Monday, June 13, 2011

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.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

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.



Monday, January 10, 2011

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.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

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