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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.

78/52 (2017)

 

As part of his talking-head interview for Alexandre O. Philippe's documentary 78/52, author Bret Easton Ellis declares that the notorious shower scene in Psycho is the one element that makes Alfred Hitchcock's horror masterpiece certifiably brilliant. Ellis is mistaken, of course, but his notion fits Philippe's movie to a "T". There are forty-five minutes of context and insight here, surrounded by garishly flushable fluff. Before we even get to the interview subjects (all presented, incidentally, in film-school-chic black-and-white), Philippe sets the table with a confusing re-creation of Marion Crane's long and frantic drive to the Bates Motel, which plays as if Universal Pictures had refused to let him use any actual footage from Psycho (we eventually see some, thank God). The doc's centerpiece--a thorough breakdown of score, editing, performance, and Saul Bass' meticulous yet immediate-feeling storyboards--is worth the hassle, as long as you resist the impulse to check out early.

Superman III (1983)

Tragedy Girls (2017)