Flying Sugar Studio News

Some old photos from Birthday shooting

Tony Clifton — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 17:00:48 +0400

These photos were taken about 4 years ago during the shooting of the fight scene for Birthday. Read More

�Wife� apartment preparation

Tony Clifton — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 13:27:40 +0400

�Wife� rehearsal photos

Tony Clifton — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 10:37:13 +0400

Plot Device short

Tony Clifton — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 22:51:43 +0400

Fragments of War

Tony Clifton — Thu, 26 May 2011 23:53:29 +0400

We asked some people to tell us simple but interesting stories about the Great Patriotic War and what their grandfathers have been doing at that time.
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Final Cut Pro X Presentation (video)

Tony Clifton — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 12:00:38 +0400

Part 1: Part 2:
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Nike ads by Robert Rodriguez

Tony Clifton — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 22:07:44 +0300

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The Making of Monsters

Tony Clifton — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 19:51:49 +0400

Our new short

Tony Clifton — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 20:54:49 +0400

Hello there. We have a new short which was made specially for Philips Parallel Lines contest. There were two main requirements:

The film had to be maximum 3 minutes long,
Only this dialogue allowed was this: Read More

Metamorphosis

Tony Clifton — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 11:59:35 +0400

A short comedy about how simple actions can cause strange consequences.
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Song About Insane Masha

Tony Clifton — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 20:16:47 +0400

A short story about a girl who just can´t be happy.
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Sony EX1R Slow Motion Test

Tony Clifton — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:14:06 +0400

Watch the video
For those who have troubles watching this HD-clip: try Vimeo.
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The Expendables (new trailer)

Tony Clifton — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:18:07 +0400

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Revenge

Tony Clifton — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 15:47:01 +0400

Series of accidents result in murder of the innocent woman. Murder leads to revenge.
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Cafe

Tony Clifton — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 10:55:08 +0400

A conversation of two people in a cafe. It’s highly recommended to watch other Flying Sugar Studio movies at first.
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Morning

Tony Clifton — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:00:01 +0400

A man wakes up after a binge and tries to remember what has happened the day before
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Southland Tales

Tony Clifton — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 03:08:24 +0300

Germany, USA, France, 2006
Director Richard Kelly
Starring Dwayne Johnson, Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mandy Moore, Justin Timberlake, Nora Dunn, John Larroquette

Since Donnie Darko insinuated itself into the canon of cult cinema with its much-buzzed Sundance premiere, a failed theatrical release and finally a strong following on DVD, the question has been what writer-director Richard Kelly would do next. Rumors swirled around Kelly’s follow-up; it was over two-and-a-half hours long; it was a futuristic tale set in a fascist United States; actors like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Kevin Smith were all signed on to play various roles. It was being backed by Universal, a big change from Darko’s indie origins. Now, after a Cannes premiere, Southland Tales has gone from rumor to reality. And the rumors were far more exciting than the reality of the film. Read More

$30 Film School (Michael W. Dean)

Tony Clifton — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 21:21:28 +0300

How to write, direct, produce, shoot, edit, distribute, tour with, and sell your own no-budget DIGITAL movie. One of the most important tools available to an a artist.
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Be Kind Rewind

Tony Clifton — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 00:06:08 +0300

USA, 2008
Director Michel Gondry
Starring Jack Black, Mos Def, Danny Glover, Mia Farrow, Melonie Diaz, Irv Gooch, Chandler Parker, Arjay Smith

Throughout Michel Gondry’s “Be Kind Rewind,” I couldn’t decide if I was watching a cleverly timely and zeitgeist-y riff on the make-your-own-media era or a weirdly anachronistic throwback to a time that’s not coming back. It’s a tossup. Sweet-natured and likable as the movie is, it never really delivers on the promise of its ingenious premise, which hints at a subversive retelling of mainstream Hollywood movies but stops short at goofy homage. Read More

Case

Tony Clifton — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 11:04:12 +0300

A young man tries to escape from bandits who want to get his case
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Exiled (Fong juk)

Tony Clifton — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:08:06 +0300

Hong Kong, 2006
Director Johnnie To
Starring Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, Francis Ng, Simon Yam, Nick Cheung, Richie Jen, Roy Cheung

The opening scene in “Exiled” lacks only a score by Ennio Morricone to be a spaghetti Western. A fistful of knuckles raps on a door. No answer. Again. Again. The door opens. The man knocking asks for “Mr. Wo.” A woman replies, “Not here. Wrong house.” The routine is repeated again, for this is indeed the house of Mr. Wo (Nick Cheung), and the woman is Jin, his wife (Josie Ho). Read More

Dead Daughters (Myortvye docheri)

Tony Clifton — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:11:38 +0300

Russia, 2007
Director Pavel Ruminov
Starring Yekaterina Shcheglova, Mikhail Dementyev, Nikita Yemshanov, Darya Charusha, Ravshana Kurkova, Ivan Volkov

When Night Watch made it to U.S. multiplexes (with a promise of Day Watch and Dusk Watch firmly made), I didn’t expect the (very weird) movie to kick-start an outpouring of Russian genre flicks. And since I’m one of the horror geeks who didn’t much care for Night Watch, I wasn’t exactly elated at the prospect of more. Well, Day Watch hits theaters later this year, and now comes a J-horror-inspired snoozer called Dead Daughters. which presents perhaps fifteen interesting minutes that have been scattered across an oppressive 119-minute frame. Read More

Juno

Tony Clifton — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:14:53 +0300

USA, 2007
Director Jason Reitman
Starring Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Allison Janney, J.K. Simmons, Olivia Thirlby

Juno may well be 2007’s “Little Film That Could.” You know the category — there’s one every year. Last year’s entry was Little Miss Sunshine. Word-of-mouth for Juno has been building since its World Premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in early September. The film almost came out of nowhere — almost, but not quite. It then rode a wave of positive buzz to Toronto. The marketers were out in full force, giving away boxes of orange Tic-Tacs (if you see the movie, you’ll understand). The result (of the buzz more than the breath mints) was packed screenings. Now, with visions of little golden statues dancing in their heads, the men and women behind the movie are cautiously hoping more for a visit from Oscar than some fat guy in a red suit. Read More

Film Directing Fundamentals: See Your Film Before Shooting, 2nd Edition (Nicholas Proferes)

Tony Clifton — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 00:11:07 +0300

This book provides a clear-cut methodology for translating a script to the screen. Using the script as a blueprint, author leads the reader through specific techniques to analyze and translate its components into a visual story. A sample screenplay is inc
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Fine Cuts: The Art of European Film Editing (Roger Crittenden)

Tony Clifton — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 00:04:38 +0300

Author reveals the experiences of many of the greatest living European film editors through his warm and perceptive interviews which offer a unique insight into the art of editing � direct from masters of the craft.
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Writing the Short Film, Third Edition (Patricia Cooper, Ken Dancyger)

Tony Clifton — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 00:06:50 +0300

This book takes the student and novice screenwriter through the storytelling process � from conception, to visualization, to dramatization, to characterization and dialogue � and teaches them how to create a dramatic narrative that is short and complete.
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Building a Stabilizer Arm (Cody Deegan)

Tony Clifton — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:16:02 +0300

Machinist plans and step-by-step assembly instructions for building a stabilizer arm
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Acting: Advanced Techniques for the Actor, Director, and Teacher (Terry Schreiber)

Tony Clifton — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:08:59 +0300

A step-by-step guide for actors from a Broadway director and renowned acting teacher. Readers are expected to have a strong foundation in the fundamentals of acting technique.
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The Matrix in Theory (Critical Studies 29) (Myriam Diocaretz)

Tony Clifton — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:07:46 +0300

The contributions in this volume probe the effects the Matrix trilogy continues to provoke and evaluate how or to what extent they coincide with certain developments within critical and cultural theory.
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Practical Cinematography, Second Edition (Paul Wheeler)

Tony Clifton — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:05:12 +0300

This book discusses the principles of cinematography and the expertise which is unique to the DoP. It deals with all the basic theory such as color temperature and sensitometry, and all the practical things a DoP needs to know.
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Acting for Film (Cathy Haase)

Tony Clifton — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:33:31 +0300

In this must-have guide for aspiring performers readers will discover exercises for relaxing the face to achieve maximum expressiveness; maintaining proper eye focus in front of the camera and conveying the �beats� of a scene, even in the shortest takes.
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My Blueberry Nights

Tony Clifton — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:13:51 +0300

Hong Kong, China, France, 2007
Director Wong Kar Wai
Starring Norah Jones, Jude Law, David Strathairn, Natalie Portman, Rachel Weisz

From almost any perspective, My Blueberry Nights is the perfect pick to open the 60th Cannes Film Festival: A noted international director (Wong Kar-Wai) making his English-language debut, with a cast of international stars (Norah Jones, Jude Law, Natalie Portman) and exciting memories of past appearances at the Festival as part of the bargain — in 2004, Wong Kar-Wai’s 2046 was such a fresh work that the screenings of the film had to be pushed back, as the print was literally still wet. At this morning’s press screening, you could hear cineastes sigh in rapture from the opening titles — blue-glazed visions of pie and cream, indigo skies with neon-glow cityscapes leaning lazily against them. Read More

99 francs

Tony Clifton — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:07:35 +0300

France, 2007
Director Jan Kounen
Starring Jean Dujardin, Jocelyn Quivrin, Patrick Mille, Vahina Giocante, Elisa Tovati

Once the wunderkind of French film, his star shooting to the top thanks to Dobermann, director Jan Kounen has spent the past several years seemingly wandering in the universe, waylaid by a fixation with shamanistic spirituality that may well be good for his soul but led directly to his making the financially disastrous psychedelic western Blueberry. Career detoured or not, however, it was simply a matter of time before Kounen re-emerged on the scene in some form — the man is simply too obvious and significant a visual talent to be left out of the game forever — and he has done so with the striking, ambitious and hyper kinetic 99 Francs, an adaptation of the same novel of the same name by Frederic Beigbeder. The story of an ad executive in the midst of an existential crisis the material seemed at first blush an odd match for the technicolored spirituality of Kounen but in the final analysis I sincerely doubt this film could have been made by anyone else. A stunning technical tour de force the film is a viciously pointed satire of consumer culture, one that delights in pulling down the curtain between perception and reality and yet never forgets that this is still a film and as such it needs to be entertaining. Which it is. Hugely. Never having read the novel I cannot comment on the accuracy of the adaptation but 99 Francs is, without a doubt, the high point of Kounen’s career thus far and will very likely go down as his master work. It is the film that he was seemingly born to make. Read More

No Country for Old Men

Tony Clifton — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 21:25:39 +0300

USA, 2007
Director Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald

Misguided souls will tell you that No Country for Old Men is out for blood, focused on vengeance and unconcerned with the larger world outside a standard-issue suspense plot. Those people, of course, are deaf, dumb and blind to anything that isn’t spelled out between commercials on dying TV networks. Joel and Ethan Coen’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel is an indisputably great movie, at this point the year’s very best. Set in 1980 in West Texas, where the chase is on for stolen drug money, the film — a new career peak for the Coen brothers, who share writing and directing credits — is a literate meditation (scary words for the Transformers crowd) on America’s bloodlust for the easy fix. It’s also as entertaining as hell, which tends to rile up elitists. What do the criminal acts of losers in a flyover state have to do with the life of the mind? Read More

Darjeeling Limited, The

Tony Clifton — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 00:04:06 +0300

USA, 2007
Director Wes Anderson
Starring Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Anjelica Huston, Amara Karan, Waris Ahluwalia, Wallace Wolodarsky, Barbet Schroed

Father-related family trauma spiced with fraternal rivalry? Animal-themed whimsy? Owen Wilson and Jason Schwartzman? Yes, it’s the latest from Wes Anderson, about three brothers on a journey through India with a hunch their late dad has been reincarnated as an albino leopard. Expect plaintive guitar rock and sad-eyed absurdity aplenty. Read More

Bucket List, The

Tony Clifton — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 23:16:19 +0300

USA, 2007
Director Rob Reiner
Starring Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman, Sean Hayes, Beverly Todd, Rob Morrow, Alfonso Freeman, Rowena King

The Bucket List is a cheery cancer comedy with a drippy tearjerker ending, which might not sound like fun to you, but I bet your parents will love it. It’s the kind of movie that people’s parents love. It has just enough vulgarity to make undiscerning audiences think they’re watching something “sophisticated,” along with the sort of Grumpy Old Men/Odd Couple humor that has been a surefire laugh-getter for decades. In fact, some of the specific jokes have been getting laughs for at least as long as I’ve been alive. Read More

Birthday

Tony Clifton — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 21:59:36 +0400

Masha is in her mid-teens and she is always clashing with her mother. One day she comes home towards morning after a routine party and comes up against her mother badly. Her mother being a diabetic feels bad and becomes unconscious. Masha has 15 minutes to get to the drugstore and buy a medicine. But it turns out to be a hard task.
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Baby Carriage

Tony Clifton — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 02:14:03 +0400

A young woman is walking with her infant who starts to cry because he ran out of his milk. She asks a passer-by to watch her kid to go and buy some milk.
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C and P

Tony Clifton — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 00:01:34 +0400

A tennis-ball jumps as fast as it can to teach a cruel lesson to those who deserved it.
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