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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.

Landline (2017)

Like all independent filmmakers, Matthew Aaron wears many hats on his third feature, Landline—not the least of which is a baseball cap representing his beloved Chicago Cubs. It takes singular vision and ungodly determination to get a movie off the ground, so I don’t blame Aaron for swinging for the fences as writer, director, producer, editor, and star. But the unfocused Landline loses sight of its premise early on. Following a sex-video scandal, ad executive Ted Gout (Aaron) strives to rid himself of modern technology. There are side-plots aplenty: one, a misunderstanding about Ted’s husband’s relationship with a childhood friend; one, a babysitting misadventure involving pot; still another pitting Ted against a social-media-savvy coworker for the all-important Cubs account. Any of these could be a movie. The effect of stuffing them all into one film is akin to reading an online article in which every third word is a hyperlink.

Check out Kicking the Seat Podcast episodes 209 and 211 for our double-header Landline interviews with Matthew Aaron and co-star Jim O'Heir!

The Ticket (2016)

T2 Trainspotting (2017)