Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film/Archive 78

This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:WikiProject Film. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 75

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Archive 77

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Alien (film) GAR

Alien (film), an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for a community good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. – zmbro _(talk) 19:48, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Aliens (film) FAC

Coincidentally, Aliens is up for Featured Article status and it's not getting much attention! Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 21:37, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Distribution: US vs North America vs domestic

We're having a discussion at Talk:No Time to Die#Theatrical distribution about how to describe the distribution arrangement for this film. Any guidance would be appreciated. GA-RT-22 (talk) 02:09, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

The advice at WP:FILMBOXOFFICE (in the context of box-office grosses) should be followed here because the same rationale applies. Betty Logan (talk) 02:19, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

How would you include Bahamas and Bermuda in "US & Canada" if they're in the same region? We also don't know which North American countries are included in the US domestic distribution rights. Therefore the guidance in "Box Office" isn't so clear cut when applied to distribution rights. The MOS guidance also appears to be changeable determined by a handful of editors here. It doesn't provide clarity in this circumstance. --GloMonster^Talk 07:11, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

There is also WP:FILMDIST. You don't need to list the distributor for every region, just the relevant ones. In this case Bahamas and Bermuda are not relevant, unless thye host the premiere or something. Betty Logan (talk) 11:22, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

I think you're missing the point. We know who the distributors are; this is about distribution regions. What do you mean by "are not relevant"? Why the bias towards larger countries? We're not discussing box office revenue. Surely the guidance was to avoid being US centric etc? WP:FILMDIST doesn't provide any more clarity. It's seems out of date with its terms. "Domestic" to whom? "Foreign" to whom?

It appears that the wider consensus with many film articles is to ignore your "Box Office" guidance rationale and go with the term "North America" which doesn't give weight to any particular country within a distribution region. --GloMonster^Talk 16:25, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?

If you answered yes or no to that, you may be interested in this page move discussion. Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 16:29, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Helen (film, 2008)

Please can someone move Helen (film, 2008) to its best title? I think it may be Helen (2009 Irish film), and we may need to rename Helen (2009 film) too, but this looks like a job for a naming expert. Thanks, Certes (talk) 12:09, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Moved to Helen (2008 film). The film premiered in 2008, not 2009. Nardog (talk) 12:40, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Queerbaiting examples list

Input would be useful at Talk:Queerbaiting#Examples section lacks credibility, as would anyone willing to edit the queerbaiting article itself and excise the WP:UNDUE. Crossroads ^-talk- 05:32, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

The Light Bulb Conspiracy

The Article The Light Bulb Conspiracy received a "More citations needed" box.

It has 13 refereces for 4.8 kB text - that's about the same ratio as found for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (film). On top of that, the English version of The Light Bulb Conspiracy has the most references of all parallel articles in other languages. My question where references are missing was not answered. Please make this request concrete. I'd like to remove the box. Thanks! Bikkit ! (talk) 09:32, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

That list of alternate titles should really be cited or removed (BFI is often a good source for international titles) but aside from that it seems fine, if a little prose-light. Gʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ^ˣ 09:50, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Will be done! Bikkit ! (talk) 16:46, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Two page moves

Hi. You may be interested in these move discussions:

Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 08:52, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

"Taiwan" or "Republic of China (Taiwan)"?

Earlier this month, I created an article for the 2021 Taiwanese horror film The Sadness. Recently, User:Kylinki edited the country parameter of its infobox, changing "Taiwan" to "Republic of China (Taiwan)". I'm neither well-versed in the history nor the politics of the region, but considering that arguments over "'Taiwan' vs 'Republic of China'" are mentioned in one of the headers over on Talk:Taiwan, I imagine this is somewhat of a contentious subject. I undid Kylinki's edit, partly because I've never seen Taiwan referred to as "Republic of China (Taiwan)" in the infobox of an article about a Taiwanese film, but mostly because the article for Taiwan itself is simply called Taiwan, not Republic of China (Taiwan). Kylinki then restored their edit, which is why I've decided to bring up the matter here. Thoughts? —Matthew - (talk) 01:21, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

While I'm sure there's probably some policy on the matter here somewhere, my first inclination would be to go with how we title the article. Gʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ^ˣ 12:29, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Agree with Grapple. MOS:CHINESE isn't a great help, but the country and the Wiki project are both at "Taiwan" and not the "Republic of China". FWIW, I've always placed "Taiwan" as the country in the infobox for any Taiwanese film articles I've created. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 12:39, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Definitely Taiwan per Lugnuts and Grapple. No Great Shaker (talk) 13:19, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

"Taiwan" is the correct name per above as well as per WP:COMMONNAME, and WP:NATURALDIS. — Starforce¹³ 15:08, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Science SARU#Requested move 15 August 2021

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Science SARU#Requested move 15 August 2021 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. — Shibbolethink ^(♔ ^♕) 02:33, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Question regarding inclusion of a film in a filmography table

There's a film "based on a idea" by Slavoj Žižek that has been included in his filmography section. He doesn't have any active role in the film, his only contribution is inspiring the writer. Is there then any justification to keep that entry? To my understanding, if he doesn't participate in any tangible way then it doesn't count. I already deleted it once and was reverted so I don't wanna engage in a edit war without making sure I'm right. - Ïvana (talk) 15:35, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

If he's not officially credited with anything, then it shouldn't be in his filmography. BIGNOLE (Contact me) 20:14, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

He is credited. It says on the website "Based on an idea by Slavoj Zizek" The film was made in collaboration with him and is based on one of his published jokes. I think people coming to the Zizek Wikipedia page would definitely be interested to see such a film in the filmography. I don't really understand why you are so keen to remove it?

One of the problems I can see is that the filmography table only lists a title. This implies that he is either an actor, or a writer/director. If he has different roles in these things, then a better table needs to be used. BIGNOLE (Contact me) 12:19, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

@Andy Lambert 18: It has been pointed out that the table may need to be modified, so stop reverting the article while we sort that out. Also I just saw that you're the writer and director, so doesn't this fall under WP:CONFLICT and/or WP:PROMO?

@Bignole: do you think adding a column for notes + row stating that it is based on an idea by him is enough? My original question was regarding the validity of the inclusion because he is not credited with any concrete role. - Ïvana (talk) 17:47, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Ivana, it's probably two-fold. There probably needs to be a bigger table that covers what his roles on those films actually are. See Stephen King#Filmography as an example. I'm not saying it's perfect (e.g., Carrie needs an explanation as to what his role is, otherwise it should be removed or in the notes say "based on his work"). So, if you know what his roles are in each of those films you can see if there is a pattern (e.g., a specific actor column or writer column) or if it's all over the plan and you just need a single column with a brief description of his role. As for this film in question, you just need a reliable source for the credit. Being "based on an idea" isn't an official credit, even if they are giving him that credit. That would be like crediting Michael Jackson for a film because someone listened to a song of his and it inspired a short film. Nice to give recognition, but it isn't an officially recognize credit by any means. Again, it comes down to context and what is the rest of the table including. BIGNOLE (Contact me) 18:35, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Hi Ivana & Bignole Thanks for your response. Noted that the table needs to be modified. Re: conflict of interest, I didn’t consider such a minor addition to fall under that definition, but you know the rules better than me. I merely wanted to add what I saw as a legitimate entry into Žižek’s impressive filmography. I genuinely feel that readers of Žižek’s Wikipedia page would be curious about such a thing and that these kind of details are what make Wikipedia so interesting. As for being “based on an idea” being like making a film “inspired” by a Michael Jackson song, I personally don’t think that is the same at all. The film in question, “Turn On” is based very closely on this piece by Žižek from his book “Zizek's Jokes: (Did You Hear the One about Hegel and Negation?)” https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=FlT5DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=vibrator+joke+zizek&source=bl&ots=M5ZMBA15Yi&sig=ACfU3U2mn4J4jQ2ILVPMBjWJocvz2D1tzg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjDv8yQxtPyAhXvQEEAHc3IAnwQ6AF6BAgoEAM#v=onepage&q=vibrator%20joke%20zizek&f=false Permission had to be obtained from Žižek himself who gave the film his blessing. Perhaps the word “idea” is the thing causing concern, and maybe it would have been better to say that “Turn On” is in fact based on a published piece of writing. But then again, Apocalypse Now is listed on the Heart of Darkness Wikipedia page as being based on Conrad’s book, despite having no credit in the film! ;-) Žižek has a lot of fans many of whom have an insatiable desire to know everything about him in a completist way, and including films based on his work as well as the films he appears in would seem appropriate. Hope you guys agree. cheers, Andy

Requested move at Talk:List of films featuring prisons#Requested move 20 August 2021

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:List of films featuring prisons#Requested move 20 August 2021 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. — Shibbolethink ^(♔ ^♕) 20:13, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Rotten Tomatoes info editing bot

I've created a bot that edits Rotten Tomatoes prose on Wikipedia. I've submitted a Bot Approval Request here, but it needs discussion from the film community. Let me try to describe in detail what the bot does.

We use an example from Titanic (1997 film), where we have the following wikitext:

On [[review aggregator]] website [[Rotten Tomatoes]], the film has an approval rating of 89% based on 193 reviews, with an [[Weighted mean|average rating]] of 8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "A mostly unqualified triumph for James Cameron, who offers a dizzying blend of spectacular visuals and old-fashioned melodrama."<ref name="www.rottentomatoes.com"/>

The bot updates the percentage score, the review count, and the average rating. In particular, the average rating of 8 would be changed to 8.00 since that is how it is displayed on Rotten Tomatoes, and it indicates that the average score of a film is in fact calculated to two decimal places. This numeric precision modification was brought up in the BRFA as potentially being contentious.

The bot also removes the wikilink to weighted mean, leaving just "average rating". I don't believe Rotten Tomatoes uses a weighted mean, and I believe the reason this wikilink is so common in Rotten Tomatoes prose is because of redirects which have since been deleted. It might also be because Metacritic does explicitly use a weighted average.

If there is prose like "As of June 2020", whether using the template {{As of}} or not, the bot updates the date and uses the template {{As of}}. It includes the day if the original prose includes the day, and keeps US date format if the original uses that format.

If the critical consensus is missing, the bot would also add a sentence of the form The site's critical consensus reads, "blah blah blah.".

If the review count or average rating is missing, the bot performs a complete rewrite of the prose since it cannot safely integrate the missing info. Currently the complete rewrite is of the form, On Rotten Tomatoes, TITLE holds an approval rating of 80% based on 80 reviews, with an average rating of 8.88/10. This is obviously another point of contention. My understanding is that no single format will please everyone, and there are a huge variety of formats in use. If this bot behavior is too contentious, the bot can simply avoid these situations by not adding the missing info and always keeping the original prose format. (A ridiculous option would be to have it randomly use a variety of formats.)

Finally, the bot always uses the template {{Cite Rotten Tomatoes}}. This is simply for convenience. It was brought up in the BRFA that such a change in reference may cause problems, but my understanding is that {{Cite Rotten Tomatoes}} is just a shorter version of {{Cite Web}} specifically for Rotten Tomatoes. (Note that Cite Rotten Tomatoes was considered for deletion but kept.) The bot will keep archive info in the citation if it is already present. See a small discussion about archiving here.

The bot will keep ref names, and keeps list-defined references as well, only updating the definition. An edit is not made if only the reference is changed.

(Other minor changes include always using '%' instead of 'percent', and always using '/10' instead of 'out of 10'. Again, this kind of behavior can be removed if too contentious.)

In summary, can some version of this Rotten Tomatoes bot meet the approval of the community? If yes, I believe the major point of discussion is how conservative the bot has to be with its modifications, as described above. Winston (talk) 15:13, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

In theory, yes, this sounds promising. As long as the bot is just changing the data points and not the actual wording used in the construction of the data as that is always seemingly a contentious topic between editors who all have a preference on wording. I do have some points of issue with the test edits, which I'll add to the bot request. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 16:12, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

I like this except for the cite template. Even though it wasn't deleted, there are still faults as soon as RT changes their urls (with hyphens and dates, it's surprisingly common even for uncommon film titles, with cite RT format meaning redirects aren't shown) and doesn't archive well. Cite web perfectly suffices and doesn't have those problems, I really don't see the point of cite RT, and as stated, it can introduce inconsistent ref style which is never ideal. Kingsif (talk) 20:26, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

This is pointless busywork that will clog my watchlist. I oppose any bot job like this. If no human deems it important enough to change "44% approval rating and 5.56/10" to "43% approval rating and 5.27/10", it should just stay at the previous value. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 04:19, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I admit it's not the most important editing work, but I think there are a lot of bot edits that in isolation seem unimportant, yet still have been made. Also, there are definitely humans making edits like the example you gave. I myself I have made those kinds of edits before, and if you think of a film off the top of your head and go to that film's article, chances are you will find an edit like the example you gave. One way you can check this is to go to the revision history, pick an old version (maybe about a year old) to compare, and scroll down to the Rotten Tomatoes part. Winston (talk) 06:18, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

If the data was concentrated in a template (or templates) and the articles were simply transcluding them, it wouldn't clog your watchlist. And that's the way I, too, would want it to be if it was put in practice. Nardog (talk) 07:28, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

The template {{Rotten Tomatoes prose}} exists, but is not widely used and runs into the contentious issue of (uniform) wording. Winston (talk) 07:57, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I wouldn't want that either. What I'm thinking of is a template that automatically pulls the percentage, average rating, or number of reviews (or the respective "as of" date) from centralized data that's updated by a bot.

Come to think of it, this would be a perfect project for Wikidata. Perhaps you should request a bot operation there, although you may have to get property proposals first. Once this gets running, we can create a template that pulls the data from Wikidata here, and we would be freed from having to update the scores on this project. Nardog (talk) 10:51, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Wait just to clarify, this is a separate idea you are proposing (basically an automated version of {{Rotten Tomatoes prose}}), and not a replacement for the current bot idea of updating Rotten Tomatoes info right? Winston (talk) 12:03, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Oh, I must confess I missed that you had already written a bot and were seeking approval. As for this specific bot task I completely agree with NinjaRobotPirate. Bots (re)writing prose sentences is almost never a good idea. I would particularly advise against automatically adding critical consensuses as they are not always so germane or useful. Look at the one for Nine Lives to see what I mean (although the article does currently include it—I don't think it should). (I've always thought links to and mentions of "weighted average" need to be removed, but that seems a task more suited for AWB as simply removing the links may not be enough.)

If anything of this sort was to be done on this wiki locally, dump the data in a module and let templates transclude it. As in

As of {{RT data|movie_title|type=date}}, the film holds an approval rating of {{RT data|movie_title|type=score}} based on {{RT average|movie_title|type=count}} reviews, with an average rating of {{RT data|movie_title|type=average}}

turns into "As of August 2021, the film holds an approval rating of 88% based on 49 reviews, with an average rating of 7.10/10", with the possibility of omitting the first parameter if it's already attached on Wikidata.

But at that point it would be far more beneficial if the bot just put the data on Wikidata, which would allow for dynamic use of the data (e.g. on lists) and on other projects. Nardog (talk) 12:38, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I like your Wikidata idea, and I will probably look into it (I'm still pretty new to anything beyond English Wikipedia's mainspace). My current bot could be "evolved" to implement your idea.

For now, I'm making the current bot much more conservative. In particular, it will not add missing review counts or averages (and so will not rewrite sentences), it only updates/adds access dates for citations, and when a citation is missing a new citation will use the {{Cite web}} template instead of {{Cite Rotten Tomatoes}}. The precision of the originally present average rating is also preserved.

I'd like to get this more conservative version of the current bot approved.

As for the "weighted average" issue, the bot indeed doesn't just remove the links (including the recently deleted redirects); it removes all mention of "weighted" which I think is what you agree with. Regarding your view of the critical consensus, I agree that sometimes the critical consensus is more humorous than informative, especially for poorly received movies, but in these instances it is harmless to include if not already included. I feel the consensus is usually useful, and from what I've seen it is almost always included here. Winston (talk) 13:53, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Since it's been brought up, for the record, I don't remember anyone liking the RT prose template when it was brought up and still think it's a horrible editing practice. Leave automated text for hatnotes and maintenance. So please do nothing more with it. Kingsif (talk) 01:57, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Large IP range vandalizing with categories

Hi, please take a look at Special:Contributions/2603:7000:1A00::/45, who is continuously vandalizing film articles by miscategorizing and adding other false info to articles on various films. I believe this is all done by the same user, who is evading this active block on one of their old /48s. Is anyone familiar with any LTAs or former users that have done this type of vandalizing? Additionally, I would appreciate it if people kept an eye out on sketchy edits like these. Thanks. eviolite (talk) 02:17, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up and looks like they've been range blocked. Same user behind this gem. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 12:10, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Feedback requested at WT:Biography

Your feedback would be appreciated at this discussion at WikiProject Biography: WT:BIOGRAPHY#Modification of several dozen biographies to note signatories of the Polanski support letter. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 00:37, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Trick (1999 film)

Hello. Fine Line Features (the film's US distributor) stated that the film did "credible business" in the United States.^[1] I tried to put the fact in the article, but it was keep removed by User:Joeyconnick.

I don't want to get involved in editing war for a long time, so I put the matter in here for discussion. Other wiki pages also indicated that whether a film is a commercial success, like Eighth Grade (film) and An Inconvenient Truth. If the film's US distributor indicated that the film did "credible business", I think the wiki page can also mention that too. - Marychan41 ^(♔ ^♕) 13:29, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

The source seems reliable and all but "credible business" seems like a very awkward piece of information—does that mean it underperformed, was a modest success, made its budget back? Looking at the article, it seems the gross is reliably sourced (to Box Office Mojo) but the budget isn't (imdb is not to be used as a source), so it might be worth phrasing this in a way that shows context: "Trick grossed $2,087,228 at the box office,[1] which was seen by as its distributors as "credible business".[2]". If the budget could be sourced reliably then just work it into that same sentence. Gʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ^ˣ 13:43, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Your suggestion is very good. Thank you very much. - Marychan41 ^(♔ ^♕) 12:29, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

References

^ https://web.archive.org/web/20210822043044/https://variety.com/2000/film/news/indies-go-every-witch-way-in-99-1117760726/

RT and MC wording

Your thoughts and suggestions would be appreciated at WT:Review aggregators#Arbitrary break. This has come up countless times over the years, and WP:AGG is just an essay, but it would be great to have some level of participation we can deem relevant and put this conversation in the rearview. Thanks in advance! --GoneIn60 (talk) 19:37, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

The Unsung Heroes

Additional eyes could be used at The Unsung Heroes (film). An editor who created the article continues to add redundant promotional citations, and some of these citations contain deliberate false information (appearing in festivals, winning information). I am concerned that this film's notability has been inflated by rounds of the same promotional articles being published by different news sources. Could someone please take some time to look over it or dive for more sources? It is a fairly recent film, but sources may be in Malayalam. BOVINEBOY2008 18:03, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

this is a 2017 documentary film. i will add citations and link of article related to the movie and add edit summary for you to verify. please have a check and guide me to improve the same. thanks in advance.

Streaming

Should movies infoboxes and templates include in which streaming service the movie is available?

Zidane tribal (talk) 03:15, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Absolutely not, unless it is the original distributor in the film's country of origin. Movies hop from a streaming service to another all the time and it varies heavily by region. WP:NOTCATALOG. Nardog (talk) 03:21, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Ghostbusters is up for FAC

Neutral notice. It'd be nice to have some participation, Aliens failed from basically no comments. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 11:29, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Colin Goudie

I'm still new and my first created article is still under review so I'm not the best person to do this but Colin Goudie, who was one of the film editors of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, doesn't have a Wikipedia page. I'm just suggesting and I hope I'm not out of line. Thank you, everyone. The Horror, The Horror (talk) 20:16, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Some input needed on handling the critical reception for Dune (2021 film)

Some addition input would be helpful on the situation related to how to phrase the current critical reception around Dune (2021 film) in the lede. There's is discussion on the talk page Talk:Dune (2021 film)#On the statement in the lede about criticism. --Masem (t) 21:52, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Merge proposal

It has been proposed that List of fictional librarians be merged into Libraries and librarians in fiction. Seeking your feedback at Talk:List of fictional librarians#Merger proposal. Thanks. --Historyday01 (talk) 13:24, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Indaba 2021 is here!

Hosted by the Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda, the first ever virtual Wiki Indaba conference is taking place online from the 5th to the 7th of November 2021 under the theme Rethink + Reset : Visions of the future.

Wiki Indaba 2021 is a unique opportunity to come together to build the capacity of African Wikimedians both within the continent and the diaspora to foster the growth of the coverage and our involvement in Wikimedia projects.

The call for submissions is open, please submit your session proposal either as a presentation, panel discussion, lightning talk, or workshop before September 24th 2021.

Most importantly, we would like to have you at the conference, please register here to get your free ticket and spread the word to your community members.

Looking forward to seeing you and hearing you speak at the conference.

Geoffrey Kateregga (talk) 23:45, 16 September 2021 (UTC) - On behalf of the Wiki Indaba 2021 Local Organizing Committee

Rotten Tomatoes and auto-updates

Hi. I know there was a thread about this somewhere, but I've just seen this go live for the first time (here). I guess some of your watchlists might be busy! More info at this BotReq. Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 08:16, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

Source check?

Is anyone able to check the source(s) added with this edit to Alag? My browser isn't resolving them and I'm not sure they address the claim that the film is based on Powder. Thanks for checking! DonIago (talk) 15:26, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

The link just redirects to https://www.bollywoodhungama.com/movies/ for me, so the claim fails WP:V. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 16:03, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Lugnuts. I thought I was seeing that redirect as well, but because wherever it was taking me wasn't resolving I didn't want to jump the gun. DonIago (talk) 16:13, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

Archived version of the review before it was redirecting. Still don't think it passes WP:V given that it's a reviewer making a comparison, not saying that it is actually based on Powder—even though the similarities seem very obvious but that's WP:OR. ~Cheers, Ten Ton Parasol 16:33, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks folks. I've removed the claim and messaged the editor to clarify that a reviewer comparing two films isn't a claim that one is based upon the other. Cheers. DonIago (talk) 00:22, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

RFC at Hugh Jackman

There's an RFC at Talk:Hugh_Jackman#RFC_about_listing_singer_in_lead_sentence about whether or not to list singer in the lead sentence. Feel free to participate. JDDJS (talk to me • see what I've done) 16:22, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Rotten Tomatoes summaries

Is there any guidance about RT summaries being quoted? To me, it feels like privileging a single aggregator more than we should in defining critical consensus, and it also has a more cosmetic problem of making every. film. article. sound. like. a. formula. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 20:02, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

I don't think there's any official guidance, but I also am against their overuse. They basically headline every film reception article, pushing the view of RT editors over the other reliable sources the article cites. Not sure how it became so widespread to quote anonymous (unvetted) and opinionated summaries from a review aggregator. Putting it on every article makes our reception sections subordinate to Rotten Tomatoes and diminishes the actual reliable sources that follow. Opencooper (talk) 23:30, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

There is the essay at WP:AGG which sums up common views on their usage. There is also some MOS guidance at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Film#Critical_reception. There does seem to be a relentless push to add them to every article and standardize the wording. I'm not a fan of including them on articles about older films, especially when there is only a handful of reviews, or in the case of something like Citizen Kane where superior commentary is available. But where we do include them, their coverage should fit in organically with the style of the prose and they shouldn't be regarded as the ultimate arbiter of critical opinion. Ultimately, they survey a few hundred critics at most from Anglophone countries, and even then Metacritic can draw to different conclusions after surveying many of the same critics. Betty Logan (talk) 00:27, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I prefer to include it. I don't feel that it "privileges" Rotten Tomatoes. If other review aggregators offer a similar feature, are they not allowed to be included? Also, when you use analogous information in many different articles, it necessarily results in a formulaic structure since there's only so many different ways you can include it. Doesn't every film article pretty much start with TITLE is a YEAR COUNTRY GENRE film directed by DIRECTOR... etc? Wikipedia articles usually have a similar style, which is a good thing. It's supposed to be an encyclopedia and should be predictable. If you feel strongly that an article should not include the critical consensus, you can try removing it, but someone will probably add it back anyways. I will say this. Not everyone wants to read a couple of individual reviews to get try to get a feel for the critical response to a movie. Something like the critical consensus by Rotten Tomatoes is concise, generally accurate, and summarizes many reviews at once which is simply different than including a few individual reviews. Given the prevalence of the critical consensus in Wikipedia articles, many others apparently feel that the RT critical consensus is useful.

Regarding the bias towards English/Anglophone reviewers, there's nothing to be done about that except to try to include other diverse reviews if possible. The alternative is to always mention such bias or to not include any reviews because of potential bias, which is ridiculous. It would be obnoxious to point out or try to avoid every potential bias, especially an English bias from an English website on the English Wikipedia.

I have not seen prose which pushes the RT summary over other sources or indicates that the RT consensus is "superior" in any way. If your opinion is simply that including it is detrimental in some way, then we just have a difference of opinion. Winston (talk) 08:21, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Within any given project – film, video games, music, etc. – member editors have a tendency to push for conformity across similar articles. That conformity is usually based on the result of past discussions, and its natural to keep rolling with what works. Of course, consensus can always change and conformity is not a requirement. If there's something in particular about the RT summary that's problematic and needs further discussion, let's discuss it, but appearing formulaic across articles isn't likely a strong enough reason to buck the trend. We incorporate MC's findings as well, including the categorical label applied by the aggregator (e.g. "generally favorable reviews). Multiple aspects are covered, and if additional aspects exist for any given article, then per WP:DUE we should include those as well to maintain neutrality.
As for RT detracting from the sources that follow, not sure I follow that line of reasoning, Opencooper. Perhaps you can provide an example to illustrate? Also implying that RT isn't really reliable compared to the "actual reliable sources" needs some elaboration, and going down that rabbit hole might actually be best explored in a separate discussion altogether. --GoneIn60 (talk) 09:30, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

I remember a discussion regarding RT way back when that likely revolved around an editor conforming RT prose across various articles and whether that was disruptive/desirable. My recollection is that I didn't really see an issue with articles formatting it in the same manner, and that it might improve readability, though it does make articles somewhat more generic overall. To be sure, not every article should be painted with the same brush (especially, say, films made before RT existed versus those made subsequently), but I'm not sure I'd have a strong objection to having a standard, or at least default, and I'm not sure I see how including the quote is problematic in this regard (though Betty's notes above would be well-taken). There is some room for discussion as to whether, if we don't include the RT quotes, we should still be including the MC quotes, though the latter do tend to speak more to the overall reception versus getting into details. There may be an argument that if RT is the only data being included in Reception that the quote should be avoided, as it might have a chilling effect on editors going digging for other reviews that would be quoteworthy? Anyway, I'm not sure I have strong feelings on this, but I'll certainly be curious to see where this goes. DonIago (talk) 14:10, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

The common practice is to include Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, and Cinemascore if they're available. If an article has Rotten Tomatoes and not Metacritic, then MC should be promptly added, provided it has enough reviews there to be relevant, but usually when one does, the other does too. I don't think there are cases where RT is the only data being included in Reception when it wouldn't be correct to fix it by adding Metacritic instead of considering removing RT. In some cases it may seem like there's an overreliance on RT because it is quick and easy to add and there are articles whose Critical response section is just that. But the problem there isn't that RT is there, it's that the reviews themselves aren't. If the desire is not to make RT seem too importing, it seems the solution is always include more info (both other aggregators and the reviews themselves), instead of trying to remove RT or RT's critic consensus. —El Millo (talk) 16:45, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

What do to about infoboxes for soundtracks in film articles?

Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Backlog elimination drive: Album covers is an effort to reduce the Category:Album infoboxes lacking a cover backlog, which has approximately 24,000 entries. Here and on the campaign's Talk page, editors are discussing how there are many film articles with infoboxes for soundtracks lacking cover art. The lack of images in these infoboxes is a major source of the backlog, but we're not sure how this can be resolved. Sometimes, soundtracks have unique covers, other times they are similar to film posters (fair use images). Do any project members here have ideas for resolving this issue? Comments welcome on the campaign talk page. Thanks! --Another Believer _(Talk) 15:07, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

They shouldn't have infoboxes. If it's not notable enough to have its own article, its not notable enough to need an infobox, and any info can be easily put in prose instead. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 15:10, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Honestly I wouldn't be in any rush to include covers in these cases; several films articles I've worked to FA status have included cover-less soundtrack infoboxes as there is no encyclopaedic value to another non-free file on top of the usual poster that most of these articles will have. Perhaps if the aim is to reduce a tracking category's contents, an amendment to the infobox template to allow the article to be opted out of the category if a parameter is/isn't checked might be a better option than adding non-free content to articles which may not need it. 𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 15:16, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. I have no issue with coverless infoboxes when appropriate, but we should not keep filling the maintenance category with entries which are unlikely to ever have a cover added. I don't know how to fix this issue, though, hence my note here. If any editors have a suggestion for where to go for help, please let me know, or feel free to invite those who may be able to help to this discussion. Thanks! ---Another Believer _(Talk) 16:02, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

The category is automatically populated by the infobox template itself. It should be possible to amend the template to only add Category:Album infoboxes lacking a cover if a given field is filled in (something like |coverneeded= yes) so that it is then only adding articles to the category when there's a need for it. As doing so now would empty the category it would probably be best done when you're finished with this current backlog drive and are satisfied that the remaining entries are those where a cover is not needed, so that we're starting with a clean slate. I could have a poke at the code involved and come up with the necessary addition, and then the project could decide if they're happy with that idea. 𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 19:53, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

You could suppress the category if the infobox is not in the lead, using Module:Is infobox in lead (as is done for the short description rn). Galobtter (pingó mió) 20:00, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

That is probably the best idea, if infoboxen that are not in the lead are unlikely to qualify for images. Another option would be to suppress the category if |type= is set to film/soundtrack/cast or whatever values make sense. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:45, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

What about a two step approach? Alter the template so that any infobox with |type = film/soundtrack etc is put into a Soundtracks sub category of Category:Album infoboxes lacking a cover. For greater clarity it could be combined with the Is infobox in lead module to create another subcat of non-lead soundtracks. These cats would allow the people on the cover drive the result they want - a parent category free of soundtracks, along with the chance to check the soundtrack articles for false positives. When an idea of the false positive rate has been arrived at, make the final alteration to the template to exclude those articles from the categories if needed. Alternatively you could just leave them in the sub-cats so there's a record of them and they're not wandering in the ether with an unknown status. - X201 (talk) 07:51, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Would it be possible to alter the template so it can be set at "needs_cover_art=yes" as a default that disappears when cover art is added or can be set to "=no" manually? And then, as part of the drive, infoboxes that don't need cover art could be set to "=no".--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 02:32, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Given that most film articles do not have a need for cover art specific to the soundtrack, I wonder whether it would be more prudent to make no the default. DonIago (talk) 04:31, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

That would have the result of being unable to check if someone forgot to add cover art, which would undermine the whole point of this discussion.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 17:37, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

It should be noted that Zmbro (talk · contribs) has been removing soundtrack infoboxes from film articles and linking to this discussion in their edit summary. I don't believe there's any consensus to support such removals at this time? DonIago (talk) 16:16, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Doniago Yes per the discussion above it was made clear that unnecessary infoboxes should be removed from articles. Film soundtracks that have actual pages should have infoboxes and an image but per that discussion, it came to the consensus that these articles shouldn't have infoboxes. – zmbro _(talk) 16:19, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

But in one case it's possible I misunderstood the situation. I'll stop for the time being. – zmbro _(talk) 16:24, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

I see DWB asserting that film soundtracks without their own articles shouldn't have infoboxes in the film's article either, but that hasn't been my understanding thus far and I don't see other editors commenting on that one way or another. MOS:FILM doesn't say anything about discouraging infoboxes for soundtracks without their own articles. I may have overlooked something? DonIago (talk) 16:41, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

I don't see a consensus for removal there. I see exactly one person saying they should be removed, and multiple other people talking about how to manage the infoboxes, with the implication being that they should stay in the articles. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:47, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

It is very well possible I misread something. I apologize and will stop until further notice. – zmbro _(talk) 16:54, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Ahoy there. I'm here via my watchlist. I wanted to make sure you were aware that, regardless of the consensus here, you were removing the infobox from video games in some cases, not films. MOS:FILM does not apply to video games, and MOS:VG has it's own guidelines about soundtrack inclusion. -- ferret (talk) 17:10, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Ferret Thanks for letting me know! Again, I apologize, I'll be extra sure to stay away from video game articles. – zmbro _(talk) 18:40, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Some film plots require more than 700 words

Especially if they display a nonlinear narrative and are more than 3.5 hours long.

Case in point: Once Upon a Time in America whose plot section runs the risk of becoming a contentious zone. AnyDosMilVint (talk) 10:21, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

The word count limits are less of a hard and fast rule and more of a best-case guideline, but that's not to say that we shouldn't try to keep things to a minimum where possible. Although this is a film that's four hours long--across two DVDs, at least on my copy--that doesn't mean that condensed, simplified wording, or glossing over/omitting minor plotlines or details, wouldn't be possible. Ultimately a summary should really convey the gist of something in essence, and more than 1300 words as it currently stands is definitely excessive. I would suggest asking for an uninvolved copyeditor to look at it, perhaps at WP:GOCE/R—someone who hasn't seen the film or at least is not particularly invested in it may be able to better cut it down by understanding which elements a lay reader would not need. 𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 15:07, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

We seem to have reached a consensus in the talk page and we've trimmed it down as much as we could, to the point that the "too long" tag has been finally removed. Trimming it down further would imply to start cutting important subject matter IMO. AnyDosMilVint (talk) 17:23, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

As someone with a BA in English and who's done a lot of work trimming down film plot summaries, and who is entirely unfamiliar with this film other than by name, feel free to drop a note at my Talk page if you'd like me to see whether I can tighten it up a bit. Cheers. DonIago (talk) 00:40, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Writing about fiction#Plot summaries of individual works mentions non-linear works. A plot doesn't have to be described in the same order as the work. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:55, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Noticeboard discussion on reliability of Pinkvilla, Meaww & Bollywood Life

There is a noticeboard discussion on the reliability of Pinkvilla, Meaww & Bollywood Life. If you are interested, please participate at WP:RSN § Pinkvilla, Meaww & Bollywood Life. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 02:07, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Empty categories

Hello, WikiProject Film,

There are two empty film categories, Category:Pages using infobox film with image size parameter and Category:Pages using Infobox film with incorrectly placed links. Empty categories are typically tagged for CSD C1 deletion except for a few limited types of categories and I just wanted to ask if these two were widely used by editors here. Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:24, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

As these are error-tracking categories I think we're better off keeping them, unless the error syntax they track is no longer possible. I'll throw {{Possibly empty category}} on them for now but if anyone objects they can be reconsidered for deletion if they're not actually tracking possible errors any more. 𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 01:33, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Don't delete them for currently being empty. {{Infobox film}} adds Category:Film articles using image size parameter. Module:Infobox film/track adds Category:Articles using Infobox film with incorrectly placed links. The two categories were moved yesterday without changing the actual tracking. They were nominated for speedy renaming by Gonnym. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:43, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

I made a remedial move to Category:Pages using infobox film with incorrectly placed links. – Fayenatic London 20:57, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick action. These categories are empty no longer! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:57, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Categorization question

RayDrum has taken upon himself the task of subdividing Category:English-language films by decade (e.g. Category:2000s English-language films) into individual categories by year (e.g. Category:2001 English-language films). There was no discussion of this change prior to entering into this endeavor. So, is this a useful update, or overcategorization? WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 16:02, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

The editor has been blocked as a sockpuppet and all of the categories have been deleted. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:58, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Wild Things Foursome, Editing to remove wiki warning

Rewrote this article https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Wild_Things:_Foursome to remove ~2700 characters as previously done in order to remove warning the article is too long and detailed. User:Edmont Edmount reverted my edit for some reason. I am asking Edmount to come here to discuss it. Missbellanash (talk) 08:00, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

I guess this is the right page, there's a link on the talk page to go here. In the article the first section has this: "Carson suspects his father of murdering his mother to gain her money. After a weekend party at his father's house on a Florida bay, Carson is arrested for the rape of Brandy Cox" The part I was after had something about 100+ million dollars, the reason is after watching the movie, there's a lot going on but 100 million was no point. It's not there now, the article I saw/read was LONG and mirrored the plot step-by-step. Is it good enough?

Missbellanash (talk) 12:51, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

List of film festivals in the United States

Just wanted to advise participants here that I've spun off the very partial and woefully incomplete US section in List of film festivals in North and Central America to a standalone List of film festivals in the United States. Because film festivals are a finite and narrowly-defined topic for which there's real encyclopedic value in listing them as comprehensively as possible, I'm of the view that this should be a "permit all verifiable members of the group" list under WP:CSC rather than an "only include festivals that already have Wikipedia articles to link to" list — however, I'm also of the view that we shouldn't presumptively redlink any entries that don't have Wikipedia articles yet, because some of them might not clear WP:ORGDEPTH as appropriate topics for standalone articles at all, so the rule should be "a verifiable film festival can be listed, but don't link its name until an article does exist".

I've expanded the list to an extent, adding more entries and starting to add reference citations to support them — however, it's a big job that I'm not inclined to tackle all in one shot, so I wanted to ask if anybody wants to help out by adding missing entries that you know about and/or some references. Again, nobody else should feel obligated to complete the entire list in one shot either, but even if you just want to tackle a few entries to help out that would be very much appreciated. Bearcat (talk) 16:47, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Inclusion on Black List notable?

A question has been asked if being added on the Black List should be included in an article at Talk:I.S.S._(film). More input would be appreciated. BOVINEBOY2008 01:11, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:The Conversation#Requested move 30 September 2021

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:The Conversation#Requested move 30 September 2021 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Vpab15 (talk) 18:47, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Spoiler concern in T2's lead

Feel free to weigh in at Talk:Terminator 2: Judgment Day#Mentioning Schwarzenegger as the good guy in the lead. --GoneIn60 (talk) 15:51, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

WGA considering a new writing credit

Felt the project should be aware that the WGA is considering adding an "Additional Literary Material" credit for all participating writers who do not otherwise receive writing credits. This would not alter the "Written by/Story by/Screenplay by" credits, and this new credit, if adopted, would be separated from those credits. This might be helpful for future films that have a lot of writers work on it, that it can be mentioned that that those not fully credited receive this. More info in this Deadline article. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 17:51, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Oh no, trying to explain it all in lay terms was already a ballache. Is the proposed change as simple as "everyone else gets a minor credit, but they're still going to fight about it"? Kingsif (talk) 16:29, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, yes, the goal is to give every writer who did X amount of work on a script to get some form of credit, even if that work doesn't justify them getting the full credits based on the percentages the WGA uses. The best example I saw in the Deadline article was likening it to TV series, where all writers get some form of credit, like "co-producers/story editors" etc. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 01:31, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

The Lake House

Can someone take a look at The Lake House (film) and tell me whether the tag at the top of the page is still applicable or not? I've been slowly working on the page for a while now and I think the tag's explanation is more applicable to the Production section rather than the entire article. -- Carlobunnie (talk) 03:13, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

It was tagged (justifiably) by MarnetteD four years ago, and the article was in a very different state back then. At a glance I would say sufficient progress has been made since then to remove the tag. In any case, if there are any remaining problems the tagging would need to be a bit more focused to direct further necessary improvements. Betty Logan (talk) 04:18, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Nice work Carlobunnie (and others) - As you have put in the effort I think you should have the honor of removing the tag. I would suggest that the last sentence of the "Home media" section needs a ref. Again thanks for your editing. MarnetteD|Talk 12:11, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you both for replying. I feel more comfortable with removing the tag having reading your comments. MarnetteD I haven't come across a satisfactory secondary source for that yet (short of citing the dvd itself), so if it's not too much trouble, would you mind lmk if you find anything that could work? -- Carlobunnie (talk) 21:04, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

I did some searching and didn't find anything. I added a {{citation needed}} tag. That does mean another editor might remove the sentence some day. I'm not sure that the info helps in a readers understanding of the film but that is just me. Cheers. MarnetteD|Talk 22:09, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

I added the info because I saw similar details included in other film articles, so I thought it was okay to add. I have no issue w removing it though, if you think that would be better? -- Carlobunnie (talk) 23:30, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Let's wait and see if another editor takes care of it in the future :-) MarnetteD|Talk 00:37, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Imagery

There aren't any images provided for some viewers to view as examples. Some people use images as a way for them to focus, and others use it to find the information they need from a long article. Sairamaret (talk) 22:36, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

In most cases, editors run into WP:NFCC issues for non-free images, particularly WP:NFCC#3a and WP:NFCC#8. Editors are welcome to upload and add free, fair use images to WP:COMMONS if available. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 02:32, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Opinions needed about James Bond recurring film characters table

There's a discussion Talk:List of recurring characters in the James Bond film series#New table format that's becoming stale as a compromise between me and another editor doesn't seem possible due to opposing viewpoints. Third opinions are welcome. Details on the different options available will be at the discussion. —El Millo (talk) 12:33, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Where should videos of public domain films go in the article?

I recently did some fixing up of The General (1926 film). It's in the public domain, so the full film is available on Commons as File:The General (1926).webm. Currently, the file appears in the plot section, but I'd kinda like to see it in the lead. After all, we feature an image of a painting in the infobox for its article, and surely a video file of a film is as relevant to its article as that? I'm not sure if we'd want to replace the poster or add a new field to {{Infobox film}} for the file or something else. This question will become larger as more films enter the public domain, so I'm curious to hear others' thoughts. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:24, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

I don't think it belongs in the infobox or the lead. We include the poster in the infobox as the primary means of visual identification. The purpose of the lead is to summarise the contents of the article and state what is notable about the film. I don't think it is an appropriate location for supporting media. I prefer the approach taken at Debbie Does Dallas which provides a link to the film in the External links section, but if you are going to provide a thumbnail video file in the article itself then either the plot section or the home media section would seem to be a sensible place to host the file. I agree with you that this is going to become more an issue so it would be sensible for the project to provide some guidance. Betty Logan (talk) 07:49, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

I'd agree with Betty's take, of putting a link to it in the external links section, but a thumbnail, if desired in the plot or release/home media section as appropriate. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 16:37, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

I'll also point out for PD works that may not yet be on commons, {{external media}} provides a way to give a link in the body of the article (but this can also be used for relevant copyrighted pieces that may be of interest, such as a behind-the-scenes featurette in a production section) --Masem (t) 16:48, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Bot to auto-update Rotten Tomatoes scores with Wikidata

Hi, the bot just made some trial edits. Check out the bot request for approval. Winston (talk) 02:09, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Should we mention actor auditions?

160.2.211.63 (talk · contribs) has been adding a lot of casting information to a lot of film articles, but sometimes it's little more than "X auditioned for the role of Y." They are at least providing presumably reliable sources, but I question the value of simply mentioning that an actor, even a blue-linked one, merely auditioned for a role that they did not get. I presume that many actors audition for many roles. Thoughts? DonIago (talk) 16:53, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

I'd say it's context-specific. Some notable actors being considered for a landmark role is worth nothing (Sean Connery as Gandalf or Tom Selleck as Han Solo, for example) but there's no need to be exhaustive. It is however the kind of information that makes a cast section a bit more encyclopaedic than just an imdb-style raw list of names, so I'd say I'm more for than against. 𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 16:57, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

I would go a step further and ask, "what was the level of consideration?" If someone says, "Peter Jackson considered Sean Connery," but he was never actually contacted or auditioned (i.e., in the running) then how relevant is it? That's less consideration and more fleeting thought. If Connery actually auditioned and it came down to him and McKellan, then absolutely it should be mentioned because the context shows there was real consideration for a different actor. BIGNOLE (Contact me) 18:59, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

IMO this falls under WP:NOTDIRECTORY. As mentioned there will be exceptions but those can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. If we need to add something about this to WP:FILMMOS it has my full support — Preceding unsigned comment added by MarnetteD (talk • contribs)

Thanks folks. It sounds to me that in the general case, at least, if the most that can be said is that an actor auditioned for a role, then that's probably not appropriate for inclusion. I don't know whether an MOS update is really warranted as I've only seen this one IP making these changes, though they are making a lot of edits. I'm assuming they mean well, but would encourage other editors to review their contributions as well in case there are larger issues. Cheers. DonIago (talk) 02:35, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Superhero film character articles

I wanted to bring this to the attention of WP:FILM because it's something that's beginning to get a little out of hand. So a lot of comic book characters have appeared in the MCU, DCEU, and such. Normally we used to just link back to the main character articles (like Batman, Iron Man, etc.), and it was an anomaly for an incarnation of a character who appeared in a film to receive his/her own article—it only happened in extraordinary cases like Joker (The Dark Knight). Nowadays, pretty much every single superhero who has appeared in an MCU or DCEU movie gets their own standalone article specifically about that incarnation of the character. It's gotten to the point that Steppenwolf (DC Extended Universe)—a character who only appeared in two versions of the same movie—is an article that exists.

This is problematic, unencyclopedic, and pure fancruft. Not to mention, most of the standalone articles are 100% unnecessary; in cases like Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series), Peter Parker (The Amazing Spider-Man film series), and Peter Parker (Marvel Cinematic Universe) (three separate articles about the exact same character), everything important could neatly be summarized in Spider-Man in film. Anyone have any ideas on the course of action we should take here? JOE BRO 64 22:46, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Follow the instructions at {{Merge}}. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:50, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

I don't think this is just a simple merger issue. There are probably well over a dozen of these articles. JOE BRO 64 02:35, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

There was a very lengthy disussion about this issue among MCU editors a few months ago, and we now have guidelines about which characters qualify for standalone articles at WP:MCUCHARACTERS. While other franchises (such as the DCEU and X-Men films) don't have taskforces, they can still follow this model. InfiniteNexus (talk) 03:06, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

My inclination would be to merge these articles where possible. I'm seeing large amounts of uncited/fancrufty material that could be culled. Large chunks of the various Peter Parker articles are merely lengthy plot summaries. Information about specific costume design etc for specific films can be covered in articles for those films and, where they're relevant enough to the big picture, summarised in the main Peter Parker/Spider-Man article. Popcornfud (talk) 10:26, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

I would agree with calls to merge these articles; they do all seem to cover a core concept which can be covered in one article. It might not be the most pertinent example but I did work on the Richard Roma article which covers multiple adaptations of a work, for an example of how to discuss a character being portrayed by multiple actors (for example, breaking up critical reception of the role distinct from any portrayal); it doesn't touch on the issue of separate plot lines or anything but we should always be keeping these to a minimum anyway. 𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 10:34, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

I completely oppose to merging non-comic articles into comic articles. Comic articles are from my experience mostly garbage articles. Unfocused, unreferenced and with almost no value, either encyclopedic or even plot-wise. The film and TV articles on the other hand (in general) are the exact opposite with a clear focus. Gonnym (talk) 10:59, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Wouldn't the best solution be to merge the articles into their ideal place and then make them not suck? Popcornfud (talk) 12:58, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

No. Having a clear focus to an article is the foundation of a good article. Having a comic-central article with a giant "in other media" sections which is unfocused and full of one-liners isn't the solution. The MCU articles for example, have very little in common with the comic article. A reader wanting to read one very likely does not want the other. When they do, there are "see also" links available. Gonnym (talk) 13:13, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

There's probably a lot that can be done with the Spider-man in film article and the three above articles to actually break up that film article and discuss the three sets of films (Raimi's, "The Amazing", and the MCU set) as films as to remove some wasted cruft in the first article (the "Recurring cast and characters" table is useless outside of three notable roles), and then those three character articles now turn into film series articles (far more notable on their own), and the character can be discussed in context of the series. As a further benefit, the "Appearances" sections get nuked in favor of the normal short summary of each film that should be on that page. But that's only a solution that works for the Peter Parker articles. I totally agree all these spinouts (typically to allow expansion on regurgitation of film plot) is absolutely unnecessary. --Masem (t) 13:20, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Splitting one subject into multiple articles just because some elements of the subject material are better-written or sourced than the rest isn't really a valid forking reason; and there is no reason to suppose that the article should be "a comic-central article with a giant "in other media" section" if it is properly written. We cover articles for characters who span multiple media all the time; Sancho Panza, Prince Hamlet, Robin Hood to name a few, it's hard to see why Spiderman should be an exception to this. 𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 13:26, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, saying we shouldn't merge because "comic character articles suck" is a pretty bad reason not to merge. If anything, the merging process should provide incentive to improve the comic character article. JOE BRO 64 15:25, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

I had some similar thoughts when I started this thread: Wikipedia_talk:Notability/Archive_66#More_fiction. FANCRUFT and plot-only/mostly be gone, but if there's a lot of money involved, there's often WP-usable coverage. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:57, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

I do not see any compelling reason to pursue widespread merging. Film-incarnation characters are much more well-covered by secondary sources than their comic-book counterparts, so to simply merge film-related coverage to the comics articles would be to create undue weight. The film-incarnation character articles should be considered properly split off in its own scope. For example, I doubt that Steppenwolf will ever have more than a Start-class or C-class article about the original comic-book character. From what I've seen, such characters simply are not being covered in secondary sources. In contrast, film incarnations are on a bigger stage and subject to much more critique about their design and their behavior, and we see that with even Steppenwolf. I'm sure there could be some cases where merging makes more sense, but to dismiss the majority of it as merely "fancruft" is disingenuous. These films have very large audiences and as part of that have a ton of secondary-source coverage, so it's no surprise that there can be film-incarnation character articles. Furthermore, I see the organization of content as scope-driven. The related films' articles have a lot of content, mostly grouped by the nature of the production. Film character articles have a different scope to focus more on a particular element. That's my take anyway. I don't find these articles detrimental, and as a reader, the availability of articles with this kind of scope is appreciated. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 19:13, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Fyi, a very good example of an article on a film incarnation of a character exists at Portrayal of James Bond in film. IronManCap (talk) 19:51, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

And now we have Venom (Sony's Spider-Man Universe). This is getting completely out of control. JOE BRO 64 00:04, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Merger proposal

Made a merger proposal here for the film The Constant Gardener and a related page, hasn't gotten any traction there so I'm listing it here for more attention. QuietHere (talk) 04:04, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Merger proposal on Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (soundtrack)

I have started merger discussion about Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (soundtrack), located at Talk:Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason#Merge soundtrack article? --George Ho (talk) 11:58, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

BFI, AllMovie and years listed

There is a discussion ongoing at Talk:Umberto Lenzi filmography on the use of the British Film Institute and AllMovie to cite the release years of films. Any input on this would be welcome. 𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 13:40, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Release dates and prior-day early showings

To take an example Dune (2021 film) officially opened Oct 22, 2021 (the typical Friday), but as typical with films, there were early theater shows the evening before, and because this was on WB's day-and-date for HBO Max, it was also available to watch on Oct 21, 2021 roughly 6pm ET, since WB knew. (This is sourced too). The question is: what then is the wide release date for the film for lede/infobox purposes? --Masem (t) 13:31, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Many movies that officially open on a Friday in the US actually start screening on Thursday nights, but we (and most sites) list them as opening on Friday anyway. Looks like HBO Max is simply sticking to the day-and-date model. I don't see how this has to be treated any differently from any other movie that officially opens on a Friday but in reality on Thursday. Nardog (talk) 14:21, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

That would be my thought too, that the "early Thursday showings" is a happenstance of the official Friday release date, and for WP's purpose, we should stick to that official one. In the case of Dune (being an highly anticipated film), noting in prose about early showings/HBO Max is fair but I don't think the infobox should reflect that. --Masem (t) 14:24, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

In the body maybe, but not in the infobox. Unless otherwise noted, those release dates are to be understood as the dates of theatrical release (although that's changing thanks to streaming and the pandemic). Nardog (talk) 15:01, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Language at Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (film)

There is an ongoing discussion regarding the use of the phrase "wheelchair-bound" taking place at Talk:Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (film); any additional input would be welcome. 𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 15:53, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Copy vio question

Does anyone here know how to check for a copy vio? I found this La_Dolce Vita#Plot (which I have already tagged for length) and it seemed mighty specific for it to have been created from scratch on WikiP. I thought I'd ask here first before proceeding to the other places to report these. Thanks for you time. MarnetteD|Talk 22:16, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Earwig might be your best bet for this. ᵹʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 22:31, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank ᵹʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ. I've never run one of these reports before so I am not completely sure how to process the results. The report shows two sites over 90%. The Classic Arts site acknowledges WikiP. But this wordpress entry doesn't. I think I'll ask Diannaa to take a look. MarnetteD|Talk 23:09, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

That Wordpress article seems to have cribbed from Wikipedia rather than the other way around--it's dated February 2014, whereas the article in 2012 had the same plot description. It still needs a stern, stern trim but it doesn't appear to be a copyvio there. ᵹʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 23:20, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your work on this. MarnetteD|Talk 00:55, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Additional suggestions: you can check to see if the suspected source webpage was ever saved in the wayback machine to try to pinpoint a date for its creation if the date is not shown on the page. Another idea is to use the Wikiblame tool and search for a unique phrase and see what date it was added to our article. Searching for the phrase "in search of new sensations" turns up this result from 2010 which also shows how the plot description grew through the work of a Wikipedia editor. So this particular article looks okay. Not all cases can be solved however.— Diannaa (talk) 13:15, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the additional explanation Diannaa. I have added both tools to my arsenal though I may need help in interpreting their results :-) MarnetteD|Talk 18:31, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Infobox discussion

While I'm sure most of you have the film infobox on your watchlists I'm leaving this link Template talk:Infobox film#Subtitle parameter so those of you who don't can add your input. MarnetteD|Talk 17:15, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Is it only considered a "directorial debut" if it's a theatrical release?

Kevin Bacon has directed two films. Losing Chase, a 1996 film that first debuted on television though later received a limited theatrical release, and Loverboy (2005 film), which had a standard theatrical release. Currently, both films have a category considering it to be his directorial debut. An editor on my talk page has mentioned that the criteria for List of directorial debuts appears to be theatrical releases, and that since Losing Chase first appeared on TV, it should not be considered a directorial debut, even though a reliable source explicitly calls it that). Does it have to be a initial theatrical release to be a directorial debut? Which of the two films should hold the title? It seemed obvious to me his first film should have the title regardless of what format it was released in, but I'm no expert in terminology in this area. Damien Linnane (talk) 00:58, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

The list is mostly unsourced, which is not ideal. Sometimes this is not a problem in obvious cases but it can be complicated. Take Spielberg for example: that list includes Firelight, which is essentially a student film that has never been released, and Duel—which had a theatrical release in Europe—is overwhelmingly regarded as Spielberg's feature film debut, despite not having a theatrical release in the United States. If there is a reliable source explicitly referring to the earlier film as Bacon's debut then that takes precedence over editorial opinion. Betty Logan (talk) 01:31, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

It should not matter whether it is film, television or stage. A debut is a debut. I would suggest that the categories need to be specific to the format. MarnetteD|Talk 17:15, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

I think the only thing that should cause any disqualification is unreleased material; "début" implies a showing so someone's first directorial effort going unreleased might mean their second, third etc film may be their first one released and therefore their début, but the medium should not be a factor here. If there's any doubt or if sources seem to contradict, then we can also just not specify what we don't need to—if someone had directed television films before but sources refer to their first theatrical release as their début film, then we can simply skip the query and be specific with "début theatrical film", etc. ᵹʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 23:39, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Very short plot section

First off Wild Things (film series) of films are bad. Terrible film aside, I'm asking for other opinions about a very short plot section. (I vaguely recall past discussions where some editors expressed the opinion that a very short plot section was not a problem and that there was no need for a lower recommended length.)

The plot section of the article for fourth film in the series Wild Things: Foursome was bloated and at various stages exceeded 800 words, sometimes far in excess of that. (The last almost acceptable version was from 2018 and the plot section was then only just a little over 700 words.[1]) An editor recently (start of October) shorted the plot section way down to just 230 words[2], but this seemed excessively short to me and I added the {{more plot}} tag. That tag was reverted repeatedly without any explanation (until very recently).

The other editor eventually responded but I'm having difficulty understanding their apparent unwillingness to expand the plot section closer to the 400-700 words that the WP:FILMPLOT guidelines recommend and their flat rejection of my suggestion that the it would be better to have a slightly too long plot section than a very short one.
I think it would be better to restore the older version of plot section from 2018 that was just slightly over 700 words than to have an excessively short plot section of just 230 words. -- 109.76.200.55 (talk) 23:24, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

There is likely a happy medium here—if there are any major details missing from the current short version, they can be worked into it to expand it while still ending up below the 700 word mark. I haven't seen the film so don't know what's actually important on-screen but it seems like bringing the current version closer to 400 words would be a good compromise. ᵹʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 23:33, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

The only thing that seems to unify the series is that they have convoluted crime thriller plots that are largely unexplained until a big infodump right at the end. As I said the films are terrible and I haven't seen the fourth either myself, but it does not seem like the plot has been fully explained in 230 words. Frankly with a film as bad as this series, it better serves readers to have a more detailed plot description so that they can read it and avoid watching the film entirely. If you look at the discussion Talk:Wild Things: Foursome maybe it will make some sense to you than it did to me, but compromise did not seem likely. Even so, to move towards a compromise version I believe we would need to either reinstate the {{More plot}} tag until it is expanded, or restore the ~700 word version until someone wanted to trim it back. -- 109.76.200.55 (talk) 00:02, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Honestly, if it's particularly convoluted it might be best to oversimplify it—one of those byzantine plots that's full of red herrings may make sense as you watch it over the course of 90+ minutes but can read very turgidly. I'd suggest perhaps merging the last list into the prose to provide a little more context for each character, while the section Scenes in the end credits reveal a deeper truth about the many crimes and how they came to fruition. A mastermind is revealed who is a career con artist who used impersonation to further his plans to steal the Wheetly fortune. The show closes on a well-planned, years-long confidence game that has been resolved. could probably be spelt out instead of hinted at (who is the mastermind, what is the resolved con?) without going into too much detail. Ultimately many of these films that no one has any real love for can go neglected for a while since few people will be inclined to see them just to aid the article, so the tag itself may languish for a long time if just added and left there. ᵹʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 00:37, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

The question I was asking might not have been clear enough, so I will restate it: is a slightly too long plot preferably to a an extremely short plot summary? -- 109.76.200.55 (talk) 00:48, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps a better question: can the slightly too long plot be trimmed down? I personally find it easier to remove material from a plot summary than to add more, and that would resolve any WP:FILMPLOT concerns. DonIago (talk) 02:11, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

It would seem highly likely that the ~730 word plot summary could be trimmed slightly to bring it under 700 words. (While that is a better more specific question about how to improve the article, it is not a general question to ask Wikiproject Film.) -- 109.76.144.221 (talk) 02:38, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Ernest Bachrach

For reasons obscure to me, I've recently been on a Hollywood Golden Age glamour photographers kick. See Whitey Schafer. I'm having trouble narrowing down basic biographical details for Ernest Bachrach, who ran RKO Pictures's still department in the 30s and 40s. I'd love to be able to cite [3], but it's not an RS (I don't think). Ditto for [4] (auction catalogue). Ernest A. Bachrach (Q52150937) has all the non-RS database entries, which list dates of 20 October 1899 to 24 March 1973, born Manhattan, died Tarzana. Any sleuths who can find RS to confirm some or all of this? AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 02:51, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Why can't you cite the auction catalog? They do at least as much checking of provenance and facts as most newspapers.

The LA Daily Mirror Article points to "American Cinematographer" and if you can figure out which issue they were referring to you might be able to reference their archives instead. (Found a mention of Bachrach winning an award in a really old copy of American cinematographer 1934 in case that's any use.) The author of LA Daily Mirror Larry Harnisch seems to be a former writer for the LA Times, you might be able to make limited use of his website as a reference in certain circumstances if all else fails, you can always ask on the article talk page and try to get local consensus.

Good luck. Keep digging. -- 109.79.177.13 (talk) 13:50, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Help for article creation

Please see this thread Wikipedia:Help desk#When is a film without reviews notable?. I know that several of you have excellent research skills so if you can track down any info to help it would be most appreciated. MarnetteD|Talk 04:19, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Notability of Butkus Stallone?

I have been thinking...is the dog Butkus Stallone (who was in Rocky and Rocky II as you'd know) considered notable enough for his own, stand-alone article?

What do you people think? Antonio Yo Butkus! Martin (aha?) 09:23, November 4, 2021 (UTC)

Probably not, it has been deleted before: Butkus Stallone. Butkus doesn't even get a mention in the article Rocky or Rocky II so I'm not sure what makes you think there would be enough to write a whole article about the dog. If the dog already had a paragraph or two in those articles maybe I could see potential to split it out into a full article later. I see Butkus does get a brief mention on the List of individual dogs and that list might give you a better idea of which dogs people thought were notable enough to do the work to create their own articles. Not everything newsworthy[5] is worth including in an encyclopedia. That doesn't mean you couldn't start a draft article in your own userspace, and eventually prove me wrong. I wouldn't expect anyone else to start the article for you. (I'm not going to dig into the details of the WP:GNG but you probably should take a look at it.) I'm just one opinion, other opinions are available. Good luck. -- 109.79.178.190 (talk) 16:48, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your interest AM. IMO it would be tough to meet GNG for an article here at WikiP. It might be possible to add a brief mention in the Rocky article if sourcing can be found. Regards. MarnetteD|Talk 04:23, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Requested move: Mystery Girl (film) → Mystery Girl (The Naked Brothers Band)

An editor has requested that Mystery Girl (film) be moved to Mystery Girl (The Naked Brothers Band). You can participate in the discussion here.

The issue appears to be whether this is a film (which was aired in two parts) or a double episode of the TV series The Naked Brothers Band. Despite relisting, the discussion has not generated any engagement. It would be very helpful if editors with experience in this area could join the discussion. Havelock Jones (talk) 11:12, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Discussion on English titles vs. Italian in a filmography

Could anyone weigh in on discusison on whether to use an English titles versus the Italian titles for various films in the Umberto Lenzi filmography? The discusison can be found here. Thank you! Andrzejbanas (talk) 17:58, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Merger proposal on a Bridget Jones's Diary soundtrack

I started merger discussion about the article Bridget Jones's Diary: Music from the Motion Picture, located at Talk:Bridget Jones's Diary#Merge soundtrack article? --George Ho (talk) 23:51, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Remove Wikidata Rotten Tomatoes template

The RottenBot keeps adding the Wikidata Rotten Tomatoes templates for films. But it's a pain in the ass to edit it on another site and especially on a mobile. AbsolutelyFiring (talk) 00:48, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

The Months of African Cinema Contest Continues in November!

Greetings,

It is already past the middle of the contest and we are really excited about the Months of African Contest 2021 achievements so far! We want to extend our sincere gratitude for the time and energy you have invested. If you have not yet participated in the contest, it is not too late to do it. Please list your username as a participant on the contest’s main page.

Please remember to list the articles you have improved or created on the article achievements' section of the contest page so they can be tracked. In order to win prizes, be sure to also list your article in the users by articles. Please note that your articles must be present in both the article achievement section on the main contest page, as well as on the Users By Articles page for you to qualify for a prize.

We would be awarding prizes to different categories of winners:

Overall winner
- 1st - $500
- 2nd - $200
- 3rd - $100
Diversity winner - $100
Gender-gap filler - $100
Language Winners - up to $100*

Thank you once again for your valued participation! --Jamie Tubers (talk) 18:50, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

You can opt-out of this annual reminder from The Afrocine Project by removing your username from this list

Production notes for The Lake House

Moved from Talk:The Lake House (film) § Production notes

– Carlobunnie (talk) 00:03, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Does anyone know where the production notes came from/can be sourced? In my searches across to the web for information to the expand the article, I see these notes referred to from time time on websites I can't cite for obvious reasons, but no one says whether they were published in a book, or a website/blog by the writer or film producer, or whatever. I can't cite the notes directly if I don't know what format they were originally released in or where. Or if there are archives of it saved somewhere. Any help with this would be great! -- Carlobunnie (talk) 02:33, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

List of highest-grossing animated films of the 1980s at AfD

Hi. Please see this discussion. Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 09:32, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Pinocchio RM

If anyone wants to stick their nose into this requested move, feel free to do so. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 09:38, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

{{Rotten Tomatoes prose}} used in 100+ articles

{{Rotten Tomatoes prose}} is now transcluded in 100+ articles. Although the TfD was closed as keep, I don't see consensus to use it, and transcluding it (as opposed to WP:SUBST) strikes me as running counter to Wikipedia:Template namespace#Guidelines #1. Can we revisit this, especially now that we have {{RT data}} and RottenBot running? Nardog (talk) 15:03, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

The 10 most-viewed, worst-quality articles according to this Wikiproject

c 65 Army of Thieves 322,737 10,410 Stub Unknown

129 Dark Side of the Ring 228,155 7,359 Stub Unknown
405 Madam Chief Minister 125,341 4,043 Stub Unknown
488 One (2021 film) 116,797 3,767 Stub Unknown
530 Justice Society: World War II 113,115 3,648 Stub Unknown
575 I Am All Girls 108,711 3,506 Stub Unknown
628 Spirit Untamed 104,171 3,360 Stub Unknown
742 The Last Letter from Your Lover 94,778 3,057 Stub Unknown
845 Greater (film) 88,762 2,863 Stub Unknown
2 Radhe (2021 film) 2,038,627 65,762 Start Unknown

Wikipedia:WikiProject Film/Popular pages--Coin945 (talk)

Welcome to the Months of African Cinema Global Contest!

Greetings!

The AfroCine Project core team is happy to inform you that the Months of African Cinema Contest is happening again this year in October and November. We invite Wikipedians all over the world to join in improving content related to African cinema on Wikipedia!

Please list your username under the participants’ section of the contest page to indicate your interest in participating in this contest. The term "African" in the context of this contest, includes people of African descent from all over the world, which includes the diaspora and the Caribbean.

The following prizes would be recognized at the end of the contest:

Overall winner
- 1st - $500
- 2nd - $200
- 3rd - $100
Diversity winner - $100
Gender-gap fillers - $100
Language Winners - up to $100*

Also look out for local prizes from affiliates in your countries or communities! For further information about the contest, the prizes and how to participate, please visit the contest page here. For further inquiries, please leave comments on the contest talkpage or on the main project talkpage. We look forward to your participation.--Jamie Tubers (talk) 23:20, 30th September 2021 (UTC)

Ýou can opt-out of this annual reminder from The Afrocine Project by removing your username from this list

Sources for Indian Cinema

Hi, can tv series, or film series cast list have a cast which does not have any references or citation? There are a ton of wiki pages that have cast without citation, and they do not have any mantainence tag, but in some articles, many cast have been removed because they were unsourced. So, please clarify my doubt regarding this. Which is correct???Itcouldbepossible (talk) 13:36, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

The Worst Person in the World (film)

Hi. I don't know if anyone has seen this film and/or can help with the plot, but any work to make it more succinct would be most welcome. Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 10:33, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stephen Hogan

Article is Stephen Hogan. Borderline notability and AFD discussion is voluminous. Was deleted at AFD [6] and then creator went to DRV [7] and AFD was re-opened. Needs expert eyes. Softlavender (talk) 23:48, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Notability Guideline for Future Films

There is a Request for Comments concerning the guideline on notability of future films currently at the film notability talk page. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:38, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Here's the direct link: Wikipedia talk:Notability (films)#RfC: Should we replace the NFF policy with new text? —El Millo (talk) 05:22, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Individual Film Pages - Data point to add to the Sidebar at the Right

I would like for the Film sidebars (the ones giving the credits on the right side of the Wikipedia page) to list whether the film is in "Color" or "B/W." A good place to put this information would be above or below the "Running Time" datum.

Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:1C0:CF00:6590:0:0:0:DBB2 (talk) 15:44, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

conflicting information for box office gross

Oliver & Company's infobox says Box office>$121 million. The reference to https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0095776/ Shows only domestic, the "all territories" thing not working.

An American Tail has an infobox reporting $104.5 million. In the article it says The film has grossed up to $47 million in the United States and Canada, also known as the domestic box office, and $84 million worldwide.

Where is a reliable source of box office success? Dream Focus 14:35, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

There isn't one, The Numbers seems to report International Box Office as every single release ever, so if it was released 20 years later they just top up the BO with it, they don't separate it out. BOM has wildly varying figures that might deviate from one page to the next or be impossible altogether. I've just started adding ranges, for older films it's difficult to find exact figures. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 14:55, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

RfC on whether and how to cover J. K. Rowling's trans-related views in the lead of her article

FYI

– Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Talk:J. K. Rowling#RFC on how to include her trans-related views (and backlash) in the lead

I am "advertising" this RfC more broadly to relevant pages because someone selectively notified three socio-political wikiprojects that are likely to vote-stack the RfC with a single viewpoint, and the article already has a long history of factional PoV editwarring.

Central matters in this discussion and the threads leading up to it are labeling of Rowling, labeling of commenters on Rowling, why Rowling is notable, what is due or undue in the lead section, and whether quasi-numeric claims like "many", "a few", etc. in this context are legitimate or an OR/WEASEL issue. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 01:36, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

The idea that WikiProject Feminism and WikiProject Women Writers are likely to vote-stack the RfC with a single socio-political viewpoint doesn't seem especially plausible, and nobody at the Rowling page has questioned the relevance to the lead of the film adaptations.

But by all means, we do need fresh eyes on the lead of the article, which has seen a good deal of whitewashing and FALSEBALANCE POV-based editing. Newimpartial (talk) 02:16, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Home media releases

This template features dozens of articles on the home media release of every single film. See 2020 in home video as an example. There are over 1000 films listed in just this article. Most of them contain references to Blu-ray.com. You may know that this source was recently classified as unreliable (WP:RSP/BLURAY). My questions are: Do these articles fall under WP:LISTCRUFT? Should they be merged? Can they be deleted? Some Dude From North Carolina (talk) 18:16, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

In the context of what's provided in the articles thus far, I'd say they don't really justify their existence; home video information (hopefully with more useful context) for said films should exist at those respective articles, and if they aren't notable enough to have an article then they shouldn't be on a list. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 19:03, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

The_Ice_Age_Adventures_of_Buck_Wild

Could someone from the group please take a look at Draft:The_Ice_Age_Adventures_of_Buck_Wild. Given the coverage and the fact that it is now 2 months to release, is it ready for mainspace? Frankly it is more complete than 90% of drafts I see there.Naraht (talk) 07:16, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

@Naraht: While the film satisfies the guidelines at WP:NFF regarding animated films, I don't think the draft itself satisfies WP:GNG. Personally, (and this may be noted somewhere on the site as well) I use a rule of thumb of about 20 reliable sources in an article to consider it notable. There are currently 11 in the article, and I also notice some text in the production section without sources attached. So this needs some additional work still or more time for more sources to come through. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 16:58, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Favre1fan93 Could you please respond at WP:AFCH in the appropriate section. (As for number of reliable sources, I've built articles on fraternities that have merged into others on a page in the 1935 Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities and two yearbooks. :) )Naraht (talk) 18:31, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Content fork

I came across the article Warner Bros. Pre-World War II, which seems like a content fork of the main Warner Bros article; it was also written as a WikiEd assignment. Any thoughts on what should happen to it? Rfl0216 (talk) 03:20, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Any info that can be pulled out from it and merged to the WB article is probably the best thing that can be done. It needs an editor with the time and inclination though :-) MarnetteD|Talk 03:36, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Horror films, genre wars and sockfarms

Hi. Can anyone help with this query at WP:AN? Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 20:14, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

They found the person to be a a sock - see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Jinnifer. Hopefully this will help remind us of who this is in the future :-) MarnetteD|Talk 19:37, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Film ratings

As someone who goes through years of movies to see what I might want to watch, it would be very useful if there were a couple more ratings added than just Rotten Tomatoes and a few critics. Such as IMBD, Metacritic, MovieLens, and also adding user reviews to critic reviews (like critics gave the movie a 60%, and user ratings was 73%). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Weagesdf (talk • contribs) 17:40, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Feel free to use a completely different website actually designed for film recommendations, thanks. Kingsif (talk) 17:41, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Not IMDb, as it only uses audience reviews, which are not reliable. —El Millo (talk) 17:47, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

User ratings should not be added since anyone can review a film, even without watching it. Some Dude From North Carolina (talk) 17:59, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

I think MOS:FILM#Audience reception covers this pretty well. DonIago (talk) 18:17, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

There's also WP:FILMRATING. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:03, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Not really; that speaks to the rating of the film's content (i.e. MPAA ratings of G/PG/R/etc.), not audience reception. DonIago (talk) 20:41, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Vesey Alfred Davoren up for deletion

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL
Vesey Alfred Davoren (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs|google) AfD discussion

Has a big filmography. Was a silent film star. Certainly there are obituaries. Worked in the industry for five decades. For search purposes, he appears best known as Vesey O'Davoren. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 19:10, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

IP Vandalism-ish posts

This is probably a known issue, but I keep running into this. This IP address just made a HUGE pile of edits to various film articles: Special:Contributions/184.148.35.203 If you look back through the history of those articles, (for example, Sunset Boulevard (film) or Billy Wilder) you see that whoever this is is continuously doing this, from one IP address after another, to the same subset of articles. (They really like the original Starbucks, too, for some reason)

Most of the edits are pretty trivial - inserting or removing words that don't substantially change the meaning. But some are stupid, like replacing the word "seven" with the word "each" on an oddly consistent basis. It almost feels like someone is trying to (badly) train a bot on the same subset of articles over and over.

Given the large range of IP addresses involved, is there anything to be done? Where should I be reporting this? Or is it worth the bother? PianoDan (talk) 23:22, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Benny Safdie

Crossposting from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Actors and Filmmakers: I have proposed on Talk:Safdie brothers that a separate page for Benny be made, on account of his career beginning to expand beyond his filmmaking with his brother and including more solo acting ventures. Rusted AutoParts 00:24, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Question re upcoming films, AfC, NFF, films selected for film festivals

I have some questions. I've recently been accepted as an AfC reviewer. I participated in the discussions pre- and during-RfC re NFF so I'm not completely in the dark about WP:NFF policies.

A particular editor is editing re 2022 Sundance Film Festival (note: a future event itself), including submitting some upcoming film articles to AfC (one of which I declined), and moving some articles from user-space (like this edit) with comments indicating he thinks that selection to participate at Sundance means a film is notable. I disagree (per WP:NFF). I know Sundance is one of the top five film festivals, but still. Looking through the list of films at 2022 Sundance Film Festival that are wikilinked as 'selected to show at festival', I don't find a single one of the film articles satisfying NFF at this time. I'm inclined to send all of them to draft, including:

(If anyone else with more experience or confidence feels one or more of these don't pass NFF, feel free to WP:DRAFTIFY them, and don't wait for this discussion/thread to play out.)

Nothing in WP:NFILM indicates that a selection for a film festival contributes to notability. WP:NFO does mention "The film has received a major award for excellence in some aspect of filmmaking". I'm not sure even after the event that each and every film winning an award satisfies "major award for excellence in some aspect of filmmaking". Just look at all the categories they award, here: List of Sundance Film Festival award winners. Surely any 'audience award' doesn't qualify (sounds like a popularity vote winner).

I feel like we're fighting an uphill battle from the fans and marketers. I feel like they're using Wikipedia as a mirror site to IMDb, or for more WP:SPAM to increase their advertising or search engine rankings.

Specific questions

Does anyone really think these films pass NFF at this stage?
Does selection for a film festival create definitive (or any) notability towards a film?
Does showing at a film festival create notability for a film?
What sort of awards at a film festival would contribute towards notability?
How much does level/quality/reputation of film festival — major, minor, mediocre festivals — contribute to the equation?

Platonk (talk) 04:39, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

From a quick look none of these articles should be moved to draft as they all pass WP:GNG which means substantial (several paragraphs) in multiple reliable sources regardless of WP:NFO. It seems you've got a hang up about pre-release films and consider that any suitable coverage needs to be extraordinary which is not the case. Also as you're not interpreting policy correctly you should step back from reviewing pre-releae films, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 04:35, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Atlantic306, I think you need to read the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Notability (films)#RfC: Should we replace the NFF policy with new text?. Platonk (talk) 05:24, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

User:Atlantic306 - The portion of film notability guidelines on pre-release films has been poorly written and contentious since 2008. It is my opinion that User:Platonk is interpreting it correctly as it is written, but that it obviously needs to be clarified because there have been at least two interpretations of it for at least 13 years. I agree that we are fighting an uphill battle from a combination of good-faith but overly enthusiastic editors (ultras) and marketeers. As I read the current guideline on future films, the coverage does need to be significant. I think that showing at a film festival should be considered a special form of release, and creates notability. My answers to questions 2, 3, and 5 are that it is a matter of balance. I haven't reviewed the specific films to decide whether they should be in article space, and may do that soon. Robert McClenon (talk) 07:10, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Being selected for a festival is absolutely not any indication of notability. There are all kinds of minor and tiny film festivals that pop up all over the place and screen all kinds of non-notable miscellany. If a film has already been screened at a film festival(s), that would only contribute (somewhat) to notability if the festival itself is major (and of course the festival should have a wiki article). Juried award(s) at a major festival does contribute to notability (the more famous the festival, the greater the award contributes to notability) . But IMO the bottom line for most is the amount of significant coverage in reliable independent sources (not interviews or blurbs/reviews/announcements in bloggish sources). Softlavender (talk) 07:59, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Comment I've looked at two at random, and 892 (film) has gone back-and-fourth from draft to main multiple times and Dual (2022 film) was created back in April 2020! Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 11:21, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

RFC that could affect this project

There is a titling RFC at Wikipedia talk:Article titles that will affect many articles at this project. There was discussion of making the RfC handled bit by bit before all projects understood the ramifications with entertainment being singled out next in a deleted draft, and other projects after that. Whether you agree or don't agree please join in the discussion for this massive Wikipedia change. Fyunck(click) (talk) 10:31, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

file:Noisy Cricket.jpg

posting here since the file talk page indicates that this project tracks that file. I swapped the file's sole use (the Agent J article) out for a free alternative, which I think English Wikipedia rules dictate should result in the nonfree file's deletion; but since I'm not very familiar with that part of editing, I'll let someone else handle that. Arlo James Barnes 14:25, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Notability

Hi. The sources of an animated feature film, Hitpig, says that the principal photography has commenced and the principal photography's location. But don't say the date. Will the film be notable in this case? Thanks. Firebanana (talk) 14:52, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

It is too soon, I think. An upcoming film should satisfy both WP:GNG and WP:NFF. While it may satisfy WP:NFF, I don't think it satisfies WP:GNG. It looks like several sources report the same information back in October 2020, but there hasn't been that kind of coverage since. Probably better to wait for more coverage. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 18:28, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

In development subsections for studio articles.

I've been noticing a purge on multiple studio articles of their "In Development" sub-sections, listing the films the studio are presently developing that might not have a full greenlight yet. THis is solely being enacted by @Some Dude From North Carolina: and I would prefer it if there was a more solid consensus over whether they should stay or go, given they've been a staple of these kind of articles for awhile, and may still be desired to remain. Rusted AutoParts 15:58, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Talk:List of 20th Century Studios films#Films in development and my talk page. Films in development fail WP:NFF. We can agree on that. They are not yet notable to have an article. We do not know if a film in development will ever be made or released. Should we include them in the lists of films by studio? They fail WP:NFF and WP:CRYSTAL so I say we should not. Pinging @Rusted AutoParts, ZX2006XZ, and Trivialist for input. Some Dude From North Carolina (talk) 15:58, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't especially consider them needless in my opinion. Studios have dozens of projects in their circulation all the time and most don't get officially announced as being in development or not. I wouldn't be put out should these subsections go away, but I see their use, and don't violate NFF given that more pertains to a film's individual article, not being on a list of a studio's potential projects. Rusted AutoParts 16:06, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

@Rusted AutoParts: I agree that "In development" sections have use. ZX2006XZ (talk) 16:31, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

In what way? A film is not notable if it has not entered production. Films in development have not entered production, so, they are not notable. There is no way of knowing if a film in development will be made, put on hiatus, or enter development hell. Some Dude From North Carolina (talk) 16:39, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

There are countless examples of films that haven't yet started production, but it's attempts to enter it were notable. Akira, Blood Meridian. I'm not suggeesting this makes every in development film notable but it can't be said that there aren't some that can be. Rusted AutoParts 16:48, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Some Dude From North Carolina. Studios are developing dozens of projects, if not more, at any given time, and statistically most of them won't get made. IMHO, until they enter actual production, including them falls violates WP:CRYSTAL, and including them in a Wikipedia article, even in a list, gives them a certain weight suggesting that they are closer to happening than they actually are. General readers may not understand that films in development are not guaranteed to be made. (And on a strictly literal level, they shouldn't be included on a list of films because they're not films yet!) Trivialist (talk) 00:04, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Rusted AutoParts that there is an important distinction between a film being notable enough to get an article (which should follow WP:NFF) and a film being notable enough to be mentioned as in development in another article. There are plenty of places where it makes sense to mention that a film is in development long before it begins filming, such as on the articles of those who are involved in the development (including studios) as well as any place that the source material for the film is discussed, but some thought does need to be made to how long it has been since there was news of the development (i.e. beware of films that are in development hell and are not actually actively being worked on). - adamstom97 (talk) 06:01, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

"See also" sections

Firstly, I hate see also sections. They're a whole top level section created to house maybe one or two links that are generally to just lists of films in the genre of that article's film. That is to confirm my bias hatred for these sections and their worthlessness. That said, what exactly should be in here? The manual of style says "The links in the "See also" section should be relevant, should reflect the links that would be present in a comprehensive article on the topic, and should be limited to a reasonable number. A "See also" section is not mandatory—some high-quality and comprehensive articles do not have one."

Now I question using a see also to add links to "List of [insert genre] films". It's relevancy is tenuous and is not something that would be present in a comprehensive article on the topic, these articles are literally just lists of films "potentially" in that genre, i.e. a user adding "list of christmas films" to Die Hard when it's very officially not a Christmas film and that view is a minority one. What does linking this article add to the topic at hand? I'm trying to gain a general view on if linking to such tenuous things is something we should ever actually be doing, while reiterating that such sections are not mandatory and that I hate, hate, hate them. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 16:24, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Not to pick a nit, but this might be a discussion better had at WT:MOSFILM since it concerns a potential style guideline. Sorry, I know I'm being picky here.

I'm not sure I have strong feelings on this one way or another...my gut says that if a List article is well-sourced and mentions film X, then it's reasonable to include a link to the list in the article for film X. But experience says that a lot of the time the List articles are not well-sourced/maintained (I've taken a hatchet to a few of them), and at that point it's probably not a great idea to link to the List, and a terrible idea to try to use the film's inclusion on the list to make any arguments about any characteristics of the film. I've had a couple of "If this film isn't an X film, why is it included on 'List of X films???'" arguments with presumably newer editors or ones less concerned about things like verifiability. DonIago (talk) 17:39, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

See also sections have use in topical articles. Maybe there's just less need in film articles since just about anything relevant (director, actors, etc.) are already wikilinked in the article. Platonk (talk) 18:27, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

I feel like "List of Christmas films" is something that should be linked when you mention it's a christmas film or something. Creating a subsection for a single link is unnecessary. But maybe MOS is a better platform for it. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 18:43, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

That's an interesting point, and I'd agree there's no need to SEEALSO it if it's linked within the article...there may be a policy/guideline about that? DonIago (talk) 18:45, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm struggling if this is about a specific instance or just like a general issue. Because I see no problem with well constructed "See also" sections and have, as a reader, greatly benefited from them. I'm mostly having a problem here discerning what the specific topic of discussion is? Overall, what should be included in the section is a matter of article-by-article basis ime. Also, WP:SEEALSO already states: "As a general rule, the "See also" section should not repeat links that appear in the article's body. ~Cheers, Ten Ton Parasol 18:51, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

A user is mass adding See Also sections to Christmas films that include a link to List of Christmas films. I've never seen any see also section that wasn't either linking to a completely unrelated film that happened to be in hte same genre, or just linking to a list article on tangentially related subjects. As I'm reading the Overall MOS Guideline the See Also links should be to enrich understanding of the current topic, and I don't believe listing to all films in the same genre to be an appropriate use. Frankly, that's what categories are for. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 18:55, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

That list is in poor shape, with many of the items on it lacking any sourcing, and it's been tagged since 2019. I just deleted a number of the unsourced entries, and I certainly wouldn't endorse linking to it for any films without sourcing. DonIago (talk) 19:10, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

@Doniago: Why would you remove bluelinked entries? They don't necessarily need citations. It's the non-wikilinked articles that need a citation to be included on the list. I'm going to revert your edit and add the article to the WP:CLEANUP guys to reformat and fix the article. Platonk (talk) 19:41, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Looking at the issue further, and looking at that particular user's activities, I don't think the issue is see-also section in general, but that these particular additions have been from individual standalone film or song articles to 'list of a particular subset of films/songs' of which the subject of the standalone article is a member. And that sort of addition is not necessary. It's a far stretch from reading about a Christmas film to then be directed to a list of all of them (several hundred, actually). It's like finding an article about myself and then at the bottom it says "See also List of Wikipedia editors" or "See also List of people who are not blind". No reader would care, and thus it violated MOS:SEEALSO's "A bulleted list of internal links to related Wikipedia articles. ... The links in the "See also" section should be relevant, should reflect the links that would be present in a comprehensive article on the topic." The purpose of see-also is to help the reader's understanding, not to be a navigation to alternative topics. That editor did a whole slew of edits to add see-also links to List of Christmas films, List of anti-war songs, and List of films about angels. Doubtful if any are desirable. Feel free to revert them. Platonk (talk) 20:36, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

A quick rule of thumb is not to add a link in a "See also" section when a category would do the job, unless it is defining - I think the Christmas film lists on Christmas film articles really toe the line when it comes to "defining"... but then if we get a situation where all films in the Christmas category also have the list linked, which is redundant? Kingsif (talk) 22:04, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree remove the lists and this editor's other similar additions, linking here is not useful. But, I agree with Platonk that this is not a problem with "See also" sections in general. It is a poor understanding of what that section is meant to be. ~Cheers, Ten Ton Parasol 22:26, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Hello users above who are talking about someone and, as Kamala Harris would say, that someone is me. Thanks to Platonk for finally alerting me on my talk page. Okay, I take it that the issue is the horror of adding 'List of Christmas films' to the See also sections of films included in that list, so readers would be alerted to a related page which would lead them to something they might be interested in during, say, Christmas season. And that "delete them all" cry for other relevant list distributions which, by the way, I and others have been adding for years without complaint except many years ago with 'List of vegans', which stayed on a case-by-case basis if the individual took their veganism as a defining term. Which brings us to Christmas films. Films which include Christmas as a basic plot point are Christmas films, by Wikipedia definition. The list includes the films so-defined. Hence it is fine for See also. A major mistake repeated above (and as an aside I love the opening comment, "I hate See also sections", jeez louise) is to conflate Categories and lists as one-or-the-other. Guidelines are clear that not only are categories, lists, and templates separate and equal things, but that they all complement each other. Covering a lot here, Christmas is coming and I will continue what editors have done for years, adding pertinent lists to See also sections. Randy Kryn (talk) 02:12, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
Generally speaking, I feel articles for which it was relevant enough would have available space somewhere in the article to be linked (such as the lede), and it would feel more appropriate such? Much in the way we link "fantasy film" or "romantic comedy" in the lede. This specific instance feels like if it's relevant enough to be listed in a "See also", it's better served linked to directly at the top, and if it wouldn't be mentioned in a one-sentence summary of the film, then it's not relevant enough for a "See also". And, generally, a lot of these lists do indeed feel a little egregious and just too tenuous. WP:SEEALSO also states, "should reflect the links that would be present in a comprehensive article on the topic", and I'm not sure every single item on "List of Christmas films" would actually NEED a link to that article to be comprehensive. ~Cheers, Ten Ton Parasol 02:26, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
How are you going to add a list name and link in the lead? That's something I haven't seen done (unless it's done so much it hasn't caught my attention as unusual). Just to be clear, I agree with you about not adding it to every film on that list, for there is a method to my madness: I'm not adding the See also to action or horror pages which use Christmas as a gimmick and not as one of a film's core themes (except for Die Hard which has gotten the reputation of being a Christmas film). And not adding it to other films which seem too tangential. Only to films where Christmas is an obvious defining feature. Randy Kryn (talk) 02:34, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
I would presume with a pipe the way Nutcracker: The Motion Picture, Babes in Toyland, Bad Santa 2, Christmas in Connecticut have it. (Those articles should not have a "See also" section for this reason.) Also, for what it's worth, looking at this list, I feel like both the list and the category might need a scope adjustment much in the way that a similar category was moved from "Category:Prisons in fiction" to "Fiction set in prison", because is a Christmas film one set during Christmas but ultimately about something else entirely or a film that is ABOUT Christmas, that season, or is traditionally associated with? ~Cheers, Ten Ton Parasol 03:25, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

@Randy Kryn: You want examples of how someone could weave a "List of..." article into an article? Here are some examples:

Die Hard uses is now considered one of the greatest action films, and is also often named one of the best Christmas films
George Washington uses Delegate
Taxonomy (biology) uses In botany, there is, in fact, a regulated list of standard abbreviations (see list of botanists by author abbreviation).
Borussia Dortmund uses The club have won eight league championships.

You could perhaps write "Film X is known as a Christmas film" instead of adding a see-also section.

Also, this isn't an issue about 'category versus list article' because no one has suggested that the list-article should be deleted. The issue is one of using "List of..." in a see-also section when Film X is simply one single element of a lengthy list-article and the list-article doesn't contribute to the understanding of Film X. It's a set/element issue for which categories are the ne plus ultra tool and the see-also section is a poor distant cousin.

Placing the "List of..." article prominently in the see-also section is also undue weight for most of those film articles. Platonk (talk) 03:36, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

As a side note, I doubt most readers of WP even bother scroll that far down an article to see the see also section. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 10:28, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

No Platonk, adding them is not undue, and has been done since I've been editing. This discussion borders on the surreal because lists are such a common part of See also sections. Lugnuts, hi, and you'd be surprised. After "See also" edit runs I go back and check the page views every once in awhile in the days, weeks, and months following, and they consistently have a steep upbeat which continues. It's an interesting phenomena and has given me unexpected proof that many readers read deep into articles and many have active interest in related pages. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:03, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

The layout guideline at WP:SEEALSO does not forbid "See also" sections but suggests when to use them. I see no problem with putting list article links in these sections because these do not naturally fit in the prose, especially in articles that are not going to be "high-quality and comprehensive". There is no need to shoehorn such links awkwardly into the article body if it can be in the "See also" section. We should promote cross-navigation of Wikipedia articles (nothing wrong with that particular bias), meaning that if a list article lists a film, then it should be possible for that film to link to that list article. Considering that these sections are at the end of the article body, and WP:SEEALSO does not express any kind of NPOV concerns, I do not see WP:UNDUE applying. Like if we have something like list of film controversies, if a particular film qualifies to be on that list, then the list should also qualify to appear in a film article's "See also" section. I've no problem with Randy Kryn's edits in general, and in the case of Die Hard, whether or not it is a Christmas film has been heavily discussed in reliable sources. Another consideration is that one can add text after the link, e.g., "List of Christmas films, among which Die Hard has been debated as one" or something like that. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 20:44, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Agree that it is better to have a direct link to a list in the see also section rather than burying it in the text to surprise the reader with an unexpected easter egg link as it were, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 02:39, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Per comments above, what benefit is there to linking to a list of all action films and despite arguing that it is different to a category, HOW is it different when both are just lists of films falling into a genre category? And creating a top level section for one link to an article that the film happens to be mentioned in, IS undue. Especially when something like Die Hard remains officially not a Christmas film, means its inclusion on the list is a falsehood unless it's "List of films that take place during Christmas". We don't link to obvious terms in articles either, even though that would improve navigation and traffic to other articles, linking to an arbitrary list of films unrelated by anything but genre is even less worth it. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 13:09, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

There is no such thing as list of action films. It's actually a list of lists that are grouped by decade, like other genre-type lists. So for an action film released this decade, list of action films of the 2020s would definitely be "tangentially related". And are you really arguing that there needs to be some "official" declaration that Die Hard is a Christmas film? I see that Die Hard has a big fat paragraph about how it relates to Christmas, and you're saying that it makes no sense to even give readers access to "tangentially related" information in any regard? Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 14:01, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

The "Is Die Hard a Christmas film?" thing is a meme, it's not a Christmas film. But even if it was, the only link we would need is to Christmas film which itself contains a link to List of Christmas films which is just a list. There's no need to create a top level section to house one link which would be accessed via Christmas film itself were someone so inclined and or interested. It's especially egregious because really, how many people are going to click that link in that top level section? 5? A year? Maybe 10? It's linked in 1,000 articles apparently and generating 2,000 views a day on average, so each article is contributing 2 clicks a day on average. That is this month, on average over 12 months it gets 318 hits a day which means each article with an unnecessary subsection for 11 months of the year is potentially generating 0.3 clicks a day. It does not help that Christmas film and Christmas films redirect to different articles and a separate discussion might be that content about Christmas Films and List of Christmas FIlms should really be merged and become "Christmas film" or "Films about Christmas" or something, to which all variations of "Christmas film(s)" redirect. But I think a direct link in prose should be the most involved it gets, because each of these proposed articles SHOULD be mentioning "Christmas film" in some capacity or they're doing something wrong. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 16:00, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Tbh, I just think it's better to link it where it mentions its a Christmas film in the article in the way we link to genre pages when the genre is mentioned, particularly since we don't have a proper article on Christmas films. If I were a reader looking for more films by genre, I'd be expecting the phrase "Christmas film" (or similar) at the top of 90% of these articles to link to it or a similar place I can find them (rather than the pretty useless link to Christmas). And I don't think it qualifies as EASTEREGG bc, like, the piped text would reflect the contents of the article—it seems unreasonable to think a reader would be surprised the phrased "Christmas film" or "Christmas-themed film" links to a list of them. It's, for me, more a matter of providing the link where the reader would most run into or think about the information. Films that are less Christmas-centric but still related, I guess can have it in see also, but the majority should just link it in the body somewhere most relevant. ~Cheers, Ten Ton Parasol 14:42, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

My thoughts on this discussion: if it is linked in the article or if the same basic concept is covered in the categories then it probably doesn't need to be called another time, but if it does (i.e. there is a relevant list article that is not linked and does not have a related category, or there is a seemingly unrelated article that consensus believes would make sense for users to also read) then a see also section would make sense in that case. It should be rare, I feel, because most relevant articles should be wikilinked and categories seem to be quite thorough these days. - adamstom97 (talk) 06:04, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

SEAOFBLUE leads: Heavy wikilinking and namelists at start of lead

In film articles, it seems common practice to wikilink the names of producers, directors and actors four or more times within even short film-articles: once in the lead, once in the infobox, once in the cast section, and usually once more under production and remaining sections.

Also, I find it odd that most of the film articles start out with a string of names, such as:

"Film X is a 2019 film of whatever-genre produced by Producer NameA, directed by Director NameB, starring Actor NameC, Actor NameD, Actor NameE, Actor NameF, Actor NameG, Actor NameH, and Actor NameI. It is about summary-goes-here.

This pattern causes the film-plot-summary to be pushed below what is shown with a navigation pop-up (which only displays the first paragraph). Also, you click on a film-article and immediately are assaulted with a string of unknown names and have to sift through the WP:SEAOFBLUE to find out what you really came there for: "What is Film X?"

Per MOS:LEAD, The lead is the first thing most people will read upon arriving at an article, and may be the only portion of the article that they read. and The lead serves as an introduction to the article and a summary of its most important contents.
Per MOS:LEADLINK, Too many links can make the lead hard to read.
Per MOS:REPEATLINK, Generally, a link should appear only once in an article but may be repeated, if helpful for readers, in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, hatnotes, and at the first occurrence after the lead.

Examples I found while scrolling through Category:2019 action thriller films and looking only at the navigation pop-up:

Better examples: The Balkan Line, Capsized: Blood in the Water, India's Most Wanted (film), Password (2019 Bangladeshi film), The Wolf's Call
Worse examples: Bodies at Rest, Boomerang (2019 film), Cold Pursuit, The Courier (2019 film), Moothon

Most film articles fall somewhere in between these two by containing a seaofbluenames followed by a single brief sentence about plot/content. However, most do not have any plot/content summaries in the first paragraph. I find that this common construction of film articles does not serve the reader well.

Thoughts? Platonk (talk) 17:48, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

We already discussed and agreed that Cast should only be linked in the lead, infobox, and cast section, they shouldn't be linked beyond cast. Also the producer doesn't need to be in the lead, noone cares about who the producer was and it isn't important to namedrop them in the lead so that's one blue link per article gone right away. Like the MCU articles, why do we mention that the film was "produced and distributed by walt disney pictures" IN THE FIRST SENTENCE!? Why does that matter and who cares? That's two links you can get rid of right away per those articles. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 20:41, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, who cares who the director and actors are. There are probably a few dozen "big names" which will actually catch my attention and make me dig further past the "visual noise" to see if I want to watch their movie. The rest of the namedropping is worthless puff only a hardcore film fan would recognize; not the average reader. There seems to be far too little evaluation being performed on which names should and shouldn't be listed. I refer you to the "better examples" I listed above to see what I mean about choosing who and how many should be listed. Platonk (talk) 23:06, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Do you have a link to that "already discussed and agreed" discussion? I would think that agreeing to no more than 3 wikilinks is different than "must put in lead, first sentence". But I'd like to read it. Platonk (talk) 23:06, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure where the discussion is, it will be in the archives, but this is the policy from Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Film#Plot Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 13:45, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree that there can be too many names in the opening sentence. I think there is a tendency to perpetuate the same approach in every single article, like feeling the need to mention the director every time in the opening sentence. Per WP:LEAD, the topic needs to be identified and the context established, and that will vary based on the film. That can be determined through how reliable sources cover the film. For example, not all directors are household names, and I would argue that if the name is not a household name, the director should be named later. I would probably argue the same thing for actors.

To use an example, Cold Pursuit is very likely to be covered because of Liam Neeson's presence. The director and the screenwriter are much less important. So that article should start off with something like, "Cold Pursuit is a 2019 action thriller film starring Liam Neeson as a vengeful snowplow driver who starts killing the members of a drug cartel following the murder of his son," which satisfies WP:LEAD, then follow with other details. The problem is that there is a cookie-cutter mentality where it's assumed every film article needs to open in exactly the same way. As it was pointed out above, the MCU articles have that cookie-cutter approach which seems to inappropriately "hail corporate". Like for Spider-Man: No Way Home, the opening sentence says "co-produced by Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing". What?! And Black Panther (film) does not even mention Chadwick Boseman until the second half of the third sentence. That MCU cabal of editors wields the Infinity Cookie Cutter, though. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 14:22, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I think the MCU project could do with a revamp in time. The leads are terrible but you can't change one without changing all of them. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 19:37, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes you can. And you should (when the opportunity arises). That's what I had done (though not within MCU) and someone reverted me twice to a sea of blue, which is what lead me to start this discussion to see how the Film Project thinks about the issue. Sounds like I'm not the only one thinking this way. Liam Neeson is the only name I recognized in the Cold Pursuit popup. I like Erik's term better: "household name". Darkwarriorblake, WP:FILMPLOT doesn't really cover the subject of the lead, nor even wikilinking actor names. Platonk (talk) 20:04, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

It's this part, "Do not include actors' names in the plot summary, as it is considered redundant to the "Cast" section.". They should be linked once in the lead because it's a summary of the entire article but regarded as separate from the body text (such that if you click "Highlight duplicate links" it will not consider links in the body to be duplicate of links in the lead, and it should be linked once in the infobox for the same reason. Cast is then the first available place they should be linked. That's it. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 20:15, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Oppose any unilateral action on MOS compliant ledes. The reader with previous experience on Wikipedia expects to find links for the director and leading cast in the first paragraph so why make things more difficult for them. The film director is obviously central to the film so should be in the first sentence and the leading actors should at least be in the first paragraph. Also they still can be linked in the cast section as many readers go there first for researching a particular actor and his position in the cast list or just confirming whether imdb is correct. There is no need to rewrite the MOS in my view as this is a problem that does not exist and the changes to articles would be cosmetic with no meaninful benefit at all, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 02:50, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
I agree with Atlantic306 and would add that the plot summary in the lead is the most important thing, which the OP seems to imply, as the plot summary is noteworthy to readers but per our Wikipedia guidelines and MOS it is only included in articles to give context to the important, encyclopaedic information such as production and reception. - adamstom97 (talk) 06:13, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Eyes needed at Spider-Man: No Way Home

There's currently a dispute at Spider-Man: No Way Home, and a user is rapidly reverting edits in spite of the current consensus. It'd be helpful if we could get more input at the relevant discussion and some more eyes on the page to prevent edit warring. (I won't make any reverts until the issue is fully resolved.) JOE BRO 64 03:07, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Actors' names in plot summaries

I was aware that WP:FILMPLOT unequivocally states "Do not include actors' names in the plot summary, as it is considered redundant to the "cast" section." As a newbie, the first time I encountered this situation I removed the actors' names from the plot summary, and happened to mention it on the Teahouse page. One editor commended me, but another gave me a dire warning:

"You may be totally in the right per relevant guidelines in removing the names, but any kind of mass removal of content across multiple articles is likely going to attract attention and things might end up being quite contentious...it would be wise to start a discussion about it at WP:FILM and see what others might think. If you can clearly show that not only the relevant guidelines but also at least a rough consensus...supports such removals, then things will probably be easier to carry out."

I don't intend a "mass removal," I was just going to fix the problem when I stumbled across it while checking out Wikipedia after watching a movie. So what about it, can I summarily remove actor's names from plot summaries?

A similar observation: very occasionally I find in the lead section of films noir a mention of the film being black and white, but not very often. Example, the film The Big Steal: "The Big Steal is a 1945 American black-and-white film noir..." It seems to me that either all black and white films should be described as such, or none of them should. Your thoughts on standardization? -- Pete Best Beatles (talk) 06:02, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

What's the film in question for the actors in the Plot section? —El Millo (talk) 06:21, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

If your edits are in line with a straightforward reading of an existing guideline then there is nothing wrong with them. The warning was wrong. Putting actors' names in a plot summary just makes the plot section real like the back of a DVD case. oknazevad (talk) 13:20, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

... Yeah, that warning was excessive. They are correct that, generally, a new editor appearing and only making the same mass change to lots of articles will attract attention - but when that change is unequivocally correct, there is no reason for the attention to be negative (if you had done so and I'd noticed, I might have sent some WikiLove cookies to say "thanks for doing gnomish work"). I find the instruction that you need consensus as well as the very explicit MOS to so absolutely ridiculous.
As for films noir, I am not actually sure all of them are in black and white, especially if some neo-noir films are described more generally as noir. Typically if a film is black-and-white, this is mentioned somewhere in the lead, but I don't know of any hard and fast rule so "whatever feels appropriate" would be my suggestion on that (i.e. standardization may not work). Kingsif (talk) 22:20, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I think it is probably only necessary to mention the "color" of the film if it's an artistic decision or represents a technical breathrough i.e. Schindler's List. Betty Logan (talk) 23:25, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Right. To clarify that films from the 30s are in black-and-white in the lead section seems unnecessary, almost equivalent to clarifying a film from the 2000s is in color. —El Millo (talk) 23:28, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Question about Japanese speaking theaters in the United States

I am currently working on reviewing Talk:Godzilla Raids Again/GA1. The article says "The Japanese version was released to Japanese speaking theaters in the United States prior to the altered American version." However, I am unable to verify such a thing beyond the one reliable source provided except in unreliable sources. I never heard of Japanese speaking theaters existing in the United States and I think it's doubtful that they would have existed in the 1950s. I'm looking for assistance to help out the nominator and because I can't verify such a thing appropriately. SL93 (talk) 10:29, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

I see the issue after more keyword work. They are referred to as "Japanese movie theaters". Sorry for posting something here that I discovered on my own. SL93 (talk) 10:41, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Britmax Sorry for removing the section. I didn't think of it that way. I was more thinking that no one responded yet and I solved the issue. SL93 (talk) 11:03, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

I did find one other book referring to Japanese speaking theaters in the United States. SL93 (talk) 11:24, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

IP removing DiscussingFilm Critic Awards

When the DiscussingFilm Critic Awards announced their winners today, within a couple minutes an IP started removing it from articles. There doesn't appear to currently be an article (definitely deserves one IMO) and I know the guideline on awards says that we only use awards with a WP article as a general rule - but since the awards are currently trending on Twitter and clearly got the IP's attention enough, it has been accepted until now. The IP also has either stopped or is taking a break, though there are still instances out there... do we make the DF Critic Awards article or (like some other critic associations) just allow it like we have up to now. IP is SPA, BTW (76.200.91.132). Kingsif (talk) 22:19, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Actually, that IP is making a lot of disruptive film edits, like blanking sections and adding gibberish references, even removing prose criticism from DiscussingFilm. Gonna revert and leave a disruption notice. Kingsif (talk) 22:25, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Films Noir in color & Category: Color Film Noir

After reading some of the comments in my above section Actor's names in plot summaries regarding the mention of color in films noir of the classic period, I did a little, er, sleuthing. I thought color in films of the classic period is significant because it's so rare, and I discovered we have a Category: Color Film Noir containing 34 films. 15 of them mention color in their leads, and 16 don't mention it at all. Of those that do, only three mention it specifically, while the others mention the color process used (Technicolor, Warnercolor, Deluxe Color, Eastmancolor and Trucolor).

Regarding the Category: Color Film Noir I wonder how they chose their films, because not all the films are identified as Noir in the leads. Rope (1948) is described only as a Hitchcock film; Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) is described as an "American neo-western film...that combines elements of the Revisionist Western genre with those of film noir." The Badlanders (1958) is described only as an "American Caper Film," while He Laughed Last (1956) is described as a "Technicolor Comedy Film."

Most disturbing are six in the category that aren't full films at all: they are animated shorts parodying film noir, featuring the likes of Donald and Daffy Duck, and Porky Pig. They are associated with Looney Tunes, Merrie Melodies, and Tex Avery. [Who Killed Who? (1943), Donald's Crime (1945), Duck Pimples (1945), The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946), Golden Yeggs (1950), and Rooty Toot Toot (1951)] -- Pete Best Beatles (talk) 05:55, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Films shot in 1.85:1 ratio

Hi. Please see this CfD. Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 18:24, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Character profile

Hello, WikiProject,

I am unfamiliar with articles devoted to a single, fictional character but I hope some editors here are and can give Blade (New Line Blade franchise character) a look. It was put together by a new editor from a number of different articles but I'm not sure if this is typical for film characters or some action is required (cutting down the content or tagging for improvements). Thank you to any editor who can give this article a scan. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:07, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Year of release in the lead

Hi. Just spotted this based on changes to this article. The film was shown at the Venice Film Festival in 2017, but didn't get a domestic/wide release until 2018. I've always assumed the lead should match the infobox, but WP:FILMLEAD states "At minimum, the opening sentence should identify the following elements: the title of the film, the year of its public release..." So what happens in these cases? Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 11:02, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

"Public" is probably a confusing word choice. From what I recall, it means "public" in the sense of not being being private screenings or sneak previews. So film festival screenings are public releases, as reflected by secondary sources actually covering and reviewing them. Maybe we should just drop "public" altogether? I forget why the distinction was made in the first place. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 15:35, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

I would drop it; it doesn't add any clarity at all. I think what it is intended to mean is that a member of the public can buy a ticket and go and watch a film, as opposed to say a test screening or a critics screening. Betty Logan (talk) 16:18, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Per WP:FILMYEAR, the year of a film is determined by the first public screening, and that includes festivals. That's the way IMDb does it. The confusing word there is not "public" but "release"; it should be "screening" or "showing" instead, as "release" usually refers to a commercial (theatrical/disc/VOD) rollout. Nardog (talk) 17:05, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks all. I don't know if Joe Public can turn up and watch a film at Venice, but it would make sense to change it to public screening. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 18:06, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Agreed, "screening" is a much better word here. Daß Wölf 20:13, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

FYI, I don't agree with using festival screenings as a release date, might as well include test screenings as well. It'd be disingenuous say, to call Avengers Endgame a 2017 film if it was screened at a festival the year prior to its worldwide release. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 18:10, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

If it's just a press screening I would agree (if Lugnuts wants to fly in and watch something at the Venice film festival he can actually do this, incidentally) but some films do the rounds at festivals and pick up a significant amount of coverage before getting a limited theatrical release or just bypass the cinema altogether and then debut on DVD. Where do you draw the line? If we don't count half a dozen festival runs as a "release" do we also preclude a limited release for a film that maybe played for one week at one cinema? If we went down this route American Sniper becomes a 2015 film, Gone with the Wind becomes a 1940 film etc. It starts to get messy. Betty Logan (talk) 21:14, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Comparing a test screening to a festival isn't a fair comparison. Typically, once it goes to a festival, it's a finished film. Test screenings are done to do just that...test what they have and see what needs to change. They are typically not fully completed at this point because of the potential for change. Additionally, test screeners are selected through questionnaires to get a cross-section sampling of the population, unlike a festival where that isn't the case. BIGNOLE (Contact me) 22:39, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

That's maybe the issue if it's just screened at one small festival and nobody becomes aware of the film until a major release, possibly years later, but for a current example, Shiva Baby has been on best-of year-end lists for 2020 and 2021 because it hit up nearly every festival in America in 2020 and gained a cult following before going to theaters this year. When a film won awards in 2020, you couldn't reasonably argue it was only "properly" released in 2021. Kingsif (talk) 22:50, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

That would mean films that screen at festivals and don't get picked up for distribution—which many, many films that screen at festivals, even among those that pass our notability guidelines, never do—have no years. That would be ridiculous.

If you think about it, the entire reason we assign years to works of art is that we want to know when they were made—which significantly characterizes our understanding of each work and its influence. And the first public screening is the only piece of information that is publicly available and objectively verifiable for every work that is closest to when it was made. Some films become in the can just before (or sometimes even after) the first screening, others months in advance, but such information is hard to come by.

This is no different from other media: the year of a play is determined by first production; the year of a book first publication. Ideally we might want to know when they were written, but that is not available for every piece of work and it's not always easy to determine when a work becomes "complete". So first public showing of any kind is pretty much the only metric that is always available and allows for comparison with other works.

Awards, top-ten lists, etc. may go by domestic release all they want—but note most countries don't get many arthouse films. For us to do that would be parochial. It doesn't make sense for an international encyclopedia that strives for NPOV. Nardog (talk) 02:36, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Note: I proceeded to edit MOS:FILM based on the discussion above, but it has been reverted. Seeking clarification here. Nardog (talk) 07:52, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Did this get resolved? Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 13:45, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

It hasn't, so I just asked the reverting editor if they still object to the change. Nardog (talk) 00:03, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Some Dude From North Carolina instated a similar change to the MoS. Nardog (talk) 17:21, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Anyone experienced with visual effects?

Can someone help me understand the X-ray sequence of Total Recall? I'm trying to write about the special effects for the film and the segment on the X-ray sequence is boggling my mind. McGovern, who lead the team, speaks in a casual expert mode and I can't fathom what he's actually doing. The below is the section, there's a little more before and after it but it wouldn't let me paste it in here so this is just for help locating it. The last 3 paragraphs in particular, I just can't fully interpret what it is his team is doing or where the skeleton animation is versus motion capture. Can someone with more knowledge interpret it for me because I've tried reading it a dozen times and there just isn't enough info for me to parse exactly what he's doing, and if I can't understand it I can't write about it.

Thank you

https://www.fxguide.com/fxfeatured/recalling-total-recall/
Recalling Total Recall – fxguide
(Redacted)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Darkwarriorblake (talk • contribs) 13:53, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't think there's any reason you'd really want to go into that much detail in the article. The germane points are that they tried mocap, it didn't work, so they reverted to keyframed animation using scanned skeletons and the backup reference footage they'd shot at the time of filming. The rest is mostly just process wonkery that isn't really relevant—they did each character separately and composited them together, adding post effects and motion tracking to make it seem like it lived in the scene. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 15:09, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm not necessarily after minutiae, I just can't tell what the relationship is between the Silicon Graphics Machine and what they put on this Laserdisc and then combine the signals thereof. It's a unique action from reading the article so I just need a layman interpretation of it but I can't grasp what he is doing at all. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 23:56, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Film remakes by country at CfD

Hi. Please see this discussion. Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 09:34, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Improvised dialogue at Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (film)

There's currently a discussion that has reached an impasse at Talk:Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (film)#Improvised dialogue on whether to include a specific scene with improvised dialogue, where input from other editors is welcome. —El Millo (talk) 06:11, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Home media releases

~~Please leave a comment/vote at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2022 in home video. Thank you. Some Dude From North Carolina (talk) 22:46, 10 January 2022 (UTC)~~

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2021 in home video, new discussion. Some Dude From North Carolina (talk) 14:51, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Defining a film noir

How is it decided that a movie is to be described as a film noir? The lead in the article for When Strangers Marry calls the movie a "suspense film," but Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference (ed. Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward, The Overlook Press, 3rd ed. 1992) definitely lists it as a film noir. I've always assumed it's a reliable source. On a related note, there's no "This section needs expansion" template on the plot section, but it looks a little threadbare to me. `` Pete Best Beatles (talk) 05:46, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Per WP:FILMGENRE, Genre classifications should comply with WP:WEIGHT and represent what is specified by a majority of mainstream reliable sources, so just one reliable source isn't enough to justify including it in the lead section, you need to show it is generally referred to as a film noir. —El Millo (talk) 06:02, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

To add on, one can still talk about When Strangers Marry as a film noir in the article body. It is just that with the opening sentence, the consensus is to keep the genre classification straightforward and in line with most reliable sources. After the opening sentence, less-prevalent genre classifications can be covered in a way that fits the rest of the content. It's just too messy to front-load the first sentence with a mixed bag of labels. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 18:41, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Fredo Corleone

Was the character's first name Frederico or Federico? GoodDay (talk) 08:51, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

In the novel, it's Frederico. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:48, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Opinions on MOS:FILMS#Accolades at Talk:Loki (TV series)

There's been a question at Talk:Loki (TV series)#Inclusion of Society of Composers & Lyricists award on whether an award that has no article of its own but that was reported by several reliable sources should be included in an Accolades section despite MOS:FILMS#Accolades saying that Awards included in lists should have a Wikipedia article to demonstrate notability. As this question came up in a TV article, that as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has incorporated a few of the guidelines on the Manual of Style for films, it seems appropriate that this is discussed here instead, to be taken as a general question for films, and then the discussion's result shall be applied in the article where it originally came up. Pinging @RunningTiger123, who asked the question. —El Millo (talk) 06:15, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

In essence, the awards organization should be notable, and a standalone article (especially one that has survived AFD) can indicate that. If numerous reliable sources are writing about the awards from that society, that may indicate notability, but I think WP:NCORP requires more about the organization than simply listing the awards. There needs to be more substance about the organization beyond just the listings, which might be considered "trivial coverage". Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 18:47, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

What Erik said. There are some other awards that are widely included without an article for the awards or awarding body, for this reason. Whether consensus will later shift is a different question, but articles can be updated. In this case, it looks to be a good industry society that just, likely because of the field, hasn't had someone bother to make an article for. Kingsif (talk) 21:43, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

In the time since this discussion was opened, @RunningTiger123: (sorry to ping you into this section a second time) created the industry article: Society of Composers & Lyricists. ~Cheers, Ten Ton Parasol 23:48, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I created the article because it seemed that was the only way the awards would gain support for inclusion despite the sources being listed. Kingsif covered the main part of my reasoning – there was no article but plenty of secondary coverage, so it seemed that the awards merited inclusion even if, by the letter of the law, they shouldn't have been there. But with the new article, that's moot now. RunningTiger123 (talk) 23:52, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Realizing now I sound accusatory! A little too terse on my part. I was trying to remark that it is indeed moot now. FWIW, I think the article seems in right order. ~Cheers, Ten Ton Parasol 00:32, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Cinema for Peace awards

The SPA PabloCampins added Cinema for Peace awards to many film articles in November and December. The additions I examined were unsourced and poorly formatted, often breaking accolades tables, and may have put undue weight on a minor award. Will somebody with film award knowledge check the edits? PrimeHunter (talk) 02:33, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Plot expansion Die Hard with a Vengeance

Editors are invited to weigh in at Talk:Die Hard with a Vengeance#Plot expansion, where there's a disagreement over whether a plot expansion that violates WP:FILMPLOT constitutes an improvement to the article. Thank you for your time. DonIago (talk) 04:19, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

FA status of Tank Girl (film) informally discussed

The article quality of Tank Girl (film) has been under discussion since last year. Your input there and contributions to the article, which isn't yet formally under WP:FAR, are welcome. --George Ho (talk) 04:31, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Netflix as a major film studio

I’d like to make a formal request to add Netflix to the major film studios page. However, I’m not sure how exactly this should be done. This is why I would like to begin a discussion with the whole community about this and come to a consensus.

Givemesomesteviewonder (talk) 09:57, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

FA review on Jabba the Hut

I have nominated Jabba the Hut for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. --George Ho (talk) 20:02, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Spin-off films

Hi. I can see that spin-off films are listed in the List of film series articles, just look here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Is it correct to list spin-off films there? Althrough a spin-off film is a part of the franchise, it's not a part of the film series. It's a standalone movie in the same franchise as the film series. Karamellpudding1999 (talk) 12:29, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

A spin-off is by definition not a standalone entry in a franchise, because that would imply it is not connected to the continuity of the main series. A series usually comprises sequels but it can also include spin-offs that "branch off" from the main series. One good example I can think of is the Rocky and Creed films: a single series that includes five sequels and two spin-offs to the original film. Betty Logan (talk) 14:46, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wild Tales

Hi. Please see this discussion about the film's nationality and the lead section of the article. Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 14:00, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

MPA vs MPAA

In the article for the film Born to Kill (1947 film) there's a subsection entitled "Banned from re-release by MPA" wherein it describes this action taking place in 1947. However, the MPA (Motion Picture Assoction) was entitle the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America until Sept. 2019. Should the title of the subsection be changed to reflect this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pete Best Beatles (talk • contribs) 08:02, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

I think that would be more appropriate. Readers can click on the link to the organization to learn about it, including what it is called today. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 14:09, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, things should be called what they were at the time. If a link is needed it should also be the redirect. Gonnym (talk) 14:10, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Done. -- Pete Best Beatles (talk) 05:29, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Reliable sources for filmography

Since IMDb is not reliable, what are some reliable sources for filmography, if I even need them? Mandomanny313 (talk) 18:08, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

If you want to know what a filmmaker or actor has worked on you will need to look for any other sources (interviews, etc.) that list those things. Usually if it is one of the major film-related websites or a newspaper then it will be considered reliable. - adamstom97 (talk) 21:23, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

BFI and AFI? Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 21:27, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I second BFI and AFI. While sourcing is not "needed" for well-known cast/crew and films because the content is very unlikely to be challenged, that may not be the case with lesser-known figures. For example, I worked on Tom Richmond (cinematographer), and his credits are spotty from a reliable sourcing standpoint due to a career of works that have weak or no notability. If BFI or AFI aren't up-to-date (like for 2021 films), I think you can use a review to "plug" that sourcing gap. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 16:03, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

English title for Chi si ferma è perduto

Hi,

I saw that the entry for the film in question was moved to Who Hesitates Is Lost. I couldn't find any mention, poster, etc. of an English-language version of the film, though (and, even if it existed, I think the English title should just be a redirect to the Italian one, which is the original, unless Wikipedia has a different guideline I'm not aware of). My guess is that someone just attempted a translation of the title. Can I move the article back? —Gennaro Prota ^•Talk 08:49, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

I think you can move the article back. See WP:NCF#Foreign-language films. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 16:07, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Bryce Dallas Howard

Do you think the article of Bryce Dallas Howard should be Featured Article candidate? I would like opinions on this. BattleshipMan (talk) 05:02, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Definitely a well-written article, but a few relatively small issues stick out to me. The last Career subsection needs fewer quotes. I remembered thinking while reading that it seemed like 2 out of every 3 sentences had one! Also proportionally speaking, I would expect the 2nd and 3rd subsections under Career to be roughly the same length at this point in time, but the latter is almost 30% longer. Maybe that's ok based on coverage in sources, but it's worth mentioning. As it stands right now, readable prose is just beyond 16k characters. So you'd expect the lead length to be 2 large paragraphs, 3 short-to-medium paragraphs, or somewhere in between. Seems a little long at the moment, but maybe that's just me. I didn't get granular with the sources, but on the surface it seems fairly close. Pinging Bettydaisies and Krimuk2.0, who are some of the article's top contributors the past few years (in terms of added "bytes"). --GoneIn60 (talk) 07:50, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi! I did a pretty substantial revision of the article some months ago, when I was still relatively new to Wikipedia, so I do think it's a bit shaky. I'd be happy to take another look at the issues you've mentioned.--Bettydaisies (talk) 08:13, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't see any peer reviews, so the first thing I would do is put it up for review there. That will help you weed out any lingering grammar issues, sentencing issues, etc. You can find the instructions here. BIGNOLE (Contact me) 13:10, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Okay. I did make a few contributions on it. I set up a peer review on it. BattleshipMan (talk) 18:08, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Peer review is a good idea, but also consider running it through WP:GOCE for further cleanup. That should get it primed and ready for WP:FA. --GoneIn60 (talk) 05:28, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Regarding unpatrolled status

Joined this Wikiproject a few weeks ago, and created two new articles last month:

https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Tailing_Pond_(film)

https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Saurav_Vishnu

Both of them are still unpatrolled/unreviewed, so I was wondering if this project has users with Autopatrolled rights for such tasks? ThanksWickedwiki2 (talk) 15:25, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

You'd be looking for a New Page Patroller, not Autopatrolled, for that. Fortunately, I am both and can take a look. Kingsif (talk) 22:44, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! I made a few edits based on the tags added by you. Wickedwiki2 (talk) 14:20, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Discussion at Total Recall 1990 needs input

There is an ongoing discussion at this article that is of interest to this project. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 17:59, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland

There is a request to move Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland to Screen Ireland. The discussion can be found here: Talk:Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland#Requested move 26 January 2022. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 21:47, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

[1] ttps://web.archive.org/web/20210822043044/https://variety.com/2000/film/news/indies-go-every-witch-way-in-99-1117760726/

[1]