FlyingSugar.com News http://www.flyingsugar.com/rss/ Independent Short Films, Music Videos, Film Theory and Movie Reviews Thu, 29 Jul 2010 21:03:09 +0400 Thu, 29 Jul 2010 21:03:09 +0400 <![CDATA[“Song About Insane Masha”]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/works/?wid=6636 http://www.flyingsugar.com/works/?wid=6636
A short story about a girl who just can´t be happy.
Link]]> Tue, 15 Jun 2010 20:16:47 +0400 <![CDATA[Sony EX1R Slow Motion Test]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/blog/?id=336 http://www.flyingsugar.com/blog/?id=336 Watch the video
For those who have troubles watching this HD-clip: try Vimeo.
Link]]> Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:14:06 +0400 <![CDATA[The Expendables (new trailer)]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/blog/?id=334 http://www.flyingsugar.com/blog/?id=334 Watch the video

Link]]> Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:18:07 +0400 <![CDATA[Black Dynamite (trailer)]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/blog/?id=316 http://www.flyingsugar.com/blog/?id=316 Watch the video

Link]]> Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:30:54 +0300 <![CDATA[Oscar-nominated animated short films 2009]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/blog/?id=306 http://www.flyingsugar.com/blog/?id=306 La maison en petits cubesJapan, 2008 Watch the video
Winner. About an old man living in the sinking house

Lavatory Lovestory

Russia, 2007 Watch the video
About a woman working in the men’s public restroom

This Way Up

Great Britain, 2008 Watch the video
Laying the dead to rest has never been so much trouble

Presto

USA, 2008 Watch the video
I’m sure, you’ve seen this film

Oktapodi

France, 2007 Watch the video
Octopuses in love
Link]]> Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:26:43 +0400 <![CDATA[Music Video Shooting. Day X]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/blog/?id=304 http://www.flyingsugar.com/blog/?id=304 Read More]]> Wed, 29 Jul 2009 12:27:13 +0400 <![CDATA[Inglourious Basterds (teaser trailer)]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/blog/?id=270 http://www.flyingsugar.com/blog/?id=270 Watch the video
The new Quentin Tarantino movie Inglourious Basterds will be released in August 2009.
Link]]> Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:33:49 +0300 <![CDATA[Sunday Shooting]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/blog/?id=267 http://www.flyingsugar.com/blog/?id=267 Read More]]> Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:35:46 +0300 <![CDATA[Practical Special Effects: Pyrotechnics and Blood]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/blog/?id=249 http://www.flyingsugar.com/blog/?id=249 Watch the video
Last time we tried to make a blood burst effect with a fishing line and a washer. This time we decided to try other ways like using pyrotechnics. Ingredients are still very cheap: a piece of wood (for protection), a petard, a needle (to make a hole in the petard), a nichrome filament (to use as a detonator), a wire and some batteries. Watch the video
Watch the video
Watch the video
It worked nicely but we should use much less blood next time.
Link]]> Tue, 09 Dec 2008 12:42:29 +0300 <![CDATA[Guerilla (2008)]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/blog/?id=247 http://www.flyingsugar.com/blog/?id=247 Guerilla is not the best movie ever (I haven’t seen it yet), it should at least be way better than The Motorcycle Diaries. Read More]]> Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:12:41 +0300 <![CDATA[Practical Special Effects: Blood Burst and Chroma Key]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/blog/?id=243 http://www.flyingsugar.com/blog/?id=243 Read More]]> Mon, 24 Nov 2008 03:08:32 +0300 <![CDATA[“Revenge”]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/works/?wid=4253 http://www.flyingsugar.com/works/?wid=4253
Series of accidents result in murder of the innocent woman. Murder leads to revenge.
Link]]> Fri, 17 Oct 2008 15:47:01 +0400 <![CDATA[“Cafe”]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/works/?wid=5499 http://www.flyingsugar.com/works/?wid=5499
A conversation of two people in a cafe. It’s highly recommended to watch other Flying Sugar Studio movies at first.
Link]]> Mon, 29 Sep 2008 10:55:08 +0400 <![CDATA[“Morning”]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/works/?wid=6044 http://www.flyingsugar.com/works/?wid=6044
A man wakes up after a binge and tries to remember what has happened the day before
Link]]> Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:00:01 +0400 <![CDATA[Southland Tales]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/reviews/?rid=24974 http://www.flyingsugar.com/reviews/?rid=24974 Director Richard Kelly
Starring Dwayne Johnson, Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mandy Moore, Justin Timberlake, Nora Dunn, John Larroquette
Southland Tales
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]]> Thu, 27 Mar 2008 03:08:24 +0300 <![CDATA[“$30 Film School” (Michael W. Dean)]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/download/?tid=38311 http://www.flyingsugar.com/download/?tid=38311 Link]]> Wed, 26 Mar 2008 21:21:28 +0300 <![CDATA[Be Kind Rewind]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/reviews/?rid=23429 http://www.flyingsugar.com/reviews/?rid=23429 Director Michel Gondry
Starring Jack Black, Mos Def, Danny Glover, Mia Farrow, Melonie Diaz, Irv Gooch, Chandler Parker, Arjay Smith
Be Kind Rewind
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]]> Thu, 20 Mar 2008 00:06:08 +0300 <![CDATA[“Case”]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/works/?wid=1497 http://www.flyingsugar.com/works/?wid=1497
A young man tries to escape from bandits who want to get his case
Link]]> Thu, 13 Mar 2008 11:04:12 +0300 <![CDATA[Exiled (Fong juk)]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/reviews/?rid=13575 http://www.flyingsugar.com/reviews/?rid=13575 Director Johnnie To
Starring Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, Francis Ng, Simon Yam, Nick Cheung, Richie Jen, Roy Cheung
Exiled (Fong juk)
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]]> Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:08:06 +0300 <![CDATA[Dead Daughters (Myortvye docheri)]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/reviews/?rid=2631 http://www.flyingsugar.com/reviews/?rid=2631 Director Pavel Ruminov
Starring Yekaterina Shcheglova, Mikhail Dementyev, Nikita Yemshanov, Darya Charusha, Ravshana Kurkova, Ivan Volkov
Dead Daughters (Myortvye docheri)
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]]> Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:11:38 +0300 <![CDATA[Juno]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/reviews/?rid=5517 http://www.flyingsugar.com/reviews/?rid=5517 Director Jason Reitman
Starring Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Allison Janney, J.K. Simmons, Olivia Thirlby
Juno
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]]> Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:14:53 +0300 <![CDATA[“Film Directing Fundamentals: See Your Film Before Shooting, 2nd Edition” (Nicholas Proferes)]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/download/?tid=13007 http://www.flyingsugar.com/download/?tid=13007 Link]]> Sat, 01 Mar 2008 00:11:07 +0300 <![CDATA[“Fine Cuts: The Art of European Film Editing” (Roger Crittenden)]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/download/?tid=11857 http://www.flyingsugar.com/download/?tid=11857 Link]]> Sat, 01 Mar 2008 00:04:38 +0300 <![CDATA[“Writing the Short Film, Third Edition” (Patricia Cooper, Ken Dancyger)]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/download/?tid=22973 http://www.flyingsugar.com/download/?tid=22973 Link]]> Fri, 29 Feb 2008 00:06:50 +0300 <![CDATA[“Building a Stabilizer Arm” (Cody Deegan)]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/download/?tid=42115 http://www.flyingsugar.com/download/?tid=42115 Link]]> Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:16:02 +0300 <![CDATA[“Acting: Advanced Techniques for the Actor, Director, and Teacher” (Terry Schreiber)]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/download/?tid=46994 http://www.flyingsugar.com/download/?tid=46994 Link]]> Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:08:59 +0300 <![CDATA[“The Matrix in Theory (Critical Studies 29)” (Myriam Diocaretz)]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/download/?tid=36868 http://www.flyingsugar.com/download/?tid=36868 Link]]> Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:07:46 +0300 <![CDATA[“Practical Cinematography, Second Edition” (Paul Wheeler)]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/download/?tid=45461 http://www.flyingsugar.com/download/?tid=45461 Link]]> Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:05:12 +0300 <![CDATA[“Acting for Film” (Cathy Haase)]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/download/?tid=12454 http://www.flyingsugar.com/download/?tid=12454 Link]]> Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:33:31 +0300 <![CDATA[My Blueberry Nights]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/reviews/?rid=21023 http://www.flyingsugar.com/reviews/?rid=21023 Director Wong Kar Wai
Starring Norah Jones, Jude Law, David Strathairn, Natalie Portman, Rachel Weisz
My Blueberry Nights
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]]> Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:13:51 +0300 <![CDATA[99 francs]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/reviews/?rid=32815 http://www.flyingsugar.com/reviews/?rid=32815 Director Jan Kounen
Starring Jean Dujardin, Jocelyn Quivrin, Patrick Mille, Vahina Giocante, Elisa Tovati
99 francs
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]]> Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:07:35 +0300 <![CDATA[No Country for Old Men]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/reviews/?rid=23001 http://www.flyingsugar.com/reviews/?rid=23001 Director Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald
No Country for Old Men
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]]> Mon, 04 Feb 2008 21:25:39 +0300 <![CDATA[Darjeeling Limited, The]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/reviews/?rid=43979 http://www.flyingsugar.com/reviews/?rid=43979 Director Wes Anderson
Starring Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Anjelica Huston, Amara Karan, Waris Ahluwalia, Wallace Wolodarsky, Barbet Schroed
Darjeeling Limited, The
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]]> Fri, 25 Jan 2008 00:04:06 +0300 <![CDATA[Bucket List, The]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/reviews/?rid=53404 http://www.flyingsugar.com/reviews/?rid=53404 Director Rob Reiner
Starring Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman, Sean Hayes, Beverly Todd, Rob Morrow, Alfonso Freeman, Rowena King
Bucket List, The
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]]> Fri, 11 Jan 2008 23:16:19 +0300 <![CDATA[“Birthday”]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/works/?wid=7612 http://www.flyingsugar.com/works/?wid=7612
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.
Link]]> Mon, 20 Aug 2007 21:59:36 +0400 <![CDATA[“Baby Carriage”]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/works/?wid=2316 http://www.flyingsugar.com/works/?wid=2316
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.
Link]]> Sun, 08 Jul 2007 02:14:03 +0400 <![CDATA[“Fire Show at Melnitsa Concert”]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/works/?wid=3029 http://www.flyingsugar.com/works/?wid=3029
Fire show and the famous Russian folk group “Melnitsa” in concert
Link]]> Tue, 01 May 2007 00:13:20 +0400 <![CDATA[“C and P”]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/works/?wid=10249 http://www.flyingsugar.com/works/?wid=10249
A tennis-ball jumps as fast as it can to teach a cruel lesson to those who deserved it.
Link]]> Tue, 20 Jun 2006 00:01:34 +0400 <![CDATA[“Blind Game”]]> http://www.flyingsugar.com/works/?wid=1010 http://www.flyingsugar.com/works/?wid=1010
Two young loving people are indulging in inoffensive gaiety against a background of blue sky and bright summer sun.
Link]]> Mon, 12 Jun 2006 23:10:14 +0400