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I was captivated by last year’s smash hit “Frozen,” not only for its stunning animation and catchy songs, but for its story, which featured female characters in primary, heroic roles. It is a story about women, in fact… the men are almost incidental.

We all make mistakes. From leisure suits in the ‘70s, to “hypercolor” clothing in the ‘80s, to rat tail haircuts anytime, we Americans are notorious for making choices that seemed like good ideas at the time. Despite our less-than-stellar judgment, we tend to demand more of our finest institutions. In particular, we expect our most prestigious award-givers to choose the right winners. Is that too much to ask? Take the Academy Awards (please!). Today, we thought it might be fun to go back through history and point out the most obvious mistakes in the history of the Oscars. Focusing on past recipients of the three major awards (Best Picture, Actor and Actress), we’ll identify the times when Oscar really fell down on the job. And, sad to say, it’s happened more than once.

Ah, that eternal question: which is better, the book or the movie? Though such comparisons are natural, even inevitable, they’re also kind of pointless, since the conventions of each medium differ so markedly. Books explore the dense inner lives of characters in a way movies can’t, while films use sight, sound and motion to create an immediacy books can’t.

In Hollywood, August is rather indelicately known as a “dump month”— a time when studios traditionally litter theaters with films that have low box-office expectations and pack all the heft of a half-eaten Twizzler (à la this year’s “Let’s Be Cops” and “The Expendables 3”).  However, now and then over the years, the scheduling gods have managed to include a real gem with all the other celluloid junk. Here’s a look at some of the films that—from the 1950s to the 2010s—have defied their dog-day August release dates and become timeless works of art.   

The phenomenon known as typecasting has been practiced in Hollywood since its earliest days. Stars who excelled in certain kinds of roles were usually offered those kinds of parts repeatedly. To risk-averse studios, this simply made good business sense.

Cities are like people, in that some periods represent career peaks, and there are plenty of examples of golden ages to go around: Paris in the 1920s, Los Angeles in the 1940s, and New York in the 1950s all brim with romance in the popular imagination. But no scene was quite as explosive in sheer energy and style as London was in the 1960s. A nation finally emerging from Blitz mentality and the rationing of World War II, England was primed for a major cultural earthquake, thanks to the crumbling of centuries-old social constriction, and the emergence of the Baby Boomers's youth culture. And when that earthquake, or “youthquake,” came, it was the movies that registered its shockwaves. “Swinging” London was its epicenter, as bands like The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, and the Kinks created a danceable soundtrack for the era, and pioneering hair stylist Vidal Sassoon snipped girls’ hair into a bob, perfect for bouncing along to the beat (and of course, boys’ hair grew down past their collars).