Annie Malone is mostly unknown today, but during the first quarter of the 20th century she had a profound impact on the empowerment of African-American women. Malone was a business tycoon, style trend setter, educator, philanthropist and role model. A documentary film made in 1927 presented an in-depth celebration of her extraordinary career – but the film’s disappearance mirrors Malone’s absence from most historical texts.
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Every time I try to watch “South Pacific,” I attempt to coax myself into believing that I will fall in love with the film before the closing credits. And after every viewing, I wind up sighing in disappointment.
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Few film scholars elevated the 1929 short “Wrong Again” to classic status, but I’m willing to go out on a limb to suggest it deserves such an honorific classification. It was among the last wave of Laurel and Hardy’s silent output and had three future Oscar winners behind the camera – director Leo McCarey, cinematographer George Stevens, and screenwriter Lewis R. Foster – plus one of the most wonderfully original sight gags of all time.
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Sometimes when you least expect it, a dramatic or comedy film suddenly erupts into a musical number. For the sake of listicle distraction, here are 10 musical numbers from non-musical films that should get you singing along when you least expect it.
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In concept, a film trailer is supposed to pique audience interest into seeing a production that will soon be playing in theaters. Sometimes, however, a trailer has the opposite effect and creates groans or giggles when it should be sparking excitement. Here is an extremely objective list of 10 trailers that fell far short of their goal in creating buzz for their feature films.
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In the shabbier corners of cinema, there are the monsters who create wonder – you wonder how they ever wound up on big screen. For those who like movie monsters that inspire more smirks than shrieks, here are 10 creatures who give monsters a bad name.
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This dinky little two-reeler would have been lost to obscurity had it not been for the unlikely presence of Curly Howard in his only outing without fellow Stooges Moe Howard and Larry Fine. Curly and his comrades were working with Ted Healy at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the early 1930s and the studio occasionally split them up for separate appearances, with Curly being dumped in “Roast-Beef and Movies” in a new comedy act featuring George Givot and Bobby Callahan.