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Health (film)

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From the moment I borrowed that new Robert Altman biography at the library, fate must have stepped in. And indeed, fate led me to work on an article about a largely unknown entity in the Altman catalogue.

Through an IMDb message board listing, I managed to catch it on the Fox Movie Channel--at the end of April and again in May. It was tough going with the plot, even during the second time, but I eventually managed.

HealtH, a political satire set in a Florida hotel, was shelved by its distributor in the early 1980s and has been largely forgotten since then--and it even showed at the WP article before I came in. The amount of coverage it received back then is surprising, even with its already obscure reputation.

Out of a 3 kB stub, I expanded the article almost ninefold before it made the Did you know section on Friday night's Main Page (in my time zone). The blurb also mentioned four minor cast members from New York, known as The Steinettes.

Has there been a title so fitting for a PR subject? Compared to this, only Gosford Park and (to an extent) M*A*S*H can rival its comprehensiveness here, as far as Altman's works are concerned.

Looking forward to GAC soon enough.

Thanks, Slgrandson (How's my egg-throwing coleslaw?) 10:28, 10 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ruhrfisch comments: I have to admit I did not recall ever hearing of this Altman film - sounds interesting. I think most of the information is there, but it needs some tweaking in terms of language and perhaps organization for GAN and especially if FAC is on the horizon. So here are some suggestions for improvement.

If the title of the film is "HealtH" (which the article uses a bunch of times), shouldn't the article be moved to "HealtH (film)" too?
The article seems a bit WP:OVERLINKed to me - does the reader really need links to Acronym, Parody, Independent (politician), and Idiosyncracy (to name a few)?
I also felt that the lead was a bit sparse - per WP:LEAD the lead should be an accessible and inviting overview of the whole article. My rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way
~~I did not understand why there was a separate Synopsis section - it seemed to me to either be items that should be in the lead or else in the Plot section that follows it.~~

Synopsis eliminated. --Slgrandson (How's my egg-throwing coleslaw?) 17:29, 1 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Similarly I was not sure how the Themes section differed from the Reception section - most of Themes seems to be material from critical reviews of the film. Could this at least be a subsection of the Themes section?
The article has several short (one or two sentence) paragraphs that break up the flow - could they be combined with others or perhaps expanded?
There are places where the article feels repetitive - for example, the Steinetts, Carol Burnett and Paul Dooley are listed in the cast section, so why then have the sentences "The Steinettes, an a cappella group from Greenwich Village, New York,[16]:1-D were on hand as the singers. Carol Burnett, who appeared in A Wedding,[5] starred as Gloria Burbank. Paul Dooley, who co-scripted with Altman and Barhydt, played Paul Dooley.[4]:82" in Production?
Or Dick Cavett and Dinah Shore's roles are mentioned in the Synopsis, Plot and Cast sections
~~There is no requirement to do this, but moist articles do not cite the lead - since it is a summary, the cited refs should all be in the body of the article too.~~

Many of the lead cites have been erased and moved. --Slgrandson (How's my egg-throwing coleslaw?) 17:29, 1 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Similarly, references usually come AFTER punctuation, and are usually at the end of a sentence or phrase
~~If a reference is to something in all capitals, the WP:MOS says to convert it to title case - so "ROBERT ALTMAN'S SATIRE 'HEALTH'" would just be "Robert Altman's Satire 'HealtH'"~~

Converted. --Slgrandson (How's my egg-throwing coleslaw?) 17:29, 1 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If the production began in February 1979 and was completed in three months, how can it be a satire of the Reagan Carter campaign? Reagan wasn't even nominated until July 1980.

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:54, 19 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]