-beens fated to a future forever flying coach and going unnoticed in the Bangor airport? And is 80s icon Pac-Man also angling for a comeback as he photobombs the finale?  Feast on the next crazy Stephen King installment with Stuart, Jakob, and Arnie now!

Chris Pine (Star Trek) may be the fourth actor to play Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, but he’s the first incarnation of the Tom Clancy character to challenge Jason Bourne’s spy movie supremacy in the 21st Century. Can the CIA analyst keep pace with the times as he hunts down a shady Russian businessman (Kenneth Branaugh) out to tank the U.S. economy?  And how long can eye surgeon Keira Knightley be kept in the dark about her boyfriend’s covert activities?  Find out as Now Playing unlocks the file on the iconic spy’s most recent big screen adventure.

Ben Affleck goes from Chasing Amy and following J-Lo around the block, to pursuing neo-Nazis hoping to detonate a dirty bomb on American soil in The Sum of All Fears.  Was this fourth Jack Ryan adventure too timely, with a plot that predicted many aspects of the 9/11 terrorist attacks?  Does Tom Clancy’s Cold War politics still apply to this new War On Terror? And will CIA director Morgan Freeman open a file on why Harrison Ford has gone missing from the franchise? Jakob, Stuart, and Arnie are ready to play ball with the hot button thriller. Listen Now!

Harrison Ford was in no Clear and Present Danger of being replaced by any other movie star in 1994, but CIA analyst Jack Ryan does solicit help from another popular Tom Clancy character for his third big screen adventure. Can world-weary mercenary Clark (Willem Dafoe) help the pencil pusher defeat a Columbian drug cartel, and reign in an overreaching U.S. President?  And does this 1989 novel about Reagan's War On Drugs still hit the right targets today?  Arnie, Jakob, and Stuart have emerged from the jungle with the answers, so Listen Now and find out!

Paramount was eager to adapt more Tom Clancy novels after Red October brought home a boatload of cash. But is it as much fun to play Patriot Games with so many important pieces missing from the sequel? Gone are the Cold War politics, sleek submarine technology, and Alec Baldwin as our nerdy CIA analyst hero. Will Arnie, Jakob, and Stuart remain loyal to the past, or go with Harrison Ford as an older Jack Ryan defending his family and seaside home from crazy Sean Bean (Lord of the Rings) and a rogue IRA faction? Listen and find out.

Sean Connery has stolen a Soviet nuclear submarine, and now every Cold War naval vessel is on The Hunt For Red October. Tom Clancy's 1984 bestseller was designed to torpedo Rambo shoot 'em ups, and take the action genre into a new decade of thinking man 'techno-thrillers'. But did Alec Baldwin study enough about his co-star to turn his untested CIA analyst into the next James Bond?  Arnie, Jakob, and Stuart are ready to track every move in Jack Ryan's 30 year movie career, starting with this 1990 blockbuster.  Listen Now!

Join all seven podcasters as they sit down for the first time to give a collective review of The Breakfast Club.  Does John Hughes' seminal teen drama of the 1980s still have something important to say about cliques and class division 35 years later?  What were the hosts like in high school, and has recording one thousand shows together felt like punishment or a unique bonding experience? You won't need to return to your locker for that bag of grass in order to spend the day giggling as Now Playing explains "who we are".  Listen Now!

Nobody walks in LA… except Snake Plissken, after President Cliff Robertson tasks him to recover a top secret weapon from revolutionaries hiding out at the former Happiest Place On Earth. But SoCal’s new prison island proves to be a decidedly sunnier and funnier place than the Big Apple penitentiary of 15 years ago. Can Kurt Russell’s one-eyed badass fend off deranged plastic surgeon Bruce Campbell, surf tsunamis with Peter Fonda, and hang with outlaw Pam Grier? And is Escape From LA a sequel to, or parody of, John Carpenter’s 1981 classic?  Listen and Find Out!