Talk:Luis Buñuel/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Kingsif (talk · contribs) 19:17, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Hi, I'm Kingsif, and I'll be doing this review. This is an automated message that helps keep the bot updating the nominated article's talkpage working and allows me to say hi. Feel free to reach out and, if you think the review has gone well, I have some open GA nominations that you could (but are under no obligation to) look at. Kingsif (talk) 19:17, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time and effort to do this review. Looking forward to working with you. --Jburlinson (talk) 05:31, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Good Article review progress box

Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

• Talk page barely used - certainly not in the last year, and while there's been some clean-up in the last few days, the history does not indicate edit wars or other controversy. Article appears stable.
• Lead is a good length
•  Done Could a Spanish filmmaker, naturalised Mexican in 1949 be simplified to "Spanish-Mexican filmmaker"? With further explanation (including citation) in the body of the article
•  Done obituary doesn't need a wikilink
•  Done Some quotes are good in the lead for icons, but the lead's second paragraph looks more like a review section. Could the quotations be trimmed or otherwise described (and if the latter, make sure the quotes/further detail with refs are in the body)?
•  DoneHis work spans two continents, three languages, and an array of genres is a kind of description that intends to inflate the person - but it's not all that impressive so it also reads strange (as well as treading the POV line). It's already been mentioned that he worked in France, Spain, and Mexico, perhaps there's a more descriptive way to write this introduction - "Having worked in Europe and North America, and in French and Spanish, Buñuel's films also spanned various genres" or something like it?
•  Done The repetition of "he ranks" in the last sentence of the lead just irks me. You could alter the phrasing of the second instance, but it's not that bad.
• Infobox satis
•  Done -- Image replaced with one from the public domain. Images all free except the La Hurdes screenshot. I'm not sure if it meets fair use, either: this moment is not mentioned in the body, and the still is barely recognizable as an upside-down rooster even with the caption explaining it, so it does not serve an illustrative purpose. I would personally think the goat "falling" would be a much better image - and could have a great explanation in the body text with something about Buñuel's ethical stance on filmmaking?
• This relevance issue pervades quite a few of the images, of which there are a lot:
  • Calenda is fine
  •  Done Dalí and Lorca are too big (add upright parameter). They could also be put together (multiple image template) to further streamline this section. Image of Dali moved to section on Chien Andalou.
  • Epstein seems well enough connected to the early career, should be fine
  •  Done the mentions of Breton are so sparse it probably doesn't warrant an image
  •  Done While the MoMA picture is beautiful, I don't see how that specific exhibit relates? Could this be cleared up in prose/caption?
  •  Done Man Ray is probably fine; caption here needs a period
  • Lamarque fine
  •  Done Paz fine, maybe align right since he's looking left?
  •  Done Philipe may be too tangential to Buñuel's career to be pictured. Replaced with photo of Michel Piccoli.
  • Carrière fine
  •  Done Deneuve fine, maybe pair it with her quotation?
  •  Done Pinal statue image not worth it
  •  Done School photos are fine, I'd have them stacked on the right
• Quote boxes used well throughout
• There's some tags in the article:
  •  Done Two 'when?' tags that can be removed: it's established in the sentence before.
  •  Done The external links clean-up does need to happen: the first four seem appropriate, perhaps the others can be incorporated into the further reading section?
• Article uses a wide variety of reliable sources and makes good use of inline citations
• The scariest copyvio figure is from where MoMA has copied Wikipedia, but:
  •  Done Sense of Cinema shows heavy quoting - it is mostly attributed quotations, but is over 50 of the source, which can become an issue. Further, the phrases to shock and insult the intellectual bourgeoisie and a huge success amongst the French bourgeoisie are not used as quotations but have been directly copied. Non-quoted language paraphrased.
  •  Done Similar issue with Huffington Post - mostly quotes, but over 40% of the source. Again, hairdresser had to bind her breasts is not quoted but is word-for-word from the source
  •  Done There are other instances of quotes from a source reaching over 30, 40% of the source, but seem acceptable: either quoting Buñuel at length in a short article, or the short obituary from which only two quotations are taken. Can the two above be trimmed or summarized instead of quoted?
  •  Done The phrase Las Hurdes was banned by three successive Republican governments, which is not quoted, was taken from Senses of Cinema, can it be paraphrased?
  •  Done Sources with less than 33.3% confidence not checked yet, can these be fixed first? I have checked these and made some changes, but for the most part they simply represent titles of films or material directly quoted.

Prose

•  Done The lead could still be worked on, in line with comments made above. I think all suggestions for the lead have been incorporated.
•  Done The first sentence of the body is Buñuel was born in Calanda, a small town in the province of Teruel, in the Aragon region of Spain, to Leonardo Buñuel, the cultivated scion of an established Aragonese family, and María Portolés, many years younger than her husband, with wealth and family connections of her own., which presents a few issues:
  •  Done It's a run-on. Readers are going to lose the point of the sentence, but at least in this case the grammar remains consistent. However, it would still be better split for readability.
  •  Done "born in X, in Y, in Z" could use better phrasing - either switch it up or just change it to "born in X, Y, Z". More info on the excessive list of places could improve it, too. The small town info is good, but if there's relevance to Teruel it's not clear - i.e. why not just "Calanda, a small town in Aragon, Spain"?
  •  Done Given there's so much detail on the parents, perhaps name them both and then give the background in other sentences.
  •  Done Perhaps make the cultivated scion of an established Aragonese family more accessible. "cultivated" normally refers to plants, "scion" is antiquated, and "established Aragonese family" may not mean much to an unfamiliar reader - who were they?
  •  Done And maybe consider whether all the detail about his mother is relevant. She was much younger but why is that important, e.g. And who were her impressive family?
•  Done I'd consider adding his birth date in here, but not necessary. It allows a prose citation and helps frame details of his childhood in the appropriate era without the reader returning to the infobox/lead for it.
•  Done Did Buñuel's religious disillusion and him leaving the Jesuit school line up? It seems to be the right age. Of course, the vagueness of what age one had a high school education in 1910s Spain could be misleading. Remember that saying "high school" to the US and Canadians typically means age 14-18, to Brits means 11-16, and to the Irish and Aussies even different ranges. Given that descriptions of Buñuel as a child and at the age of 16 come after the high school mention, an age or year for leaving the Jesuit school would be helpful.

Sources don't indicate the exact year when Buñuel left the Jesuit school, but it is stated that he spent the last two years of his high school education in a public school and he started University in 1917, when he was 17, so one could hypothesize that he parted ways with the Jesuits when he was 15 (1915). This would have put his lapse from Catholicism around the same time, but that would be speculation. The source says that he was 16. I'm not sure how to revise the article in the way you suggest without going beyond what I can find in the sources.--Jburlinson (talk) 08:52, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

•  Done I've reached When Buñuel somewhat derisively refused and think there may be some overuse of "somewhat". It's a nice word, but can be seen as adding nothing. Think about removing some of them?
•  Done The phrasing of derisively refused to acquiesce to Epstein's demand in general may be a little too flowery for purpose
•  Done Does "photogenia" (founded on the insert shot) mean that they discussed insert shots or something else?
• I'd move the paragraph of his personal life to a section on his personal life
•  Done The Chien andalou section opens with After this apprenticeship, but it's been a while since the Epstein apprenticeship has been discussed. A better introduction is needed.
•  Done to appear, gratis, in the film - while the random Spanish fits, it probably shouldn't be used. It could easily just be removed.
• To make matters worse, Charles de Noailles was forced to withdraw his membership from the Jockey Club. did this make matters worse? Worse than threats of excommunication? And is de Noailles being in the Jockey Club (or not) relevant to Buñuel?

The Jockey Club was the most prestigious private club in Paris whose membership consisted of only the cream of the cream of French society. Expulsion from it would probably have been more painful for him than excommunication. That he would be such a staunch patron of Buñuel and that Buñuel would gladly accept his and his wife's money, is one of the many ironies of Buñuel's history.

•  Done a time of political and social turbulence, a period of intense and bloody upheaval - it was either turbulent or upheaval. The two clauses don't sit well together, and are contradictory in tone. I suggest pick one or otherwise condense.
•  Done to set afire or otherwise wreck - 'set afire' is also relatively outdated, but I think this could easily just read "to destroy"
•  Done in a score of other cities - 'a score' is antiquated. Just say 'many'.
•  Done Add a comma directly after (PCE) in 1931
•  Done Starting a new section with The following year also doesn't seem to work.
•  Done "charro" films needs its link changed to Charro#In cinema.
  • Is the mention of genre movies, called "churros" in the next paragraph supposed to be charros?

They are different things. Charro films are cowboy films. Churro is the Spanish word for a cheap quickie film.

• •  Done Is it possible to directly compare charros to Westerns?
•  Done a vogue for films about - I'm also glad for the random French, but 'popular taste' should suffice
•  Done their latest collaboration - use of 'latest' is recentism. And at this point, it was either their last or it wasn't.
•  Done for the film, called Los olvidados - maybe stick an 'eventually' in here?
•  Done director: "visualized doesn't need the colon
•  Done The list following resisted the production in a variety of ways: should be using semi-colons to separate items
•  Done critic Ed Gonzalez as, "salacious enough to make Elia Kazan's Baby Doll and - don't need the comma after 'as', do need to make Baby Doll italic
•  Done that, "a - remove comma
•  Done In the words of film historian Peter Harcourt: "if The Young One must still be considered a 'bad' film by conventional standards, then it is one of the most subtle, most challenging and most distinguished bad films ever made." - this biography is not a laudit of Buñuel (nor a review dump). Sentences like this are outside of specifications, and should either be relevantly connected or left out.
•  Done dutifully submitted - love the sarcasm, but 'dutifully' is a bit fluffy here
•  Done was cashiered from his government post - perhaps 'fired'?
•  Done Carrière was the scion - two instances of 'scion' is stranger than one, if it was the nominator who added it, I'd be genuinely interested to hear why
•  Done Saying second attempt to film Mirbeau's novel suggests that one or the other was left unfinished, but both were completed, i.e. both were filmed, not attempted. A change here for clarity would be good.
•  Done The end of the sentence Buñuel had wanted to make a film of Benito Pérez Galdós' novel Tristana as early as 1952, even though he considered Galdós' book the author's weakest, in Buñuel's words: "of the 'I love you, my little pigeon' genre, very kitsch". doesn't fit - semantically or grammatically. The colon doesn't help. Is is meant to say that Buñuel 'considered it the worst book of the I love you genre' or something else? In any case, it needs rephrasing.
•  Done of, "2500 - remove comma
•  Done Add a space in The Phantom of Liberty(1974)
•  Done Perhaps transfer the later years subsection to its own section, out of the career section that it doesn't belong in
•  Done Period needs to move before the ref after by diabetes complications
•  Done There's a few duplicate links and renmaing and reintroducing (Serge Silberman a repeat offender), but the article may be long enough to justify some of this
• @Jburlinson: that should be all, take time to address the above! Kingsif (talk) 07:55, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Overall

• on hold Kingsif (talk) 16:29, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your review. Please give me a few more days to make the needed changes. All the best.--Jburlinson (talk) 08:04, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

@Jburlinson: I see you've done a lot of work - just the paraphrasing now I think :) Kingsif (talk) 21:43, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

I've done paraphrasing on a number of passages and deleted a few phrases in other places. Otherwise, it seems as if other copyvio notices are simply hits on film titles or direct quotes that are properly attributed. What do you think? Are we ready to go forward? --Jburlinson (talk) 06:56, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes, looks good, I'll do a prose check :) Kingsif (talk) 17:41, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Made almost all the requested changes -- still have a few more to go. --Jburlinson (talk) 10:04, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

@Jburlinson: It's looking good. I've never heard of 'churro' used to mean a cheap film, is it another old term? If not, perhaps the wiktionary entry could be updated and linked? Also, maybe a footnote saying there's no year or age for his high school, to at least explain why it's a bit unclear? Kingsif (talk) 21:27, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Churro is included in Wiktionary as a Spanish noun meaning "(colloquial) botched up artwork". It is used often in writing on Latin American cinema to describe low-budget works with low production values. It is often used by Mexican elites to describe films that appeal to the "common people". Kind of the Mexican equivalent of the "B movie" in the US.--Jburlinson (talk) 07:52, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Honestly, if you want to continue this discussion, I'm interested. I've heard of other Latin American terms for cheap films, including historic ones, so it's a nice file of information I wouldn't mind expanding. Of course, I could go read a book. Kingsif (talk) 21:06, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

I think I have addressed the various issues you've identified. Please let me know if you have further concerns. Thanks for taking the time and effort to do such a thorough job on this review. --Jburlinson (talk) 07:52, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Promoted, looks good! Kingsif (talk) 21:06, 11 June 2020 (UTC)