Screen Magazine - Index

Screen Magazine - Screen Magazine: Vol. 29, Issue 19 - Index

Adam Kempenaar And Matty Robinson Bring Their
Joy Of Cinema With Filmspotting
By: Mark Carr
The Internet has changed the world
and how we view it. It’s an age,
as director George A. Romero has
put it, where everyone has a voice.
Podcasting has slowly become a new
form of radio and media where you
can speak intellectually or casually
about topics ranging from film, video
games, gardening, knitting and
even several on the television show
“Firefly.”
In the early days of the new medium,
two film critics, “Arthouse” Adam
Kempenaar and Sam Van Hallgren,
decided to explore the new medium.
A few years, hundreds of reviews, a
name change and a new host later,
Kempenaar and Matty “Ballgame”
Robinson continue to bring one of the
best film reviewing podcasts around
with “Filmspotting,” formally called
“Cinecast,” right here in Chicago.
“Filmspotting” is a weekly podcast where the two critics have
a discussion on films of the past and present . The show is very
structured with a 10-minute discussion of a new film currently in
theaters, listener feedback, new DVDs out that week, a top-five
list relating to a film they’re reviewing or current events such as the
“Top Five On-The-Run Movies” relating to their review of “Pineapple
Express,” for example.
“Sam [Van Hallgren] and I had talked about wanting to do
[something like] a blog together,” recalls Kempenaar. “[The blog]
just would never go anywhere. I then saw ‘Wired’ Magazine’s
February or March issue of 2005 and it had Adam Curry on the
cover and the headline was ‘Adam Curry: I-Pod Radio Star.’ I didn’t
know anything about podcasting at all, and [I realized], ‘Wow, I
can do this!’ So I called Sam and jokingly asked if he wanted to be
a radio star and he said, ‘Yeah, of course!’ I mentioned podcasting
and sent the article to him and he said, ‘Let’s do it.’”
The show also features a classic marathon where the two look at a
director such as Ingmar Bergman or a genre such as Classic Heist
Movies and explore classics in the genres they aren’t familiar with.
The favorite part of the show, however, is Massacre Theater where,
as Robinson describes, “Adam and I perform a scene – that’s the
massacre – from a beloved screenplay – that’s the theater – and
our beloved listeners get a shot at winning a beloved DVD of [their]
choice.” It’s always fun to hear the two film geeks try Woody Allen
and Christopher Walken by butchering “Annie Hall.”
Adam Kempenaar is a Master’s graduate of the University of Iowa,
where he studied Journalism and had some experience with
beginning to review films, both in written format and in several
radio shows. He is happily married in Chicago with his wife Sarah
and three kids – Holden, Sophie and Quinn. Matty Robinson has
an undergraduate degree in drama and creative writing with a
Masters of Fine Arts. He is a fairly reserved guy who lives, as the
website describes, in Garbo-esque seclusion in greater Hammond,
Indiana. He also has a background in acting on a few projects.
Robinson describes his background as “very nebulous, dry and
wet.”
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“Sam got married [I believe] back in
August 2006 and he wanted to move
to Milwaukee with his family,” tells
Kempenaar. “When that happened,
the show got so complicated. We
had to do the show with him in
Milwaukee and me in Chicago. It
was getting to a point where we
weren’t having fun anymore and it
started to feel like work and [was]
losing its magic. He was ready to
move on with his career and [also]
start a family. He’s now the program
director at a radio station.”
When talking about replacing Van
Hallgren, Adam recalls that, “Matty
was the only choice. He was Sam’s
roommate back in Chicago. He was
a friend of mine and a listener of the
show. He uses his background as an
actor and brings that knowledge and
experience to the show [and] it really brought that performance
aspect with a serious tone to it. He carves his personality on air. I
also knew he was very funny. I see myself as the straight man who
really keeps the show going and let Sam improvise and have fun,
and Matty has that same role.”
Kempenaar recounts his approach to reviewing by saying, “The
less I know about the movie, the better. I will sometimes go down
to Metacritic.com and see what the score is and get a general
consensus of how I feel [and] what other critics are generally
saying about the movie. Most reviews get bogged down in plot
description that I don’t want to know anything about going into
the movie. [The reviews may] create some pre-conceived notion
that affects my viewing of it. I find that the fresher I am, the better
I feel about it.”
Robinson describes his approach by saying, “I try to judge each
film entirely on its own merits, independent of any possible source
material for the picture or what the director or actors might
have done prior to the film. Those all enter into the conversation
obviously but they are not the elements of a project that particularly
interest me. I rarely know much about a film beforehand outside
of whatever I might have read in ‘Variety.’ Personally I like to think
I employ a bastardized version of John Crowe Ransom’s New
Criticism and rely heavily on the writings and reviews of probably
the best entertainment critic of all time: Aristotle.”
One of the best things that can be said about “Filmspotting” is
that the show knows that movies are about having fun. Where as
so many film critics generate an endless argument and can take
all the joy and excitement out of watching film, “Filmspotting”
reminds people of the sheer pleasure that is cinema while still
having something to dig into when thinking of the film.
“Filmspotting” can be subscribed for free on iTunes and can be
heard at the website. Robinson is still trying to receive medical and
dental for the show but Kempenaar says that once he finds 20,000
more listeners, then they’ll talk.
//www.filmspotting.net