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Welcome to Kicking the Seat!

Ian Simmons launched Kicking the Seat in 2009, one week after seeing Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia. His wife proposed blogging as a healthier outlet for his anger than red-faced, twenty-minute tirades (Ian is no longer allowed to drive home from the movies).

The Kicking the Seat Podcast followed three years later and, despite its “undiscovered gem” status, Ian thoroughly enjoys hosting film critic discussions, creating themed shows, and interviewing such luminaries as Gaspar NoéRachel BrosnahanAmy Seimetz, and Richard Dreyfuss.

Ian is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association. He also has a family, a day job, and conflicted feelings about referring to himself in the third person.

Ep319: Dark Knight of the Solstice: BATMAN BEGINS

Today, the Kicking the Seat Podcast and HollywoodChicago.com's Pat “The Über Critic” McDonald kick off a summer mini-series examining Christopher Nolan'sDark Knight Trilogy! Years before Samuel L. Jackson popped up in Iron Man's post-credits stinger, the comic-book-movie landscape was a poorly sketched landscape of disparate licenses whose flop-to-phenomenon ratio was predictable only in its lack of overall vision. Along came Christopher Nolan, David Goyer, and Christian Bale, who ripped Batman away from the era of Burton/Schumacher camp and plopped him into a heightened-reality drama about the nature of fear.

In this first installment of "Dark Knight of the Solstice", Ian and Pat talk about Batman's long, weird road to big-screen redemption; how Batman Begins looks in hindsight, when compared to the present-day, over-strategized comics-movie machine; and--oh, yeah, the film itself.

Also, Ian rips into film-critic critics, and plugs his recent appearance on the 90 Under 90 Podcast in which he discusses 2012's found-footage superhero flick, Chronicle, with Dan and Jeremy Eden.

Episode 319 clearly has issues!

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Ep320: 23 and Meh

Ep318: Crowbocop