Parasite Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

From Harvey Weinstein to Donald Trump, 2019 was a challenging year in a lot of respects, but also one in which filmmakers responded to the sturm und drang of everyday life with projects that were riveting, thought-provoking and captured the essence of the modern world. Variety asked editors Tim Gray and Jenelle Riley and critic Peter Debruge to answer three questions about this past year in cinema to gather their opinions on what were the standout moments.

The visual language of film is universal. In “Parasite,” low, flickering light shows the distraught look on the face of the patriarch of the Kim family as the basement floods and his meager possessions are washed away. In “Corpus Christi,” natural light is used as a metaphor to symbolize life. Cinematographers of four of the Oscar nominees for international feature film recount the key moment that communicates the movie’s message in a truly cinematic manner.

Nine films are in the running for the coveted best picture prize at the Oscars.

The 92nd Academy Awards are just days away.

The shortest Oscar season ever has been especially brutal for strategists trying to gain traction with smaller-scale offerings later in the season: Early birds and conventional choices scooped up the lion’s share of Oscar nominations. And yet, as final voting comes to a close on Feb.

Change sounds like this: South Korean director Bong Joon Ho accepted his foreign film award for “Parasite” at the Golden Globes, saying: “Once you overcome the 1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.”

Haunted houses are always full of hidden passageways, secret rooms and a story or two about someone who used to live there who disappeared or died under mysterious circumstances. The Park house in “Parasite” is no exception to that rule.

And the biggest winner of the BAFTA 2020 is 1917. The war drama, directed by Sam Mendes, has been taking home some of the biggest awards this awards season. A week before the Oscars 2020 could commence, the star-studded movie has bagged as many as seven awards at the 73rd British Academy film awards. The movie bagged Best Film, Best Director, Best Special Visual Effects, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design and Best Sound. South Korean movie Parasite was another big winner at BAFTA.

Sam Mendes’ war epic 1917 was the big winner at the 2020 British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs) on Sunday night.

Powered by Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV Plus and Disney Plus, among others, the subscription video on demand market is booming. But in five years from now, it will have contracted with no single service fully dominating the landscape, according to the 7th Nostradamus Report, which forecasts trends in film and TV.

South Korean dark comedy Parasite continues to build momentum ahead of the Oscars after winning another major award.

The six Academy Award nominations for Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” — a film with, in the director’s words, the “inch-tall barrier of subtitles” to overcome — make the ferociously entertaining satire the first-ever Oscar-nominated Korean feature. The first-ever Korean short film nomination happened approximately two minutes earlier, when Yi Seung-jun’s “In the Absence” got a documentary short nod. Nothing for decades then seven in one morning? Korea is having a moment.

Dark comedy Parasite took top honours at the London Film Critics’ Circle Awards.

Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” continued its run of top critics’ honors this season, scooping the Film of the Year and Director of the Year awards at the London Film Critics’ Circle kudos ceremony this evening. The victory puts extra wind in the sails of the South Korean phenomenon as it heads into the final stretch of awards season, with the BAFTAs delivering their verdict on Sunday.

A century after World War I ended, “1917” reminds us of the cost of official policies that figure the best conflict resolution calls for young people to slaughter each other. As two angelic-looking, not-yet-cynical Tommies trudge through no-man’s land to deliver a life-or-death warning, the carnage they encounter demands we be mindful of similar missions being carried out by similar innocents somewhere on the globe, every single day.

After the Palme d’Or, the Golden Globes and a slew of critics’ gongs, it is highly likely that helmer-writer Bong Joon Ho’s masterful, multilevel black comedy “Parasite” will achieve the triple crown of prestige kudos by nabbing the international feature Oscar. Surprisingly, it is the first South Korean film to be nominated in this category, although last year’s “Burning,” helmed by Lee Chang-dong, made the December shortlist.

This year’s crop of WGA-nominated adapted and original screenplays appears on the surface to be a grim lot. There’s war (“1917,” “Jojo Rabbit”), insidious homewreckers (“Parasite”), a Civil War-era coming-of age (“Little Women”) and an arch murder investigation (“Knives Out”), to name just a few of the nominated scripts.

Filmdom’s battle between the haves and have-nots moved off-screen when Oscar nominations were announced earlier this month: Four films scored 10 or more nominations, with Todd Phillips’ “Joker,” leading the pack with 11, and Sam Mendes’ World War I nail-biter “1917,” Martin Scorsese’s epic gangster tale “The Irishman” and Quentin Tarantino’s retro “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” trailing a tick behind at 10 each. It’s rare for three films to land 10 or more nominations, let alone four.

Will love and mercy prevail again this year, or will one of the season’s darker offerings take home the ultimate prize? Last year, Peter Farrelly’s “Green Book” triumphed, its period story about a friendship that blossoms between a boisterous white bigot and a black, highly educated classical musician an unlikely balm at a time of rising racism and homophobia in America.

The film world has been sending itself into a frenzy for Bong Joon-ho‘s latest movie, Parasite. This love has seen it become an awards season darling, with nominations and wins across the board. Having watched the film, I can confirm it is indeed just as good, if not better than everyone is saying. The tricky thing though is that in order to get the absolute best experience, you should go in knowing as little about it as possible. This makes writing the following review exceptionally difficult.

Every filmmaker hopes to make a good movie, but sometimes the impact is bigger than expected.

When the dust settled on the morning of Oscar nominations, the biggest surprise might have been that there were no real surprises in the best picture race. All nine films were also PGA-nominated — the only one left off the Oscar list was Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out.”

Diversity-focused nonprofit Gold House is launching an entertainment advisory council made up of industry leaders and a Golden Rider initiative to incentivize diverse representation in film, starting with the Asian diaspora. Both the council and rider are through the organization’s #GoldOpen venture, which supports the opening weekends of multicultural films. 

Parasite created history at the SAG Awards. The South Korean black comedy won the Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture at the prestigious awards show, which is the SAG equivalent of the best picture at the Oscars.

There’s a feeling I always get at the end of a long Oscar night when the movie that won isn’t a terrible choice, but it’s the safe, blah, MOR predictable choice, the one that conforms to the dullest conventional wisdom about the kinds of movies Oscar voters prefer, because in the core of their being they’re out to reinforce a don’t-rock-the-boat vision of what a movie should be.

Brad Pitt made a crack about his marriages. Robert De Niro got political. And Jennifer Aniston talked about appearing in a commercial for Bob’s Big Boy.

Parasite and TV’s Fosse/Verdon were the big winners at the 26th Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday night (19Jan20).

South Korean dark comedy Parasite has continued its remarkable awards season run, taking the top prize at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.