Talk:I Vampiri/GA1

Latest comment: 8 years ago by Andrzejbanas in topic GA Review

GA Review edit

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Reviewer: Squeamish Ossifrage (talk · contribs) 20:04, 7 October 2015 (UTC)Reply

I'm Squeamish Ossifrage, and I'll be your reviewer. Opening this page now; in-depth comments coming shortly. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 20:04, 7 October 2015 (UTC)Reply

Criterion 1- A Good Article is well-written.

Some issues on 1a: prose. No indication of plagiarism in randomly spot-checked passages.

  • "Lantin investigates the mysterious Du Grand family who lives in a castle occupied by Gisele Du Grand who is in love with Lantin, her aunt who hides her face in a veil, and the scientist Julian Du Grand who is trying to find the secret to eternal youth." It's difficult to parse this sentence, and there's more than one grammatically defensible reading. For example, this might be a list of three people: Gisele, her aunt, and Julian. Alternatively, it could be Gisele, who is in love with (both) her aunt and Julian. Or it could be Gisele (who is in love with Lantin) and Julian. I think you intend the last of these, but restructing this passage may be the best way to present that.
  • "Freda made a deal with producers at the Italian film studio Titanus that he could create a cheap horror film by writing a story in one day and filming it in two weeks." The phrasing "made a deal ... that" is awkward. Perhaps "made a deal ... to create" instead?
  • "body buried was that of Josephs" Either "was Jospeh's" or "was that of Joseph". I'd start the next sentence differently as well, to ensure that the reader knows this is a corpse being transported (this is a movie about vampires and weird resurrection experiments, after all!).
  • "reassigned from the following the Vampire story" Just "reassigned from following".
Fixed. Andrzejbanas (talk) 04:25, 8 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • You have at least one "du Grand", but elsewhere "Du Grand".
  • Curti's book says "Du Grand", so I've changed them all to Du Grand. Andrzejbanas (talk) 04:25, 8 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • "At the castle, he meets Gisele (Gianna Maria Canale) who expresses her admiration for Lantin who reminds her of his father." I'm not entirely sure I followed this sentence properly. Too many pronouns in rapid sequence. At the very least, "expresses admiration" would be okay.
  • "an experimental transfer between Giselle and Lorette which restores her beauty." Whose beauty? I know from context, but grammatically, the sentence implies Lorette is the answer. Perhaps consider something like "an experiment to transfer Lorette's youth and beauty to Giselle"?
  • "chief executive officer of Titanus, Goffredo Lombardo stated" Needs a comma after Lombardo.
  • "Goffredo Fofi stated in 1963, that" On the other hand, you don't need the comma here.
  • If it's not adding a comma, it's having useless ones. :) Removed. Andrzejbanas (talk) 04:25, 8 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • "Freda has only mentioned Regnoli during the writing process while the film's credits add a fictional writer and scenarist Rijk Sijöstrom." There may be some problems with verb tense here. Also, am I reading this correctly that Sijöstrom is entirely fictional? If so, that probably needs introduced earlier in the paragraph.
  • I've moved it around. I'm not exactly sure how to phrase it. Curti's book just states "The credits in the Italian version also feature, as co-scenarist and scriptwriter, a non-existent Rijk Sijöstrom." and don't go on about it. Andrzejbanas (talk) 04:25, 8 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • "The film's story derives from uncredited elements." It's fairly strong wording to say "derives from" here, which implies that the story was more directly adapted from sources Freda didn't credit. I'd introduce these as "influences" or "inspirations" for the story, which I believe your sources support; you already discuss Poe in that context.
  • got it! Going to pass on inspired as it may make it sound like that Freda read the story and then starting I Vampiri, which isn't quite the case. Andrzejbanas (talk) 04:25, 8 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • "Freda and Canale had first worked together on Il cavaliere misterioso (1948), their relationship lead to Freda leaving his wife to go Canale to Brazil where they made two more films." Should be a semicolon after the parenthetical date; otherwise, this is a run-on sentence. Also, "led" in place of "lead" here.
  • "with only a single scene at the Aniene river was filmed" You do not need the "was" in this sentence.
  • "effects was involved" Don't need the "was" here either.
  • "This effect has been done" Should be "had been done".
  • "...finding the heroine hung." In this sense (and only this sense), "hanged" is correct.
  • "Freda's deal with his producers failed as he had left the set on the twelfth day of production." This doesn't read quite correctly to me. Perhaps "when he left the set" would be better.
  • Do you have a translation for Quella che voleva amare?
  • It roughly translates to "The One Who Wanted to be Loved", but this translation is not in the book and not an official title as I don't have any info on an English language release of this material. So I can remove the added English translation if you think that's needed. Andrzejbanas (talk) 04:25, 8 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • Editors are permitted to provide direct translations; doing so isn't considered original research except in weird cases that aren't relevant here. I think that the MOS-compliant way to display this would be: Quella che voleva amare [The One Who Wanted to Be Loved], but as I'm failing to find that buried in the manual of style, what you've got seems more than adequate for this level of article curation. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 13:32, 8 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • "In their retrospective reviews, AllMovie wrote" Unless there's more than one, singular "review" here.
  • I'm not sure how best to credit Danny Shipka. Introducing him as the author of a (not itself notable) book takes up a lot of space, but doesn't really inform the reader much. I'm aware that he's not really a film historian per se. Perhaps something shorter like "Danny Shipka, author of a book on European exploitation films,..."
  • He's an assistant professor at a University I believe, which doesn't make it sound like the best source. I'll rephrase this a bit. Andrzejbanas (talk) 04:25, 8 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
Criterion 2- A Good Article is verifiable with no original research

Sources are reliable, and the article is well-referenced. Strictly speaking, the GA requirements for reference formatting are extremely lax, but there are some elements of reference formatting that you may wish to improve on nevertheless:

  • References that are in languages other than English (presumably the I Vampiri booklet and the Talbot source) need their language specified.
  • Both are English actually, despite Diabolique's magazines French sounding title. I don't believe it let's you add the language if it's in English in the template for citation I'm using. Andrzejbanas (talk) 04:25, 8 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • Well, I guessed wrong there! Yep, if they're in English (even if they don't look like they're in English from the citation), no language specification is required. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 13:32, 8 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • You're inconsistent about linking publishers. For example, you link Arrow Films in #25, but not at first appearance (#5) or #16. Broadly speaking, you have three options with publisher links: never, first appearance, or always. Any is acceptable, but you need to be consistent.
  • Ah yes. I never got back to that. I always add and find more info and the arrangement gets all wrong. I've corrected these now I believe, there were only a few so it was fairly easy! Andrzejbanas (talk) 04:25, 8 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • It's absolutely not a GA-level criterion, but you may want to use this converter to render all your ISBNs into properly-hyphenated ISBN-13s, which are most correct according to the current standard.
  • It's a good idea. I've changed it. Made me realize I needed to fix the order of linking the McFarland publisher as well anyways. Andrzejbanas (talk) 04:25, 8 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
Criterion 3- A Good Article is broad in its coverage

The only criticism I have here is that you mention this film as the first Italian horror film of the sound era. And that's true! But the reader is left uncertain whether there were many silent-era Italian horror films, or only one. In fact, it is the latter, as a source you already cite notes. It's probably worth mentioning Il mostro di Frankenstein here. It even has an article to link to.

  • Sounds okay. I've tried to squeeze it in. I've cited Curti on this one as well just to be safe. Andrzejbanas (talk) 04:25, 8 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
Criterion 4- A Good Article is neutral

No objections.

Criterion 5- A Good Article is stable

No objections.

Criterion 6- A Good Article is illustrated, if possible, with images.

Pending. I'm currently looking into the oddities of the URAA to ensure that the image from the film is properly licensed and to see if it can be replaced with a superior one. Ah, copyright law. Italy's is weird, and permits fotogrammi delle pellicole cinematografiche to be considered in the category of (broadly) "simple photographs" that enter public domain 20 years after publication. Because this film was published in 1957, a screenshot from that film (but not, notably, the film itself) would enter public domain under this standard in 1977. That's why the (very heavily cropped) screenshot used here is licensed {{PD-Italy}}. But it's sometimes more complicated than that, because URAA allowed certain works to revert to copyright status (this is what happened to Metropolis). In this case, there's no evidence in the US copyright registration records that this film was ever registered for US copyright (as I Vampiri, The Devil's Commandment, or Lust of the Vampire), much less registered and then renewed. Accordingly, those images would also be in the public domain in the US, and so not subject to URAA reversion. That's a lot of text, but what it means is that there's no reason to use such a heavy cropped screenshot. Again from the BFI source is the full screenshot of the same scene. I'd strongly encourage you to replace the one in use here with that one, with the licensing described as above. Separately, the poster is properly licensed as fair-use (it is not public domain in Italy). Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 21:51, 7 October 2015 (UTC)Reply

I'll be happy to replace the image. I'll try and do this properly without getting a slap on the wrist from the wiki police. Let's try it! Andrzejbanas (talk) 04:25, 8 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
Much improved by the new image. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 13:32, 8 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
Additional notes

While these are not components of any of the GA criteria, they are aspects of the article you may wish to consider, and that you would be questioned about should you take this article to FAC.

  • The Film Wikiproject's recommended structure of a film article includes a cast section. That's not strictly required, and you do identify the cast parenthetically in the Plot section, but it's worth considering.
  • I'll generally pass on cast section unless I can add a lot of information. In this one I can't as there wasn't much info about the casting outside that "hey! these guys showed up in other horror films later!", which isn't really specific to this film. The cast is explained in both the intro, infobox and prose and it wouldn't expand very much. If you insist, I'll be happy to source an addition. Andrzejbanas (talk) 04:25, 8 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • You use mmm dd, yyyy dates. As this is an Italian film, a case can be made that it has strong national ties to a dd mmm yyyy country.
  • I'll change that around.

In general, this is very close to meeting the GA standard. Mostly, there's just some tightening of prose necessary before I'll be happy to award it the little green badge. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 21:37, 7 October 2015 (UTC)Reply

Changes look good, and I'm pleased to promote. I think that there's still some uneven prose in some places; this could probably benefit from a run through peer review for copyediting before you take it to FAC, if indeed you have a desire to do so. But this easily satisfies the GA criteria. Nicely done. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 13:32, 8 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
Thanks @Squeamish Ossifrage:! I appreciate your time to review the article. Andrzejbanas (talk) 16:53, 8 October 2015 (UTC)Reply