Talk:Un célebre especialista sacando muelas en el gran Hotel Europa

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Un célebre especialista sacando muelas en el gran Hotel Europa/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Squeamish Ossifrage (talk · contribs) 17:51, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Always happy to see silent-era film topics getting further development. I'll have a full review assembled shortly. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:51, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Prose

• Obviously, short articles are tough to write summaries for, but the lead is a little threadbare even for an article of this length. A sentence providing a summary of the modern opinions might help. But also, see §Other, below.
• At some point, an English translation of the title would be helpful for many readers.
  • Included translation in this edit Kingsif (talk) 01:55, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
• I'm not sold on the section ordering, with the modern views coming before any contemporary information about the film's production or release.
  • Moved crit section below here Kingsif (talk) 01:55, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
• Is there any information about where that newspaper clipping is from? I'm also not sure that you need to provide the entire text of the article, plus translation, via blockquote, when it's available in an image. Also, I'm confused about why you provide English translations for some of the titles, but not for others.
  • This youtube video from a Venezuelan film promoter says that the words are lost but the films remain as cultural identity after showing the clipping, suggesting that they don't know?
    • From similar images of clippings in the Sueiro Villanueva book, it seems to be El Mundo, a national paper in Venezuela at the time. Kingsif (talk) 03:45, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
  • I figured that the clipping wasn't clear enough that it needed transcription (and then translation.) No?
  • I translated the titles that were displayed in Spanish for the Venezuelan clipping, but which are not originally Spanish titles. The Spanish titles aren't translated because of this status. The translated titles could be rendered in French for the English translation if preferable? Kingsif (talk) 02:06, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Sources

• Foreign language sources need to indicate what language they are written in. With the cite family of templates, you can use the |language parameter.
  • Language param added here Kingsif (talk) 02:13, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
• Ideally, book sources have properly-hyphenated ISBN-13s. There are quite a few ISBN conversion tools online if you only have unhyphenated numbers or ISBN-10s. Note that this is not a GA criterion. It's just a good practice.
  • The cite tool corrected me when I used hyphenated ISBNs, I assumed shortening it was the standard, therefore? Kingsif (talk) 02:13, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
• I'd suggest spelling out University of California Press.
  • Done. Kingsif (talk) 02:13, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
• Mickleburgh (2018) doesn't appear to be a published paper. Academia.edu is sort of an archive, but account holders can upload "papers" there that haven't actually seen publication. I'm not sure this is a reliable source.
• The Serrano paper has the same problem.
  • To the above two: I just tried to gather as much on the topic as possible. I'll see if I can find something on either. Kingsif (talk) 02:13, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
    • Serrano teaches Film History at a Spanish university [1]. Would it be reliable in this case, even if unpublished?
    • Not much found on either with further digging, except the Mickleburgh may be a response to this published paper? Remove pending certainty, look for other sources Kingsif (talk) 02:36, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
• The Farrell source, on the other hand, is a doctoral dissertation, which are generally considered reliable sources. However, it needs to be cited as such. Since you use the cite family templates, you'll find {{cite thesis}} helpful here. Also, don't ALL CAPS the title.
  • Thanks Kingsif (talk) 02:13, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
• Izaguirre and Cortés Bargalló needs a publisher.
  • Searching Done Kingsif (talk) 02:13, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
• The other Izaguirre source is actually excerpted from an edited book. I did a little digging, and am happy to provide the correct citation for this one:

Izaguirre, Rodolfo (2000). "Un cine en busca de... tantas cosas". In Baptista, Asdrúbal (ed.). Venezuela Siglo XX: Visiones y Testimonios (in Spanish). Vol. 1. Fundación Polar. pp. 107–120. ISBN 978-980-379-015-8.

• • Thanks Kingsif (talk) 02:13, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Other

• I'm pretty dubious of the claim that this was the first South American film, and I don't see much in the article to back that up. In fact, I've found a source that confirms this as the first Venezuelan film, but offers earlier dates for other South American productions (with 1896 dates for both Argentina and Uruguay).

Sánchez, Evangelina Soltero (1997). "Prosa de vanguardia: tres caminos hacia el séptimo arte" (pdf). Anales de Literature Hispanoamericana (in Spanish) (26): 432–445. ISSN 0210-4547.

@Kingsif: The prose handling of the newspaper announcement is a bit awkward, but my biggest concern is the reliability of the Arturo Serrano source, which you lean on fairly heavily. It's possible that it (and Mickleburgh) are published works, and I'd like to offer you the chance to respond with more information about these sources. Otherwise, this presents a criterion 2b concern and is probably going to prevent me from promoting the article. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 18:27, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

@Squeamish Ossifrage: I've moved the critical section to the bottom, reordered some of the images, removed the dodgy references in favour of solid ones, stuck the transcription of the clipping into a note and translated all to English, added some extra content and expanded the lead. Anything else to be improved? Kingsif (talk) 04:01, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

I think this article is in a lot better place than it was recently. Sourcing looks pretty good. I tidied up the structure of a couple of the citations to lend a hand. I do have a few followup issues:

• The content of the film is described only in the lead and is unreferenced. Ideally, this will appear (with citation) somewhere in the body, probably in §Screening. It is helpful to remember that the lead should be a summary of the article, and so it cannot present information not present elsewhere.
  • Added content section under Screening Kingsif (talk) 00:51, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
• Any chance the surgeon/dentist is identified in reliable sources, especially if he's going to be deemed "renowned" in the project's voice?
  • Searching Doesn't seem to be, but alanguage altered. Kingsif (talk) 00:51, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
• Any information about the survival or preservation status of the film?
  • Yup, added in content section Kingsif (talk) 00:51, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
• The Oxford History of World Cinema needs an ISBN.
  • Done Kingsif (talk) 00:51, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

If you decide to continue article improvement with an eventual eye on FAC, there are quite a few things that will need to be adjusted. Dates in the references will need consistent formatting, for example, and the way that you cite page numbers in longer works will need to be standardized. Ideally, hyphenated ISBN-13s. But none of that is actionable at the GA level. Once you're able to respond to these last elements, one way or another, I think we'll be in a pretty good place for promotion. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 14:47, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

• @Squeamish Ossifrage: completed the new checklist ;) I'd also like to know the dentist but can't find it! Expanded a bit more as well. Kingsif (talk) 01:31, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

I cleaned up one of the new citations. With news articles especially, there's no need to credit anonymous corporate "authors" in most cases (stuff like "staff writer" or "for El Nacional Web". Otherwise, this is a much stronger article than it was at the start of the review process, and I'm happy to promote it accordingly. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 14:02, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Recovered status

There is an El Nacional article saying the film doesn’t survive but they recently found and restored some images from it. More info/sources appreciated Kingsif (talk) 16:03, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Critics

Another article that mentions a thesis arguing it’s Venezuela’s first terror film Kingsif (talk) 16:11, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Request for input

Here because Kingsif asked me to see if I had any advice for improvements to the article (this was a couple of weeks ago, but RL unfortunately intrudes sometimes). The first port of call for any article is ensuring fidelity to the sources: avoiding outright errors, synthesis and ensuring text-source integrity. If the sourcing is right, then that's the base on which everything else is built, so I did a spot check of some of the sources first. Unfortunately, those I did look at didn't quite adhere to all of the above:

• Referenced to Page 13 of Latin American Cinema by Stephen Hart: "The screening may not have gone well; reports suggest the public were intrigued by the moving images, but indifferent to the films themselves."—This does not appear in the cited source. The closest it comes is "It was not long, though, before audiences were craving more interesting material than ... a dentist's antics." This does not suggest at all that the screening went badly and only implies that audiences craved more sophisticated fare after its screening and those of films by the Lumière brothers.
• Cited to "Homenaje a Manuel Trujillo Durán" is the statement "The director of the film is unknown; scholars and researchers have suggested that the most likely people to be the director would be Manuel Trujillo Durán, a photographer from Maracaibo, or Veyre, the French traveling filmmaker."—This source only suggests Manuel and his brother exhibited the films. I understand that it is the case that his name has been mentioned as a potential director, but this source does not state it. Nor does it mention Veyre. I suspect it is only being used to cite "Film scholar, lecturer and Trujillo biographer Alexis Fernández" and his credentials, and that the Youtube cite that follows is the one that is used to discuss Durán's possibility as director. If so, a duplicate cite is required at the end of that first sentence to the YT source, as it makes verifiability more difficult.
• The statement: "In terms of the general public, there are spaces where the belief persists that Trujillo single-handedly invented Venezuelan cinema. An article in Últimas Noticias about National Film Day events in January 2019 celebrated Trujillo for making and projecting the film himself and outfitting the Baralt Theatre so the films could be shown." This is cited to the article in Últimas Noticias itself and the first sentence is therefore WP:OR.

This was a spot check of just four sources. Only one out of the four I checked (genuinely at random) was used correctly (López 2003, p. 109). For this article, nothing else matters than ensuring that all the text reflects the sources accurately and that the placement of citations has been considered to ensure proper verifiability, so I suggest that each is checked in turn and the text amended where necessary. Don't worry about great prose at this stage; this is a short enough article that everything else that might have been mentioned in the FAC for improvement shouldn't be a huge problem to deal with after alignment with the necessary guidelines. Steve ^T • C 23:02, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, Steve, taking your time doesn't matter. I will go through all sources more carefully, and may include some quotes in the cite template for the especially tricky ones, which I imagine you were looking for. Kingsif (talk) 23:33, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

• Source edits I have made re. the above:

1. Removed the first one - this was originally cited to Hart (for a quotation that's been moved) and an essay by Arturo Serrano. Though Serrano is an expert and professor on Venezuelan cinema, the essay itself was only published on academia, possibly not FA verifiable.
2. No edit - the opening sentence of the Production and director section was added per recommendation at FAR to summarize the section before getting into it; it does not need citation as it is non-controversial and immediately expanded on. As suspected, the source is to support Fernandez' description. Of course, if this opening sentence is found to be unnecessary, it can easily be removed.
3. Similarly, parts of this third one were also cited to Serrano. I have cut down the first part to only reference what is seen with the article.

Kingsif (talk) 15:30, 29 January 2020 (UTC)