Talk:Powell and Pressburger

message: "There are contemporary echoes in the Dogme 95 manifesto."
Listen, your love of Dogme 95 is commendable.  However, not everything relates to it.  The films of Powell and Pressburger are different than that of Lars von Trier.  It would be like quoting something from Ingmar Berman and stating that is how Steven Spielberg feels as well.  He may feel that way but that is beside the point.  Let's just talk about these great films by Powell and Pressburger and leave it at that.
: It only said that there were contemporary echoes. Of course the films are different, nobody suggested otherwise. When I saw that comment, entered by somebody else, I thought it was an interesting comparison because they are about the only two groups of film-makers that have set out a manifesto like that. SteveCrook 09:37, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: My Edit

message: Artihcus022 added a paragraph:
Without a doubt, their greatest legacy is their pioneering use of the technicolor process as attested by the visual slendour in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffmann.
Is that "without a doubt" their greatest legacy? What about all their other legacies? Their B&W films like Forty-Ninth Parallel, A Canterbury Tale, I Know Where I'm Going!, The Small Back Room etc. Their  "crusade against materialism" and the documentary movement that was so prevalent and beloved of the critics at the time. What about their fearless introduction of raw emotion, art and so many other subjects into their films? What about their strange and unique way of working? Not only the joint credit but the whole company of The Archers and their regular stable of actors. What about their total independence from the studio system (for as long as they could)? I think that all of those things are great legacies which have inspired admiration and wonder in their audiences, many of whom are film-makers. -- SteveCrook 21:02, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Greatest legacy?

message: This article (and many Internet sources) says it is 1943. However, One of Our Aircraft... was already made by Archers in 1942... What is the correct year here?--Nedergard (talk) 07:20, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Well the date of 1943 is obviously incorrect. The first film to carry the arrow in the target logo of The Archers was The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) so a lot of people thing that was the first film by The Archers. But OOOAIM was the first Archers film and the first to carry the joint credit of "Written, Produced and Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger" -- SteveCrook (talk) 22:33, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

text: P.S. They may not have incorporated The Archers into a registered company (Archers Productions Ltd) until 1943. I'll have to check on that. But OOOAIM refers to "The Archers" in the opening credits -- SteveCrook (talk) 22:36, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Founding year of Archers 

message: The article on The Battle of the River Plate states with sources that it, not Red Shoes, is, so have amended accordingly.Straw Cat (talk) 17:57, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Did you read the sources referenced? Neither of them mention The Battle of the River Plate as being more commercially successful than The Red Shoes or mention any actual figures. So the article on The Battle of the River Plate (film) says that it was their most commercially successful film and cites a couple of sources. But those sources don't actually support that assertion :) The TCM article calls it "the last great success for The Archers" but doesn't make any comparison to the figures for The Red Shoes. The Red Shoes eventually made Variety's 'Golden Fifty' list of the top money-makers of all time. I don't think that The Battle of the River Plate ever made it into that list -- SteveCrook (talk) 22:27, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The IMDB trivia section states "This was Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's most financially successful film" - but without quoting any actual figures or source! Straw Cat (talk) 00:56, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Powell didn't mention how much they made on it, or even how much they got paid for it, in his autobiography or I would have added that to his & Emeric's biography pages on the IMDb. I think we'll have to do a bit of digging to get beyond what is only heresay evidence so far -- SteveCrook (talk) 01:39, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Most commercially successful film? 

message: There is the following statement in the Critical opinions section:
While the reviews themselves may well be individually sufficient for sourcing what each say about the film, their usage in this manner is not appropriate.  They are being 'sampled' to support general statements about the film's overall critical reception, which amounts to original research. Wikipedia:Review aggregators stipulates that review aggregators are not arbiters of critical consensus, and by extension, I think it is safe to say neither are handpicked reviews hosted on a self-published website i.e. selecting a bunch of reviews does not permit us to make qualitative judgments about how the films were reviewed at the time.  The guideline clearly states that we should use books and periodicals to provide a retrospective overview of how films were reviewed by critics. This was why I tagged that section so I would appreciate it if the tag is left in placed to highlight a direction of further improvement for the article. Betty Logan (talk) 17:19, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: As a point of interest, and as the main organiser of the group that publishes information on the web site in question, when does any web site stop being a "self-published website"? The definition at WP:SPS could apply to just about any web site, certainly the vast majority. The reviews referenced are all published reviews and aren't carefully "handpicked", "sampled" or "selected" to only include favourable reviews. Contemporary reviews of these films and the film-makers aren't easy to find and we include any bad ones as well as any good ones. Many of the contemporary reviews referenced in the main article are far from favourable. That was the point of referencing them. To show that films that are generally considered to be masterpieces today didn't attract favourable reviews when the films were first released. They were out of step with the critical consensus of the time. But they have lasted a lot longer, growing in popularity over the years -- SteveCrook (talk) 23:55, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Any site that doesn't have some degree of professional oversight is considered "self-published", but that is besides the point.  Even if it were not, that would still not be a basis for coming to conclusions about the critical reception of the film, since none of the actual reviews draw any conclusions about how the films were reviewed. Betty Logan (talk) 03:42, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not so concerned about the conclusions reached by other people so much as the perceived insult to me & the site I manage which is cited in many books, theses and learned people. Who determines this "degree of professional oversight"? Is this just your opinion or is there some official measure? -- SteveCrook (talk) 11:23, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know what you are perceiving to be "insulting" about my comments. Your website is basically a personal run fansite, is it not? You may run it very well, but it doesn't alter the nature of what it is.  A non-SPS website would be something like the British Film Institute website, which is a credible academic resource that is presumably able to finance and recruit qualified and professional researchers. The sort of sources we really should be looking to are renowned sites like the BFI and AFI, articles published in peer reviewed academic journals and high quality magazines (think Sight and Sound rather than Empire), and books published by authors who are acknowledged as experts in their areas. Now, all this tag does is highlight that the P&P site is a personal run site; I have not made any observations one way or the other in regards to the quality of the site. I don't disagree with your summation of the critical consensus of the time which is why I left the text in and simply tagged it; however, it would be better if we could source such observations to something like the BFI, or a book published about Powell and Pressburger. Betty Logan (talk) 13:03, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  The BFI site isn't run by "credible academics" or "professional researchers", it's run by employees of the BFI - who then often come to our group for information about P&P, as do many academics and other people :)  The employees of the BFI don't claim to be experts in every field of British film. Don't be misled by appearances over content. The PaPAS site may not be the flashiest site ever made, but that's because it isn't trying to sell anything. It's just providing valuable information for people interested in the films, and the people that made them. Just because some people aren't being paid for something, that doesn't make the information they provide any less valuable or important. There are published books about P&P that would presumably be acceptable as Wikipedia references, even though they are full of errors (you know which book I mean :) ). The perceived insult isn't in any of your comments so much as in your attaching the tag WP:SPS which in itself is quite insulting because it is really talking about self-aggrandising web sites but is such a loose definition that it could be applied to any web site, professional or not. The BFI site is a WP:SPS - because it's published by the BFI. Various people have probably contributed to that summation of the critical consensus, but I don't think that I contributed to it, I just gave the references to confirm it -- SteveCrook (talk) 13:40, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Critical opinions section 

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thread_title:  External links modified