About the HollywoodChicago.com Staff
HollywoodChicago.com is your everything entertainment source for trusted and timely daily reviews, interviews and news. We are your daily entertainment source for:
- Film reviews (delving into what makes success or failure rather than just what happens)
- Breaking entertainment news (covering the U.S. with a specialty on Chicago)
- Humanized film interviews
- DVD reviews
- Blu-ray reviews
- Chicago theatre reviews
- Top 10 lists
- TV reviews
- Video game reviews
- Music reviews
- Entertainment giveaways
- Exclusive celebrity photography
Two of our film critics are on the Tomatometer at Rotten Tomatoes. We are credible at NewsCred. Our privacy policy is here. Our global news pickups are here. Our logos are here. Our media kit is here. View our archives here. Our staff biographies in order of joining are below. Disclosure: All reviews on HollywoodChicago.com are of products provided by the publisher/studio.
HollywoodChicago.com is in partnership with high-quality, highly trafficked entertainment sites including TVGuide.com, IMDb and Metacafe. All of our content is teased on the IMDb NewsDesk.
Adam Fendelman: Founder/Publisher
Brian Tallerico: Content Director
Patrick McDonald: Senior Staff Writer
Matt Fagerholm: Staff Writer
Alissa Norby: Chicago Theater Critic
Emily Riemer: TV Critic
Joe Arce: Senior Staff Photographer
Adam Fendelman: Founder/Publisher
Member: Chicago Film Critics Association
Adam Fendelman has been a writer since the womb (and witnesses say he was scribing in his head even then). Raring to craft words professionally, he leapt out of the University of Missouri-Columbia journalism doors in 2000.
Though he doesn’t yet have kids, HollywoodChicago.com is his baby. Helmed by Adam and joined by a team of veteran critics, HollywoodChicago.com is a daily everything entertainment publication focusing on Chicago and the national scene with movie reviews and interviews along with reviews for TV, DVDs, music, Blu-rays, video games, theater and more.
These days in Chicago, he can be found daring to champion his hometown St. Louis Cardinals, attempting to work out, screening zillions of movies and supporting struggling actors everywhere. Adam has appeared on NBC’s “The Match Off,” the FOX cop drama “The Chicago Code” and was filmed in Ron Howard’s “The Dilemma” and Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion”. He has also been heard on radio shows from Mancow to WGN Radio.
Adam lives for being moved. He backdrops his life with the stimuli that make him feel alive. Film, theater and fine fare jive especially well in his world. He thrives after the sun goes down, relishes dotting his mouth with sweets and savors foreign wheat beer if the pour’s done right.
He was a Chicago theater critic for Centerstage Chicago (part of the Sun-Times Media Group) and a Chicago film writer for Go2 Media. He is an accredited film critic with the Chicago Film Critics Association and a Rotten Tomatoes-listed film critic. Adam was the exclusive cell phones guide at About.com (part of the New York Times Company) and a writer for The Huffington Post. His IMDb page can be found here.
E-mail Adam Fendelman.
Read Adam Fendelman’s writing in our news section and our reviews section.
Brian Tallerico: Content Director
Member/Board of Directors: Chicago Film Critics Association
Brian Tallerico has been professionally covering the entertainment industry for more than a decade. He has reviewed films, TV, Blu-rays, DVDs, video games, books and music while speaking to some of the most important people in the industry he loves.
Since graduating from Kalamazoo College, Tallerico has been published in a diverse array of magazines, newspapers, reference books and online outlets including HollywoodChicago.com, UGO, Test Pattern, Actress Archives, Screenwriter’s Voice, Screen Talk, The Deadbolt and Movie Retriever.
In his time in the industry, Tallerico has written and edited thousands of pieces of entertaining content. He has built a reputation with every single studio and network and has interviewed some of the most high-profile people in front of and behind the camera.
Along with serving as content director of HollywoodChicago.com, he’s the editor of the notable textbook/reference guide Magill’s Cinema Annual, which is used in libraries and classrooms around the world. Tallerico also appears weekly on WGN-AM Radio 720 on Bill Moller’s radio program to talk about the world of television. He contributes monthly to the VideoHound reference book and now serves as the PlayStation guide for About.com (part of The New York Times Company).
Tallerico is not only a proud member of the Chicago Film Critics Association but also serves on its board of directors. He never forgets that none of what he has accomplished would be possible without the support of his wife, Lauren, and every day is brightened by the smiles and laughter of his two sons: Lucas and Miles.
E-mail Brian Tallerico.
Read Brian Tallerico’s writing in our news section and our reviews section.
Patrick McDonald: Senior Staff Writer
Member: Chicago Film Critics Association
It is rumored that Pat McDonald was conceived at a drive-in during a double feature of “It Came From Outer Space” and “Touch of Evil,” which may explain his movie review perspective.
After scoring a film minor from the movie-mad Indiana University, McDonald took a detour from his Chicago advertising career to volunteer for the city’s film festival. He established an e-mail movie review newsletter in the 1990s. Following the millenium, cyberspace beckoned and the McDonald movie reviews joined the blogosphere in The Last Blog in Cyberspace.
He was discovered for HollywoodChicago.com while wearing a tight sweater and sitting at the Woolworth’s soda fountain (or at least that’s how he likes to tell it). His movie writing has also been featured in the San Francisco Chronicle and NBC 5 Chicago. As part of the HollywoodChicago.com team, he swings from both sides of the plate (whatever that means). Pat is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association.
E-mail Patrick McDonald.
Read Patrick McDonald’s writing in our news section and our reviews section.
Matt Fagerholm: Staff Writer
Member: Chicago Film Critics Association
Matt Fagerholm has been making movies ever since he could draw. He had several hundred features under his belt before he attended kindergarten (most of which were directed by Victor Fleming). His love of visual storytelling has led him to become a professional film writer, enthusiast and critic whose work has spanned various mediums.
As the assistant A&E editor for the Columbia Chronicle, Matt wrote weekly film reviews and interviewed some of the industry’s biggest names.
He also hosted film discussions on Columbia College radio station WCRX, presented one of his analytical papers at the University of Notre Dame’s Midwest Undergraduate Film Conference, won two journalism awards for his work at the Columbia Chronicle and studied the current state of world cinema at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.
Matt made a series of student films while at Columbia and graduated with a bachelor’s of arts in film and video. Since then, he has written for various publications including The Onion AV Club, Screen Magazine, Reel Chicago and Film Monthly. Cinema has been his lifelong passion and he loves discussing and debating it with fellow film buffs.
E-mail Matt Fagerholm.
Read Matt Fagerholm’s writing in our news section.
Alissa Norby: Chicago Theater Critic
Alissa Norby has been “one of those” theater nerds ever since the dawning of the ages. At the age of eight, Alissa put on her first musical comedy in the swing set of her backyard. The show, whose cast consisted of the local third-grade Girl Scout troop, received mostly mixed reviews.
Not to be deterred by what the critics had to say, Alissa spent all of the next 10 years on and around the stage, which may be why her parents filed so many missing-person reports.
She then ventured off to an all-girls college on the east coast where she studied how to change young people’s lives through theater and critique it at the same time. It was here where Alissa learned to channel her bubbling theater thoughts and criticism into paper and ink.
After starting her theater criticism career in college, she became a contributing theater writer for various publications up and down the coast of California.
When Alissa isn’t offering her thoughts on various productions, she works with schools around Illinois to combat violence among youth. At home, though, you can usually find her pretending to be Bette Midler in her living room. As a complement to the rest of the team, Alissa brings a unique and fresh voice to the HollywoodChicago.com clan.
E-mail Alissa Norby.
Read Alissa Norby’s theater reviews.
Emily Riemer: TV Critic
Emily Riemer is a pop-culture junkie who watches way too much TV and loves movies. In 2009, she graduated with a master’s degree in cinema and media studies from the University of Chicago. Lest you think that sounds pretentious, she managed to convince her advisors to let her do her thesis on the formation of masculinity in Judd Apatow’s “Knocked Up”.
Emily has written for Stumped magazine, Paste, The Heckler and New City. Her favorite TV shows include “How I Met Your Mother” and “30 Rock”. Favorite cancelled shows include “Sex and the City” and “Friends”. Reality shows include “House Hunters” and “Top Chef”. And nostalgic favorite from back in the day? The first few seasons of “Dawson’s Creek”.
She is currently working full-time for an international nonprofit where she writes and edits for them and manages their blog. Emily loves writing for HollywoodChicago.com and hopes to be able to for a long time.
E-mail Emily Riemer.
Read Emily Riemer’s TV reviews.
Joe Arce: Senior Staff Photographer
For more than two decades, Joe Arce has been one of Chicago’s premiere celebrity publicity photographers. He has captured and crafted the candid images of more than 350 major celebrities.
Listed in the prestigious Library of Photography, Arce’s award-winning work and Web site are a virtual who’s who of Hollywood, fashion and the world of arts and entertainment. His noted “beyond the glitter” brand of celebrity portraiture offers up the viewer a rare and often-humorous glimpse of unguarded moments peeking behind the limelit curtain or backstage door.
Initially a frustrated guitarist, Arce began the 1980s shooting publicity for other Chicago bands as a favor. It wasn’t long before the flash from his camera rather than his fingers began opening backstage doors and eventually landed him on the tour buses of his childhood rock idols. Before he was old enough to rent a car, his world-famous tour mates were now likewise hanging his photos on their walls and inviting him cross country to shoot their kids’ birthday parties.
After a short stint as senior staff photographer for Backstage Pass Magazine and numerous tours as a personal band photographer for Lynyrd Skynyrd (among other such major headliners), Arce opened his first studio and began shooting fashion. He began with the portfolios of the model girlfriends of several of his former rock-star clients.
Next came national ad campaigns and work with rising young designers. It wasn’t long before major agencies on both coasts were sending their models and actors to Arce for testing. Switching his focus to arts and entertainment and notably celebrity publicity, Arce became a freelance fixture within the Chicago media as both a still photographer and later as a writer, producer and talent booker for a prime time independent Chicago arts and entertainment weekly.
Away from the limelight when he’s not busy enduring the horror of shooting some nude potential Playmate rolling across his studio floor, HollywoodChicago.com’s resident lens master reclusively hides away with his large collection of handmade celebrity publicist voodoo dolls while working on his future behind-the-scenes tell-all and watching hair metal videos on YouTube. Arce is still waiting for Heather Locklear to call.
E-mail Joe Arce.
See Joe Arce’s exclusive celebrity portraits.
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