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GA Review

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Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: Viriditas

Review in progress

Hi. I'll be reviewing this article for the next several days. Viriditas (talk) 09:57, 20 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

GA review (see here for criteria)

I'm aware of the reassessment and delisting, and I'll be keeping those issues in mind during the review.

  1. It is reasonably well written.
    a (prose): b (MoS):
  2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.
    a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
  3. It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects): b (focused):
  4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    Fair representation without bias:
  5. It is stable.
    No edit wars, etc.:
  6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
    a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
  7. Overall:
    Pass/Fail:

Images

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Lead

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  • I think the lead needs some cleanup:
  • "The film was mostly shot in Alabama, and had a much less gothic tone than Burton's other films such as Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollow."
    • "less gothic tone than Burton's other films". Why is this important for the lead? I can think of at least four more important things to say about this film, but this isn't one of them.
  • "Many critics hailed the film as Burton's masterpiece". That's bordering on an extraordinary claim. Evidence?
  • "Big Fish tells the story of a son, Will, attempting to mend his estranged relationship with his dying father, Edward..."
    • No, the film actually tells the story of Edward Bloom, not Will, through the framing of his son trying to reconcile the father son conflict. This faulty storyline in the lead appears to have been taken from IMDb, another reason why we don't rely on it. However, it does appear that some reliable sources also summarize the film in this way.

Plot

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Themes

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  • No theme section, which is strange considering the number of good sources on this topic alone. (see further reading)
  • Death
  • Father-son conflict
  • The journey of the hero, myths and stories (placement of Campbell's book The Hero with a Thousand Faces throughout the film)
    • Appears on Edward Bloom's nightstand as father and son try to work out their differences
  • Myths, legends, and fairy tales (Cohen, "A Fairytale World", DVD commentary) "If you look at folktales or mythology, there are certain images and places and symbols of characters - witches, giants, werewolves, coming into a mystical city. All of the imagery and symbolism is sort of rooted in those classic themes and structures." (Burton)
  • "the power of stories. His vision of how stories create, sustain and redeem people makes his film interesting for scholars of religion and sacred texts." (Brintnall 2004)
  • Mythological city of Spectre compared to "Atlantis"
    • "Spectre really is a dream town where you eat apple pie and everybody is friendly towards each other and it's a little surreal, very dream like." (Buscemi)
    • "It feels real, but there's something that's not quite real about it. It has an edge, the people have an edge, there's an edge to what happens, and that's the edge of storytelling." (Gassner)

Spalding Grey

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From the Wikipedia aritcle: On January 10, 2004, Gray, suffering from increasingly deep episodes of depression in part as a result of his injuries, was declared missing. The night before his disappearance he had seen Tim Burton's film Big Fish, which ends with the line "A man tells a story over and over so many times he becomes the story. In that way, he is immortal". Gray's widow, Kathie Russo, has said “You know, Spalding cried after he saw that movie. I just think it gave him permission. I think it gave him permission to die.”[1] More detail in McMahan, Alison (2005). The Films of Tim Burton: Animating Live Action in Contemporary Hollywood. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 0826415679.

Production

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  • Considering the amount of material available that documents the development process, this current section is too short.
    • More about the work between August and Wallace, as well as the opinion of the novelist can be added from here and "The Author's Journey" featurette.
      • Johnaugust.com has an enormous number of resources on this topic.[1][2] Strange Horizons interview lends some insight.
  • "The director courted Jack Nicholson for the role of Edward Bloom, Sr. and had August write two additional drafts. "
    • That has to be the strangest use of "courted" I have ever seen.
  • " The director then decided to cast around for the two actors in question."
    • But this avoids explaining why Nicholson wasn't used. The implication is that the CGI would have been time-consuming and complex, but this isn't stated in the text.
  • Casting section (under production) doesn't say anything about Miley Cyrus (it was her first role?)
  • Stan Winston Studio information can be expanded ("Creature Features" featurette, etc.) This includes the puppetry used for the tree and wolf scenes, including the CG spiders (and non-CG spiders).
  • "Scenes with Karl the Giant were commissioned using forced perspective filmmaking."
  • "Viewing Finney's performance in Tom Jones (1963), Burton found him similar to McGregor, and coincidentally found a People magazine article comparing the two."
    • The point is that Burton found that the younger Finney resembled McGregor, who plays the younger Bloom in the film. This needs to be clear.
  • Nothing in the article mentioning the award-winning production team:
    • Academy Award-winning production designer Dennis Gassner, whom Burton chose to use for this film over his typical crew
      • Gassner helped with the small sets and vignettes. The town of Spectre was the largest set they worked with. (Burton, DVD commentary)
        • Design of Spectre: pleasant but lived-in look. Brightly lit, but aged.
    • Academy Award-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood. (Molineaux 2004)
    • Academy Award-winning cinematographer Philippe Rousselot
  • Shot for four months on location. "Like being on another planet" according to Burton. Nice people, but suspicious of "movie types". Huge insects, weird sounds, smell from a paper mill - an experience you can't get from a soundstage. (Burton)
  • There's no writing section, but I've added the 2004 article from Script Magazine to further reading for use as a source.
  • Some day for night shooting used for the "shortcut through the woods" scene where Edward Bloom is on his way to the town of Spectre (Burton, DVD commentary)

Music

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Critical analysis

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  • "Observations modeled the film after Forrest Gump..."
    • That's a very clunky, roundabout way of saying some reviewers noticed similarities between the two films. Observations don't model the film.
  • Sources note at least nine deliberate references to other films. This isn't mentioned.
    • Opening scene of Bloom's entry into Spectre shows a man in a rocking chair playing a few notes from "Dueling Banjos", a deliberate reference to Deliverance (1972). The man is, in fact, Billy Redden, the same actor from the original film. (Burton, DVD commentary, 30:47; Akron Beacon Journal, 2004-09-24)
    • "Burton was intent on getting Redden, who hadn't appeared in a film since Deliverance, to play the role of a banjo-playing welcomer in the utopian town of Spectre. Burton eventually found him in Clayton, Georgia, where Redden worked as a cook, dishwasher and part-owner of the Cookie Jar Café." See also:[3]
    • Burton's attempt to "personalize" the film with actors like Redden, is followed up with author Daniel Wallace appearing as the Economics Teacher in the "Courtship of Sandra Templeton" scene.
  • Ebert mentions that this film was very similar to The Barbarian Invasions, released around the same time.

Psychological approach

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  • Clive Baldwin of the University of Bradford in "Blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction: Tim Burton's Big Fish and narrative theory".

Reliable sources

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Further reading

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  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYmag was invoked but never defined (see the help page).