Talk:Snowtime!

YTV commercial

I just saw one which announced "in theatres Friday!" at 11:05am during the Canadian debut of "Journey to the Center of Mikey's Mind".

Since this aired Saturday February 6, this would indicate a Friday February 12 theatre date for this film.

I am going to list that as the Canadian English debut date, the prior one must have been in French. 184.145.18.50 (talk) 19:04, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

It's fine for the body text of the article to note followup release dates in new markets — but as far as the infobox is concerned, in that particular spot we care only about the original release date in the original market, not a comprehensive listing of all subsequent release dates. And a television commercial is not a reliable source in and of itself, because we have no way to verify anything about that commercial afterward. Bearcat (talk) 22:03, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

“Highest grossing Canadian film of 2015”

I'm going to change the line about being the highest grossing Canadian film of 2015. Brooklyn [1] and Room [2] have much higher worldwide grosses, and both are Canadian films (albeit coproductions). Mathew5000 (talk) 08:07, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Brooklyn and Room both ran up their box office in 2016, not 2015. When determining the "top-grossing film of specific year" criterion, the title goes to whatever film had the highest box office total on December 31, 2015 regardless of whether some other film had longer legs into 2016. There may potentially be a better way to clarify the distinction, but another film's box office on or after January 1 can't ex post facto take the "top-grossing film" title, or the Golden Screen Award, away from the film that was #1 as of December 31. The title is awarded based on the year in which the tickets were actually sold, not the year in which the film had its first screening — so even as nominally 2015 films, both Room and Brooklyn still have a shot at becoming Canada's top-grossing film of 2016, and quite possibly even the all-timers list at this rate, but ticket sales earned in 2016 can't retroactively alter the 2015 title. Bearcat (talk) 17:46, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

@Bearcat: 1. Both Brooklyn and Room exceeded $3-million before the end of 2015.

2. What is the source for the statement that Guerre des tuques 3D and Le Mirage are the #1 and #2 top-grossing Canadian movies in 2015? The source cited in the article ([3]) does not make that claim.

3. The source cited is dated 23 December 2015, so how can it be referring to the box office in the calendar year up to 31 December?

4. If we want to talk about box office earned during the calendar year, we should use the preposition in rather than of. If we say "the top-grossing movies of 2015", it will be read as referring to the total gross (whenever earned) of movies that were released in 2015.

5. Are we talking here about box office earned in Canada? If so, we ought to state that. Mathew5000 (talk) 21:10, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Per this article about exactly this very thing, Snowtime/La guerre des tuques 3D is the champ per receipts taken in within calendar 2015, and Brooklyn did not surpass it until sometime after January 1 of 2016. Whether they're including only Canadian box office or all international box office is not specified, and accordingly not for us to guess per our rules against original research unless somebody can find another source which better clarifies how they calculate it — but the ACCT gave the Golden Screen Award to Snowtime!, based on its rules, and accordingly it's not for us to say "but they're wrong!" for any reason that's actually in conflict with those rules. The other curious thing is that as late as Christmas Day it was still Le Mirage that was holding the #1 position; La Guerre des tuques literally overtook it in the final week of the year because "family film + school holidays = boffo business". Bearcat (talk) 22:31, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

1. That article from northernstars.ca that you link to here, is not used as a reference in the article. When I edited the article so as to reflect the source which is cited, you reverted me. But do you now agree that the radio-canada.ca source does not support the statement for which it is cited?

2. I disagree with your comment about the northernstars.ca article "Whether they're including only Canadian box office or all international box office is not specified". The headline is "Brooklyn Tops Canadian Box Office", and the body of the article certainly does specify that it refers to the box office gross within Canada, not the worldwide box office.

3. Do you agree with me that to talk about box office earned during the calendar year, we should use the preposition in rather than of?

4. We still don't have any source that says Le Mirage is #2 among Canadian films at the Canadian box office, do we? Therefore I would suggest reverting this edit. Mathew5000 (talk) 02:15, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

If you have a problem with an existing source in the article, then the solution is to replace it with another source, not to weaken the distinction stated in the text. The Golden Screen Award is not presented to the top-grossing Quebec film as of December 23 — it's awarded to the top-grossing film from anywhere in Canada as of December 31, so our article cannot make some alternate claim about the film earning a lesser distinction than the one it earned.

If you feel strongly about the "in" vs. "of" distinction, I don't have an objection to that necessarily — but it doesn't actually change the meaning of the sentence in the way you think it does. Between "box office earned within 2015" and "total box office earned in any year as long as the film was originally released in 2015", in doesn't magically mean the former and of doesn't magically mean the later; both prepositions can still equally mean either thing, depending how you phrase the rest of the sentence.

And Brooklyn was also a Quebec film, for that matter (it was filmed in Montreal with the participation of Quebec's film industry), so dialing Snowtime back to "Quebec-only box office champ" doesn't actually solve the issue you think it's solving either. If you're going to claim that Brooklyn beat out Snowtime as Canada's box office champ based on some alternate criterion that isn't consistent with the rules of how the Golden Screen Award gets awarded, then by definition it would also beat out Snowtime as Quebec's box office champ by the exact same criterion — frequent though it may be, for obvious reasons, that "Quebec films" are French and "Rest-of-Canada films" are English, language in and of itself is not the determinant of whether a film is "Quebec" or "Rest-of-Canada". Anglophone films are still Quebec films if they were made in Quebec, such as Brooklyn or Elephant Song, and francophone films are still Rest-of-Canada films if they were made outside of Quebec, e.g. What We Have.

And finally, the fact remains that Le Mirage was the #1 film in the Canadian box office until Snowtime pipped it right over the Christmas break — neither Brooklyn nor Room was even in the Top 5 as of the stats as they stood on December 23, as again neither of them really started taking off until after December 31. Neither one of them really broke out of the "I'm not going to see a Canadian film!" ghetto in any particularly significant way until their Oscar nominations were announced. Because that's just how we roll: as a rule, Canadians refuse to like or care about a Canadian film until it gets some kind of American approval that gives us "permission" to reconsider it. Bearcat (talk) 17:27, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

We are mostly in agreement; my concern is that the statements in the two articles (Snowtime! and The Mirage (2015 film)) be properly sourced. The radio-canada.ca source simply does not talk about the Canadian box office of Canadian films; its discussion is about the Quebec box office of Quebec films. (I agree with you that Brooklyn is a Quebec film but that's neither here nor there.) You are talking about the Golden Screen Award, but that had never been mentioned in either article until I put it in just now. As for Le Mirage, I know it was #2 among Canadian films at the Canadian box office within calendar year 2015, for the reasons you mention, but do we have a reliable source saying that? Otherwise it is original research. Mathew5000 (talk) 18:49, 22 February 2016 (UTC)