PostPWN
PostPWN is a weekly film review podcast featuring Ari Froehlich, Wesley Davies, and Nick Geoghegan. It functions as the successor series to PWN, which aired its last official episode on September 20, 2019. The first episode of PostPWN was released on Anchor.fm and Spotify on October 25, 2019, which was coincidentally the five year anniversary of Interstellar: PWN #1. The format is largely based on that of the PWN series.
Each episode is split between the discussion of current movie news and recent release reviews, and a more in-depth and detailed discussion of one or twospotlight films, which are preselected by a member of the trio. The group alternate with who selects the film, with each episode's spotlight film being announced in the episode prior. Sometimes, guests or fans will also suggest spotlight movies to watch. All three members (and theoretically the audience) will watch said movie(s) before the next episode, which are released in two week intervals.
Background[edit | edit source]
Talk of doing a PWN podcast began long before the first episode of PostPWN was released. Nick and Wes had discussed the idea of a highlights series called "PWNCore" as early as 2015, though it was never decided whether the series would be a podcast or a video series. After the 2016 Academy Awards, Nick and Wes recorded a commentary of the ceremony, talking about the winners of the awards and reviewing those that they had seen. The two recorded their discussion over Google Hangouts. The podcast was never named. This commentary was unfortunately lost, however.
During the filming of the final two episodes of PWN, the trio recorded a commentary track for A Hot Lead, which ha yet to be released. The idea of a podcast is mentioned in that recording. Likewise, the topic of a podcast has been occasionally brought up on PWN. Ari mentions this fact in The Final Episode of PWN - PWN #43 when he says about the others, "maybe I'll convince them to make a podcast with me". The name "PostPWN" is likely taken from Nick's response to Ari's comment; "we're still debating what we're gonna do post-PWN". This name had been officially selected by the end of August.
PostPWN is Born[edit | edit source]
Ari and Nick took charge in formulating a podcast almost as soon as PWN had ended. The last episode of PWN was released on September 20th, the day before Nick arrived at UCSD and almost a month after it was recorded. Nick had intentionally planned not to begin the podcast until he had settled into school, while both Ari and Wes had moved into their respective schools in early September. By October, the podcast was confirmed to happen, and the trio discussed the logistics of recording. The group eventually decided to record a test podcast in order to determine whether the trio could sustain over an hour of consistent engaging conversation without too much editing. This test episode was recorded on October 10th, at 12:20 PM PST. The group simply discussed how college was so far, and introduced the concepts of the podcast. Nick recommended the first Spotlight movie in this episode, Harold and Maude
The first episode was recorded on Friday, October 18th, 2019 beginning around 4:50 PST.
Format[edit | edit source]
See also: PostPWN Spotlight
In general, episodes of PostPWN follow a loose structure. Each episode opens with the same roll-call as PWN, with Ari and Nick each stating their name, and Wesley telling some joke. The trio usually discuss movie-related news for the first part of the episode. The very first story covered on PostPWN was news pertaining to the upcoming film The Batman, alongside a review for Joker. Occasionally, there are reviews for recent films and other movies that the trio have seen. Beside Joker, film discussed include Parasite, What Did Jack Do?, 1917, and the 2019 version of Cats. Most news segments are between twenty and thirty minutes. The longest have been in episodes #14, #4, and #1 at 47, 44, and 42 minutes respectively. The briefest news segments have been episodes #9, #17, and #18 at 10, 9, and 4 minutes respectively.
The bulk of the episodes comes with the discussion of one or more "PostPWN Spotlights", films recommended each week for the trio to watch and discuss. Each member of the trio takes turn recommending a film, in reverse "PWN" order (Nick, Wesley, Ari). There are fifteen episodes to a season, so each member recommends five films. Sometimes, additional films are included as Spotlights. These may be recommended by fans or chosen by guests. Only one film has been spotlighted without any prior announcement, that being Star Wars Episode IX. Discussions usually include spoilers, and may range from thirty minutes to as long as an hour. The longest discussions have been for Metropolis at 57 minutes and Mulholland Drive at 58 minutes. The shortest was RoboCop, at a mere 23 minutes. The episodes which cover two spotlight films generally have shorter news segments.
The episode may feature other recurring segments spread throughout. The most common of these is the lauded "Data Storage Corner", which first appeared in PostPWN #3 with Microsoft's Project Silica. The first episode to include an "official" Data Storage Corner was PostPWN #10. With the onset of the Coronavirus in 2020 and its effects on the movie industry, "Corona Corner" began to appear on a regular basis. Some films are frequently mentioned to the point of having semi-regular appearances on the show, forming temporary pseudo-corners. These include Joker, which saw discussion in four episodes, Parasite, which was mentioned multiple times including two separate reviews, and Cats, which was covered by three episodes until its final mention in a chaotic review by Nick which came in Episode 15.
Episodes conclude with a segment called "Q&A Corner" whenever listener questions are available. If not, the Spotlight discussion leads directly into the next week's recommendation, and the outro of the video.
Episodes[edit | edit source]
Main article: List of Episodes of PostPWN