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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 Noé, Rachel Brosnahan, Amy 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.

Ep630: The BIRTH of INTOLERANCE

Ep630: The BIRTH of INTOLERANCE

Ian Simmons

Ian welcomes back National Review film critic Armond White for a look at two movies whose influence on the art form is as undeniable as it is controversial.

D.W. Griffith's 1915 silent epic The Birth of a Nation is a Klan origin fable bursting with racism and historical inaccuracies--but it's also a gripping human drama that boasts ahead-of-its-time storytelling techniques. Griffith followed this up the next year with Intolerance, an even grander project that interweaves four centuries-spanning morality tales, all connected by a theme that essentially undermines The Birth of a Nation's...intolerance.

In this wide-ranging (and by no means definitive) conversation, Ian and Armond talk about the balance between appreciating art and endorsing it; Griffith's puzzlingly inconsistent use of blackface; and what makes Intolerance, in Mr. White's opinion, the "greatest movie ever made."

Show Links:

Ep631: Late Screening: THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL

Ep631: Late Screening: THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL
Ep629: THE PROM - Movie Review

Ep629: THE PROM - Movie Review