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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.

Unbroken Glass (2016)

Aging allows us to appreciate the lives our parents led before we entered the picture. Even if we never knew them (or never knew them enough), it can be comforting to believe that our shortcomings, triumphs, obsessions, and secrets are, at least in part, reflections of lineage instead of mere cosmic accidents. Documentary filmmaker Dinesh Das Sabu’s mother and father died when he was just six years old. Unbroken Glass is his attempt to understand who they were by interviewing friends, extended family, and the siblings who raised him. Not far beneath the sensational draw of colliding cultures, schizophrenia, and domestic abuse is a subtextual rabbit hole that questions how much of our lives is predicated on DNA, versus determination. Introspective but not indulgent, investigative but not exploitive, Das Sabu draws on specific experiences in addressing our universal need to confront and embrace ourselves for the sake of future generations.

Listen to Kicking the Seat Podcast #195 to hear Ian's interview with Dinesh Das Sabu!

I Am Not Your Negro (2016)

The Lego Batman Movie (2017)