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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.

A Bridge Between Two Worlds (2016)

In 2000, humanitarian Gilles Raymond moved from Quebec to the Indonesian island of Flores, whose corn and red bean exports netted their impoverished residents a meager $900 per year. Working with a Catholic charity, Raymond created the Otonomi program, through which Canadian sponsors provide seven-year, interest-free "honour loans" to help Indonesian counterparts become ginger farmers (this crop can more than double a family's income). Pascal Gelinas' documentary, A Bridge Between Two Worlds, profiles Raymond's efforts to help a nation find its way out from under a brutal and impossibly corrupt military dictatorship. Raymond works with governments but is not beholden to them, and he insists on a direct link between donors and recipients. Gelinas presents his subject as a bridge not only between West and East, but between slavery and prosperity, making this film a hopeful, unofficial bookend to Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence.

Sharknado 4: The 4th Awakens (2016)

Colors (1988)