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The Rounders (1914)

Mr. Full (Charlie Chaplin) and Mr. Fuller (Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle) are shabby gentlemen who dress in battered formalwear. However, they are both unapologetic drunks who commit acts of mischievous violence against anyone who cross their paths. They are neighbors in a hotel, where their long-suffering wives wait for them with irritation and intimidation. The men respond to this display of spousal anger with greater agitation – Mr. Fuller going so far as to choke his spouse. The pair grow tired of their domestic chaos and steal money from their wives’ purses, heading off to a restaurant where they wreak havoc on the unsuspecting patrons. The wives and the restaurant patrons chase the duo to a park, where they abscond with a rowboat and sail off across a pond, only to fall asleep in their pilfered vessel as it slowly sinks beneath the water’s surface.

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The 10 Best Musical Numbers in Non-Musical Films

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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The 10 Weirdest Honorary Oscars of All Time

Earlier this week, Variety reported that Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm, was lobbying members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to bestow an Honorary Oscar on Bob Iger, chief executive of the Walt Disney Company and Kennedy’s boss. This created a major conflict of interest problem, since Disney’s broadcast division ABC is the broadcast partner of the Academy Awards, and the two are now in negotiations to renew the Academy’s licensing agreement beyond 2028.
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The 10 Wackiest Academy Award Achievements of All Time

Ahead of Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony, let’s take a few minutes to consider some of the unlikeliest nominations and winners in the history of cinema’s most prestigious prize.

Who Saw This Coming?
Few people expected Hal Mohr to win the 1935 Best Cinematography Oscar for “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” – if only because he wasn’t nominated. In the mid-1930s, the Academy changed its rules to allow write-in votes to go alongside the ballot nominees, but after write-in candidate Mohr won his award the rules were rewritten to prevent another write-in winner.
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And the Nominees Aren’t – The 10 Worst Oscar Nomination Total Snubs of All Time

Yesterday’s Academy Award nominations generated the annual debate over who was nominated and who was snubbed. But when it comes to Oscar snubs, a surprisingly large number of classic films were ignored by Academy voters.

In my humid opinion – yes, humid, because I don’t do humble – here are my picks for the 10 films that were shockingly denied access to Academy Award nominations. Mercifully, none of these films suffered in reputation for lacking acknowledgement for Oscar consideration.
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The 10 Most Intriguing Lost Screen Tests of All Time

For every sure-bet in movie casting, there are scores of questionable decisions on whether an actor can handle a certain role. And that’s where the screen test comes in.

A screen test provides the opportunity for a director and producer to determine whether a specific part should go to an actor who might not be the obvious choice for the role. David O. Selznick memorably shot scores of screen tests to find the right actors that would bring Margaret Mitchell’s characters to life in the film version of “Gone with the Wind” – except for the role of Rhett Butler, which was always envisioned for Clark Gable. Several decades later, George Lucas brought together a line-up of promising under-the-radar talent to test for his “Star Wars.”

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The Bootleg Files: The Hero

BOOTLEG FILES 823: “The Hero” (1917 short starring Billy West and Oliver Hardy).

LAST SEEN: On YouTube.

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: On public domain labels.

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: A blatant (if effective) rip-off of Charlie Chaplin’s act.

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: There is no great call for a Billy West revival.

When Charlie Chaplin’s popularity exploded into superstardom status during the mid-1910s, the demand of his films became greater than his ability to create original new works. To fill the void, a number of comic actors began to dress up in Chaplin’s distinctive Little Tramp costume and make-up and churn out short films of a Chaplinesque nature. Most of these imitators were not that special and their work has been lost to oblivion. But one copycat created a near-perfect facsimile of Chaplin’s act, to the point that his films were occasionally marketed as being genuine Chaplin films.
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