I'm New Here

Hello He Shot Cyrus Fans!

Your waiting and patience will hopefully be rewarded. As been mentioned on the excellent Frankly, My Dear podcast (which you should check out on the link on the right side over there) Scott has been incredibly busy doing episodes of that with his wife Whitney and has recently been doing more movie reviews over at the excellent redesigned film hub for all the great film bloggers out there called Man, I Love Films. With all that going on he didn't want to let this blog, He Shot Cyrus, go to waste. Well fear not, because it is back.

My name is Daniel Kielman. I went to film school with Scott and have been a guest on a few episodes of Frankly, My Dear and love film as much as him. And hip hop I would argue as well. So naturally I'm taking over his blog, or at least going to be the main contributor for the future at the moment.

I have a lot of great plans for it and have been preparing posts for some time now and am ready to start putting stuff on here. So expect updates on a much more regular basis, possibly even daily if I can really get everything together, and I'll try to give you some of his classic bits in a new light and also some new features as well.

Often times I will link directly to any posts I or Scott make over at Man, I Love Films because they are posts written by us so naturally they should get some love here too. But over here is a much more, how you say, monarchy, where anything and everything film-related will be posted and we'll see how that goes with feedback and hits.

To tell you a little more about myself here's a little history for me and some of my favorite films:

I was born and raised in Sacramento, CA. I got my Bachelor's and Master's of Fine Arts in Cinema at San Francisco State University. I currently work a few odd jobs to get by but mostly do this film writing as a labor of love. If anyone would like to offer me a cool million, or even a cool one hundred, to write about film I'm sure we can talk.

Outside of film my interests are concerts (I attend many throughout the year, I've considered blogging about these adventures too but I'm not sure if people really care that much about it), playing music (play a few instruments, learning violin at the moment), making films (only short ones under my belt), teaching, writing, reading, video games and many other odd things I'm sure will come out in my writing. Or if you have questions feel free to ask.

Here is a list of some of my personal favorite films for whatever reason:

Magnolia, Notorious, High Fidelity, Persona, Casablanca, Dr. Strangelove, Apocalypse Now, Goodfellas, and a ton of other films that I can't think about at the moment.

So expect some more articles soon and I'll try to keep things relevant and interesting and do Scott's visitors justice.

Best Movies I've Watched This Year

I've been trying to watch as many of my "100 in 2011" list before Sundance starts and so far, I've been doing pretty well. It's only Jan. 14th and I've already marked twelve movies off of my list. That's 12%! And so far, three of the movies really stand out among the rest.

Fritz the Cat (1972) - This one's a mindtrip. An X-rated cartoon featuring animals. It's pretty safe to say that Fritz had some sort of influence on Meet the Feebles. Based on Robert Crumb's comic strip of the same name, this sex-filled, profanity-laced adult cartoon was directed by animator Ralph Bakshi (The Lord of the Rings, American Pop) and instantly became a cult classic.

The most memorable scene is the one where Fritz takes three hippie girls back to his bathtub and tries to have a four-way with them but it's not long before the other animals in his building decide to join him, turning it into a 7-or-8-way and once they start smoking weed, everything gets crazy. Soon, two cops (animated as fat, disgusting pigs) show up and break up the party. Fritz is left with one option, to flush himself down the toilet and leave his new friends behind.

Rashomon (1950) - I have a pretty limited knowledge of Kurosawa. I've seen Throne of Blood, High and Low, and most of Seven Samurai. That's why he's the most named director on my "100 in 2011" list.

Rashomon is fantastic. The plot involves a married couple who's life is forever altered by a bandit (Toshiro Mifune). The wife is raped and the husband is murdered but due to how Kurosawa tells the story, you never hate the bandit. The story recalls events from four different perspectives: the wife's, the husband's (told through a medium), the bandit's, and a witness'. Each story they tell recalls the same general events but the differences are in the details.

I'm really glad I finally watched Rashomon. It's opened me up to watching more Kurosawa which is good condering he shows up on my "100 in 2011" so many times. I just wish I hadn't followed it up with Surf Nazis Must Die.

Very Bad Things (1998) - Where the fuck was this one hiding? If you want to know what kind of movies I love, watch Very Bad Things. Sex, gore, violence, bromance. What else do you need? It's a shame that Peter Berg didn't make more movies like this. From the look of his filmography, he's more of a studio director than an auteur. Very Bad Things is for anyone who loved Swingers or Made (and not just because it starts Jon Faverau). It's like Swingers and Made had a little brother who suffered from violent bouts of insanity. And apparently, someone locked up Very Bad Things down in a basement somewhere because somehow, I hadn't seen it until this morning.

Happy Birthday, Walter Hill

Empire Records

Empire Records is less uplifting once you realize the internet would have eliminated their business within the next twelve months.

100 Films I Will Watch in 2011

A Boy and His Dog

A Fistful of Dollars

A Prophet

A Woman Under the Influence

Aguirre, Wrath of God

All About Eve

All the Real Girls

Amadeus

Amarcord

Angel Heart

Apocalypse Now

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman

Barbarella

Blow Up

Body Heat

Bringing Out the Dead

Cane Toads

Class of Nuke'Em High

Cool As Ice

Das Boot

Death Race 2000

Doctor Zhivago

Dr. Strangelove

Duck, You Sucker

El Topo

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Fireworks

Flirting with Disaster

For a Few Dollars More

Fresh

Fritz the Cat

From Here to Eternity

Gerry

Ghost in the Shell

Harold and Maude

Heavenly Creatures

High Noon

It's a Wonderful Life

King Kong

La Dolce Vita

Last Tango in Paris

Lawrence of Arabia

Lost Highway

Lost in America

M

Monty Python's The Life of Brian

Nashville

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan

Once Upon a Time in the West

Ordinary People

Pandora's Box

Passion of Joan of Arc

Playtime

Ran

Rashomon

Requiem for a Dream

Rocky Horror Picture Show

Scenes from a Marriage

Series 7: The Contenders

Seven Samurai

Shampoo

Shane

Singin' in the Rain

Slap Shot

Sling Blade

Soldier

Spartacus

Sunset Blvd.

Surf Nazis Must Die

Swing Time

The Bridge on the River Kwai

The Deer Hunter

The Elephant Man

The Endless Summer

The Godfather Part III

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Grapes of Wrath

The Holy Mountain

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

The Last Temptation of Christ

The Magnificent Seven

The Plague Dogs

The Proposition

The Red Shoes

The Sweet Hereafter

The Thin Red Line

The Third Man

The White Ribbon

The Wild Bunch

Umberto D.

V for Vendetta

Very Bad Things

Walking and Talking

West Side Story

White Dog

Wings of Desire

Withnail & I

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Y Tu Mama Tambien

Yankee Doodle Dandy