Talk:House (1977 film)

Plot summary

Just watched the German release of this movie and found the plot summary here to be different in a number of ways:

• Her father is engaged, not just dating. And their annual trip isn't cancelled, he's bringing his fiancée along with them.
• Oshare wasn't invited to visit her aunt, she wrote to the aunt (who she hadn't had any contact with her in 8-10 years), basically inviting herself to come for a visit.
• The aunt isn't a witch. She's died but her body has remained somewhat animated due to her desire to wed her fiancée, who was killed during WWII.
• While the final friend, Fanta, isn't shown being killed, her actual fate is never shown or indicated.
• There is no letter to the father saying she plans to stay permanently at her aunt's, and the father's fiancée had indicated at the beginning of the film that she planned to follow Oshare to her aunt's in an attempt to reconcile with her.
• When her father's fiancée arrives, the possessed Oshare and/or Snowball the cat causes the fiancée to spontaneously combust.

Not sure if these differences are due to the English translation or what. Can any Japanese speaker who's seen it verify the plot summary? TheJazzDalek (talk) 01:27, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Hello last year. I've watched the criterion release with updated subtitles. The father introduces the woman as Gorgeous' new mother so fiancée seems fine. The final combustion scene isn't really clear as it seems to make her erupt into flames but she doesn't react to it at all so it could be just foreshadowing or something. Everything else I hope is cleared up in the new plot summary I wrote up. 207.236.94.138 (talk) 12:09, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:House (1977 film)/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: DustFormsWords (talk) 23:49, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

GA review (see here for criteria)

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Overview - After working over a list of required improvements, this article now meets the Good Article criteria. - DustFormsWords (talk) 01:39, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

1. a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

   (a) The article is largely well written but the following issues need to be addressed in order to meet criterion 1(a):

   * (Issue has been addressed.) The article now appropriately wikilinks jargon, obscure terms and proper nouns.

   * (Issue has been addressed.) "Criterion" now features the correct spelling.

   * (Issue has been addressed.) Given the famous incomprehensibility of House, the plot section is now as good as can reasonably be expected.

   * (Issue has been addressed.) Issues around radio drama have been clarified.

   * (Issue has been addressed) The Development section now meets the Good Article standard of writing quality.

   (b) The article largely complies with our style guidelines but the following issues need to be addressed in order to meet criterion 1(b):

   * (Issue has been addressed,) The word "aunt" is now capitalised consistently.

   * (Issue has been addressed.) Article is now compliant with the WP:MOSBIO policy on names of people.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

   (a) Article follows style guidelines related to referencing, including split reference list and citation templates.

   (b) All challengable facts are now referenced with inline citations, and as far as I am able to check the cited sources support the article content.

   * While references to film presentations do not necessarily need pointers to exact times, the high number of undifferentiated references to the documentary "Constructing a House" means that the article may not meet our policies on verifiability, in that it is not clear what portion of the documentary is supposed to support the claims. As far as I can tell it is not necessary to fix this for the article to meet GA, but I would nevertheless strongly recommend it now as it will only get harder as more references are added. You can do this by either (a) providing references to specific times in the documentary for each citation, or (preferably) (b) providing the specific quote that each reference is referring to in the reference. (Yes, this does mean you'd need to split the combined reference into a large number of individual ones. You will need to do this anyway to get to Featured Article.) (Not required to meet GA criteria.)

   (c) There is no evidence of original research.

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

   (a) (Issue has been addressed.) Article adresses all expected areas of content.

   (a) I would also generally expect to see a section on the film's legacy, including influence on other films, remakes, tributes, et cetera, but while desirable I suspect this is not strictly necessary for Good Article status. (Not required to meet GA criteria.)

   (b) The article does not go into unnecessary detail, with the exception of the cast list discussed above.

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

   Article appears to present all notable viewpoints without bias.

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

   Article appears stable as of this writing.

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):

   (a) Both images appear to have valid licensing and tags.

   (b) (Issue has been addressed.) Both images are used appropriately and feature suitable captions and alt text.

7. Overall: The article now meets the Good Article criteria. Its weakest areas are:

1. * The "Plot" section, which is problematic for a film this incomprehensible. More editors who have seen the film should be encouraged to help improve this into a clear, understandable guide to events in the film.
2. * Referencing - The article contains many undifferentiated references to documentaries. More effort should be made to improve referencing through provision of the relevant quotes, or possibly timecodes, to improve the verifiability of the article as a whole. Thought should be given to converting the references into a split Notes/References format (such as at Delphine LaLaurie) so that in-depth citations do not need to appear in the main article text.
3. * Writing quality - While the article is generally well-written, there is room for improvement throughout the article to improve readability and draw readers in with engaging prose.
4. * Scope - It seems likely that the article can be made significantly broader in scope, including such information as the film's legacy, academic discussion, and a broader discussion of the social and industry context in which the film was made.

1. Pass/Fail:

Response / Discussion

Place response / discussion here.

• "wikilinking to explain key terms, concepts, and jargon.". I've gone through it and linked some terms, any more items to be linked?

• Response - Personally I'd go further and wikilink important items in the plot description such as "watermelon", "grandfather clock", etcetera, as their importance to the article here defeats the common advice to not wikilink commonly understood words, but regardless the article now meets the standard required for Good Articles. (Review amended accordingly.) - DustFormsWords (talk) 03:14, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• I believe I've wikilinked anything important in the plot now (i've also included the wedding gown).

• "Criterion misspelled." This is fixed.

• Response - Looks good. (Review amended accordingly). - DustFormsWords (talk) 03:15, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• "Plot". I've tried to clean up the plot a bit more. What do you think?

• Response - In the absence of someone who has a better way of writing it, I think the content of the Plot section is about as clear as can be expected. However, your edits have introduced some new odd wordings (eg "Gorgeous' aunt accepts her to visit", "the girls are greeted by her aunt who they present a watermelon which the girls leave in a well to keep it refrigerated"). If you understand what I mean, please fix these phrasings. Otherwise get another editor to look them over or, failing that, if this is all that remains when everything else is fixed I'll attempt a re-word myself. - DustFormsWords (talk) 03:19, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• This part should be a bit more clear. If it's still giving us trouble. I'll seek outside help before taking a stab at it again. Andrzejbanas (talk) 13:07, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• Response - I've taken a pass at it myself as it was simpler to make the changes than explain them. I can't make it any clearer without having actually seen the film myself (I know it only by reputation). Given the subject matter, it's probably now about as good as can reasonably be expected. - DustFormsWords (talk) 22:57, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• "radio" Sorry, this was referring to the radio drama mentioned above. I've tried to make that part more clear. :)

• Response - Looks good, except that now "pre-production" refers to "radio dramas" (plural) and "filming" refers to "the radio drama" (singular). Which is correct? - DustFormsWords (talk) 03:28, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• I'm not so familiar with the Radio Show, but I've made it singular. Andrzejbanas (talk) 13:07, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• Response - Looks good. - DustFormsWords (talk) 22:58, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• "Development phrasing." Sometimes, I just can not write. I've cleaned this up.

• Response - This now looks good enough for GA. - DustFormsWords (talk) 03:33, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• "aunt/Aunt". The girl's call her "Auntie" in the film, I can check the subtitles to see if they capitalize it or not, but for now, I've changed it back to simply "aunt".

• Response - Looks good. - DustFormsWords (talk) 03:33, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• "green-lit/greenlit". Right. Fixed that too. It should be "green-lit".

• Response - Looks good. - DustFormsWords (talk) 03:24, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• "Nobuhiko". I used his name throughout to make it clear I'm not referring to his daughter at other times in the article. Should I only have his first name in that one paragraph then?

• Response - Yes, you should only call him "Nobuhiko" when it's absolutely necessary to disambiguate, so really only in the paragraph where you're also talking about his daughter. Consensus is that referring to people by their first names only is diminutive and non-encyclopaedic and should be avoided as far as possible. See WP:MOSBIO for a discussion of how and why to do fix this. - DustFormsWords (talk) 03:24, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• This has been changed. It refers to him as Obayashi in all the other paragraphs now. Andrzejbanas (talk) 13:07, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• Response - Looks fine now. - DustFormsWords (talk) 23:00, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• "reflist|2". Done.

• Response - Looks good. - DustFormsWords (talk) 03:43, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• "The following issues need to be addressed to meet criterion". These are all referenced by their following citations. They go through a lot, but I could expand them if you like.

• Response - The "following citations" are all attached to quite distinct facts. That is to say that in each of these cases the topic changes between the "unreferenced" fact and the next citation. It may seem like overlinking, but adding another copy of the relevant citation at the end of these sections would satisfy me, and it makes it easier for future editors to add additional content to these sections without orphaning your content from its citations. - DustFormsWords (talk) 03:43, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• I've expanded the citations. Andrzejbanas (talk) 13:07, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• These mostly look good, except that as far as I can see the Eclipse section is still unreferenced. - DustFormsWords (talk) 23:10, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• "contructing a house". ouch. That's a tricky one to re-do. I'm in no rush to push this to a FA, do you want me to try citing each one? Or can we skip this for now? :)

• Response - If it's still outstanding when all the necessary stuff is fixed I'll remove it as unnecessary to GA and pass you, but in the mean time I'll leave it there for your reference. (I'm mostly just taking my revenge for the last GA I wrote where I had to break up about 60 references to one book into individually page referenced citations. :-) - DustFormsWords (talk) 03:43, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• "casting". Hmm. Maybe I should just scrap that cast section. Most of the actors in the film are not people who did a lot of film work (as it states in the production section). What would you suggest on this one?

• Response - There needs to be something in the article on each of the notable roles in the film. For some of those, the information you have in pre-production covers them. For others, you can probably put the name of the actor in brackets in the plot section. I'm just going from WP:FILMCAST here - I'm not a huge expert on film articles - but the list does look a bit ugly and the style guidelines have a good point that there's no good reason that the portion of the list which is encyclopaedic information can't be dealt with through standard prose. So either find a non-list way of covering the relevant information, or convince me that this article is an exception and the list is appropriate. I'd be grateful for input from someone experienced in WP:WikiProject Film, if you can get any. - DustFormsWords (talk) 03:43, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• I've removed the cast section and added the individual members of the cast names in the plot. Most of the cast is covered in the production section who have more than one scene in the film and most of the young actresses were not really involved in film and just had bit parts (as they were all mostly fashion models outside ōko Minamida and Tomokazu Miura.) Tomokazu has a very brief non-speaking role in a flash back scene, but I could dig up more information if it is desired. Andrzejbanas (talk) 13:07, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• It looks fine. I've made some tweaks to the sentences on casting to improve readability and with these changes it is now okay. - DustFormsWords (talk) 23:06, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• "alt tags". They have been added.

• Response - These look fine. - DustFormsWords (talk) 03:43, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Any more suggestions? :) Andrzejbanas (talk) 03:08, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• "legacy": I've tried to find influence on this, but I can not find anything certain. The film was not widely-known about in the west ([http://books.google.ca/books?id=uVbGOE3jwWUC&pg=PA13&dq=House+1977+obayashi&hl=en&ei=3sMrTYSeMIqOnwfl45TCAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCgQ6AEwA source) until the criterion release, so it's hard to find much in this section. Andrzejbanas (talk) 03:21, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• Response - When I get time tomorrow I'll have a look myself so I can at least say that I'm not aware of anything specific on this topic that should appear. - DustFormsWords (talk) 03:43, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Article passed

I have passed the article as a Good Article and will update the relevant pages accordingly. Congratulations on your hard work bringing this notable cult film up to Good Article quality! - DustFormsWords (talk) 23:37, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Blu ray cover

I've removed the blu-ray cover as it fails WP:NFCI, which states "Cover art: Cover art from various items, for visual identification only in the context of critical commentary of that item (not for identification without critical commentary)". There is no real reason to show the image on the cover because we don't discuss the cover itself, and seeing it does not help the user understand it anymore. Andrzejbanas (talk) 01:27, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Would the description of the Criterion Collection release and its contents not serve as an adequate commentary to coincide with the visually-identifiable image of Criterion's cover art for the release? For contrast, the lede section of the article doesn't discuss the film's theatrical release poster. –Matthew - (talk) 04:25, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Probably not, the poster I believe is acceptable on it's grounds in the details that "The image is placed in the infobox at the top of the article discussing the work, to show the primary visual image associated with the work, and to help the user quickly identify the work, product or service and know they have found what they are looking for. Use for this purpose does not compete with the purposes of the original artwork, namely the creator providing graphic design services, and in turn the marketing of the promoted item." In other words, it's a film that was released theatrically, here's the theatrical poster to identify it. But although I dig the artwork on the criterion one, the article is about the film, not the blu-ray release, and it's a little biased to include it, but not the Masters of Cinema release for example. If the film was released directly to home video, then we'd probably swap the poster for the DVD cover, but that would be the case for a film like Maneater, not House. If you'd like a third opinion, we can re-add the image for now and we can bring the image up for deletion and see what others say. I'm totally good with that. :) Andrzejbanas (talk) 17:06, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Fair enough. I think it'd be a helpful secondary source because I think most people who know this movie think of that image of the cat with the big sharp-toothed mouth and all. I gotta say though, it's nice to be having a civil discussion on this website for once. –Matthew - (talk) 17:16, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Ditto! :) I agree the cat image is common, but film infoboxes are a bit weird too, because they generally want the original theatrical poster, opposed to...I don't know, video game articles use their English-language covers. Which doesn't always make sense to me either. I'm currently doing some similar discussions on having posters for re-releases of some other Toho films. It can be found here, where the American posters are added for several film in the Godzilla series. Kind of waiting to see the result of these images here. One wasn't contested and deleted, but the others are ongoing currently. So we could put the House one up for comment too, but I'm equally fine just waiting to see what the conclusion and legality is of having these extra posters.Andrzejbanas (talk) 17:33, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

So should we put the image up for comment or like... what are we waiting for exactly? –Matthew - (talk) 20:50, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Oh oops. Yeah we can! Was just waiting to see what you figured you'd want to wait for. The results of the deletion on the other Toho things, which would probably give us a final answer. Or just put it up and put into an "image up for deletion" to see what the general consensus/rules are for these kinds of things. Andrzejbanas (talk) 21:06, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

If this image was listed at WP:FfD, I would vote to delete it. The blu-ray cover's fair use rationale says its use is for the infobox, which is not true. The blu-ray cover fails WP:NFCC#3a in that the of film poster already is used in the article for means of identification and fails WP:NFCC#8 because there is no commentary about the cover thereby doing nothing to increase the reader's understanding of the film and its exclusion is not detrimental to the understanding of the film. Aspects (talk) 05:25, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Cat name

In the version of the film I've seen (the Criterion blu ray and dvd) the cat is definately named Blanche. I suggest we stick with that unless you have some other source. Andrzejbanas (talk) 05:08, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

As per a discussion on my talk page, I would suggest if you want to include the original Japanese characters names, perhaps lay it out as the article on Audition has. That way, there is no confusion and its clarified. Andrzejbanas (talk) 03:51, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Missing Information

After reading this article I noticed that it is missing some important information on the film. Things like the film's Score/Soundtrack, Themes, Influences, and Legacy are all missing from this article. I can get started on adding some of this when I find reliable information.--Paleface Jack (talk) 17:00, 8 April 2021 (UTC)