Jump to content

Talk:Goldfinger (film)/Archive 1

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Archive 1

Shirley Bassey

Is there a source beyond "in a televised interview" where she claimed she almost passed out while recording the theme? I've yet to find any shred of information that proves this to be true. K1Bond007 05:19, July 16, 2005 (UTC)

  • It's new to me, too. There was a recent interview in which she stated outright that she hates the song, however. 23skidoo 05:24, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
    • That I knew, but what was recently added is new to me. K1Bond007 05:42, July 16, 2005 (UTC)
  • I have uploaded on to Youtube the clip where Shirley Bassey discusses the original (SINGLE) recording of Goldfinger and how she nearly passed out when hitting the end note. When in Youtube type in, Shirley Bassey - Shirley discusses her life, career (Clip 3). There are five clips and anyone who is a fan will be interested in viewing them all. For those who may not be aware, the single recording of the song is not the same recording that was added to the movie soundtrack. Shirley holds that long ending high register note in the single recording for an incredibly long time and you will find yourself trying to breath for her.

Why switch from bowler to top hat for Oddjob, from novel to movie?

I think I know, but it's original research/speculation, so I'll put it here. Originally, bowlers were made by hand, and had a circular flat brim. That would have been fine for throwing with a metal rim, and I think almost certainly Fleming wrote Oddjob with a bowler because of the "iron hat" connection of bowlers. They were already a cross between hardhat and dresshat.

Unfortunately, by the time of the film, most bowler/derbys were of the later style with the more stylish curved rim, boatlike and no longer throwable like a frisbee. Rather than give Oddjob an old-style derby with a funny-looking flat round rim, the film makers were forced, in order to have something throwable (no special effects available for this in 1964 so the hat actually had to work), to give Oddjob a short top hat, which still could have the traditional flat, perfectly circular brim, without looking, er, Odd. And there you are. SBHarris 18:00, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Split

It has been proposed to split the soundtrack section into a separate article.

For the time being I don't agree with this proposal. It isn't clear if the soundtrack section is just talking about the soundtrack being part of the film or if it is about the soundtrack CD/LP. I'd would give it a separate article if (a) the CD/LP was noticable on its own (which I'm not convinced about) and (b) the section was entirely about the CD/LP. --MarkS (talk) 21:01, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Wetsuit

The analysis of the wetsuit/drysuit didn't add up as the suit is bone dry a second later so it all has to be given up to poetic license.

Thats the point, it wouldnt work
Actually, some models of real drysuits have a slick outer plastic shell (being foam insulated inside or separately), and could be more or less dry not long after getting out the water. Water runs right off them like a plastic trashbag. And as I recall, Bond works on the demolition stuff a bit before peeling it off (which in real life would him to overheat-- he'd be getting out of that thing ASAP.) But the tux is more effective in plot if you're surprised by it. Also a guy in a tux laying down plastic explosive looks silly. Not as silly as a drum ostensibly full of nitroglycerin (or charitably nitromethane) labeled "NITRO", of course (guess they use that for cocaine solvent extraction and like to live dangerously). But there's way too long a list of such stuff to get it all in. I've yet to see a real drysuit without a rubber neck-gasket, though. SBHarris 18:43, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Proving the film "wrong"

A complaint has been made that the end section has too much stuff about proving the film wrong, with POV stuff. Well, these things, of course, all must be POV. But there's been endless speculation about some of the Goldfinger scenes, enough that people have devoted whole TV shows to debunking them or not. That makes them notable enough to list here. But as I say, I'd rather err on the side of too much material than too little. If you want a really detailed analysis, I suggest the IMDB. A LOT of possible trivia has been left out of this article, I promise.

Anyway, other opinions on the matter now formally solicited. RfC. SBHarris 23:38, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with having a section that discusses the debunking of certain scenes in the film. However, it is POV to label such a section "Myths" because, in doing that, we are taking the side of the debunkers (i.e. we're saying that the debunkers are right when they say that such-and-such can't happen). Right now, the tone of that section is too one-sided. It needs to be written with the formal, detached tone of an encyclopedia and can't take the debunkers' side. --Hnsampat 05:29, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
It can if nobody is around seriously arguing for the reality of OTHER side. Do YOU know of any evidence that a bullet will blow out a modern airliner window under ANY circumstances whatsoever? Has ANYBODY ever SEEN or reported this? Has it EVER been seen in any test? Or is it to be found only in works of fiction? If you can find tests, write them up an put them here. We don't delete them, and will give you equal space. But if you can't find them, there may be a reason why you can't: it doesn't happen. Wikipedia is NOT required to give equal weight to all points of view, especially those with no empirical evidence to support them. SBHarris 21:57, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Is saying a shooting mistake is a mistake, "POV"?

An editor has objected that calling a shooting mistake or blooper a mistake, is POV. It is indeed, but it misses the point of WP:NPOV. As a little thought will show, since the removal of the section is also representative of a POV. Every edit we make on wikipedia represents a POV. All error fixes, and all fixes of fixes. Ultimately, every choice of every ASCII symbol rather than some other, is a POV. But this is not what NPOV was intended for. Errors do exist. Concensus opinion implies that some POVs are better than others, and indeed the WP:NPOV clearly spells out what to do when this is the case. A film-shooting blooper, like a spelllllllng error that everybody sees and nobody has questioned, deserves to be fixed or mentioned without a counterimposed point of view. If there is significant disagreement as to whether or not something really was a mistake (did the director intend for you to see that mike boom hanging down on the scene?), an argument from the minority side can always be constructed, if there's a cite for it or good reason to think so.

But please, don't try to suggest to us that NPOV means no errors exist objectively in the world, or can be acknowledged. That would make the very idea of an encyclopedia impossible. SBHarris 04:20, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Point well taken, although I was using POV in a different sense . Regardless of that, goofs still do not belong here. For one thing, unless they have been published somewhere, they are original research. But more than that, though, they are just plain unencyclopedic. That's fine for IMDb, but not Wikipedia. --Hnsampat 16:42, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

POV, toomuchtrivia, etc. templates

Please stop removing these templates. I am disputing the neutrality of the "Myths" section and I feel that there is way too much trivia in the "Miscellanea" section. As long as this dispute exists, the templates must stay. Also, I don't know if this is the case, but if the same user is using multiple IP addresses to revert my edits, please stop. That can constitute sockpuppetry. --Hnsampat 16:07, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Look, I can find you ONE guy to dispute ANYTHING. I can find you far more than one guy to dispute that we ever landed on the moon, or that the Earth is more than a few thousand years old. I can find you people who don't like the structure of any section of ANY wikipedia article. Are we therefore to add dispute tags to EVERY section of EVERY article? I think not. But that is the subtext and implied argument you're giving us. YOU, just one guy, dispute something, and there think it should sport a dispute tag as long as you live. Sorry, but Wikipedia doesn't work this way.

Okay, I'm soliciting comments here: RfC. We want a significant number of people unhappy with an issue before we muck it up with a unsightly tag, forever. I'll leave your tags were they are, as WP:AGF and out of politeness. But you'll have to muster up some support after a while, or they go. The reason being that Wikipedia is concensus-driven, and 100% concensus is never a reality. But to require it for the absense of all dispute tags would make Wikipedia a jungle of nothing but dispute tags. There, I've said this two ways, now. I hope the point is getting across. SBHarris 21:48, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I apologize if I am frustrating you, because that is not my intention in any way. I know well enough about Wikipedia being consensus-driven. In fact, that was my exact point in putting those tags there. It seemed to me that some users were intent upon acting unilaterally in the other direction (i.e. "I don't care what your objections are to this article; we're not letting the tags stay there.") Hence, I had to be a bit more emphatic and insist that the tags stay. I wasn't acting unilaterally; I was trying to stop someone else from doing that.

That being said, I think that any reasonable person can see that the "Myths" section is not neutral. For one thing, the word "myth" is a loaded word. I really don't think that needs to be explained. Let me give you a few examples of problem sentences (i.e. sentences that are POV and not in the formal tone of an encyclopedia):

  • "Though this is a plausible explanation for this unusual method of killing, it has been argued whether or not it is possible..." (This sentence is defining what is and is not plausible, which is an opinion, not fact.)
  • "Although James Bond films are not known for their technical accuracy, but rather for outlandishly plausible action..." ("Outlandish" is a highly subjective term.)
  • "A different urban myth (similar to the permanent marker myth) is that there is (or was) a chemical in metallic paints that is toxic and can be somehow absorbed through the skin, causing illness and eventual death; this has yet to be proven, but it may be plausible." (Again, what's plausible and what isn't is subjective.)
  • "Fortunately, today's airliner windows apparently do not behave in the same way as the window in the Lockheed JetStar used to represent a jet at 35,000 ft in the film." (What is "fortunate" or not is an opinion, not fact.)

(Keep in mind that these are just examples; there are more like this in this section.)

I should also note that the "Myths" section contains only one outside reference, which is to MythBusters. Other than that, nothing in that paragraph has been cited. Indeed, the very subjective tone of the section and its use of weasel words (e.g. "some argue," "some people say," etc.) makes me think that the whole thing is original research, which is specifically forbidden on Wikipedia. And we cannot deny that the overall tone of that section demonstrates an intent to "disprove" what goes on in the film.

Please don't misconstrue my argument. I'm not saying that we have to give undue weight to some minority opinion that says that the movie is plausible. Of course people don't really die by skin paint. Of course a plane won't really depressurize just because of a bullet. However, we can't adopt that kind of tone in writing the article. We have to be detached and neutral. It's not what we're saying; it's how we're saying it. Even if there is no dispute whatsoever as to the facts, one still has to maintain a formal encyclopedic tone. Read the "Myths" section again and think to yourself: would Encyclopedia Britannica write it this way? Or would they write it some other way? (Seriously, let's just reword that section to get the right tone and we'll be fine!)

As far as the extraordinarily long trivia section goes, I direct you to Wikipedia:Avoid trivia sections in articles. I think that sums it up better than I ever could. (In a nutshell, the reason why we shouldn't have long trivia sections is because trivia, by definition, are interesting but not notable.) That doesn't mean we have to get rid of the information that is there. It just means that we need to find some way to incorporate it into the article.

I believe that I'm being more than reasonable here. Please respond accordingly. --Hnsampat 00:52, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

ANSWER: Okay, you deserve a polite response for being polite yourself. You do raise many different issues both by example and implication, and it's hard to know where to begin.

  • First, I'm not married to the overuse of loaded words such as "fortunate", but since this work (and our view of reality) is consensus-driven, there's no way to get rid of them entirely. For example, I don't think it would be too unencyclopedic in tone to note that disappearance of the Earth's ozone layer would have unfortunate consequences for the biosphere. Perhaps it would be unencylopedic to state that the Nazis fortunately did not win WW II, even though I think only a small minority of people think otherwise. In the context of whether or not we all want to find ourselves living in a world where airliner windows are in danger of blowing out due to a bullet or even a knife penetration (as in the Goldfinger novel), I think it's rather fortunate to find that a study has shown we don’t live in such a world. Is there anybody out there who disagrees? There is a degree that luck plays a part in the world, and though there are many who disagree in many circumstances as whether a particular piece of luck is "good" or "bad" there are many others where there's not much disagreement. We all like our ozone layer and our constant solar output, do we not? And our airliner window integrity.

    But if you want to go ahead and fix this up to use language more neutrally, I won't object. Please don't mistake my argument-- I agree with some of your examples. Just don't make major deletions of information, please. What's trivia to you isn't trivia to somebody else who cares about how this movie was constructed.

  • If I went through the Britannica, I dare say I could find more than one instance where an article uses the words "fortunate" or "inclement" or "unlucky" or just plain good or bad. Probably some of these are backed by what you'd complain of as weasel-wording, but too often, weasel wording is just another way of warning that the opinion is a consensus one involving human emotion. But such things do exist, and an encyclopedia should note them, since they too are part of reality.
  • The question of "plausibility." This is central to all scientific discussion. We certainly cannot get rid of discussions of plausibility in any encyclopedia, nor statements of relative plausibility, since some explanations for things are simply more plausible than others are. Think of the list of explanations for the origin of the moon, in both terms of mechanism and time. The fact that we're engaged in the same kind of discourse as to the action and plot of some obscure work of fiction, only means that we have the luxury of having the length and time to do so, not that the method or way of reasoning itself is somehow suspect. Which leads me to the next problem of
  • Trivia. Actually, most of what that article you quote says about Trivia on Wikipedia, is ill-considered and self-contradictory, and (happily) is less honored in the breach of what actually goes on, on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is many things its designers and founders never intended. If you link "trivia", in particular, to the totally elastic issue of what is "notable," you've already lost the argument, since almost all of the 1.7 million English article Wikipedia is about things which would fail the test of how notable a subject has to be, for inclusion in Britannica. What's trivial and what isn't, depends entirely on how much space you have to discuss it in. Wikipedia suffers, and has long suffered, from what I've termed "notability creep" It's especially upsetting as regards biographies of living people, but I also note that Wikipedia has entire articles on fictional characters in uninteresting TV shows. An article on Wesley Crusher would fail the trivia test for Britannica. But did you know that he is the son of Jack Crusher and Beverly Crusher, and is was a bright young man who was almost too intelligent for his own good (Note intrusion of POV here--- better get out there at warp speed and WP:SOFIXIT). He first arrived on the USS Enterprise-D with his mother right after Captain Jean-Luc Picard assumed command. Picard realized that Wesley understood many things beyond his age, and appointed the youth as acting ensign. He matured over the years and eventually entered Starfleet Academy…… Need I go on? I suggest you go straight to the Wesley Crusher TALK page and nominate the whole wicked and nauseating thing for immediate deletion (or else start adding dispute tags like mad), then start on the thousands of pages related to comic book plots and characters you'll find on Wikipedia. Then, members of musical bands, particularly rock bands. You've got your work cut out for you, man! Why are you here, picking fights over Goldfinger??
  • Why do we have the category of Trivia anyway? What purpose does it serve? Would a list of the same kinds of things by anther name, serve as well? I think so. As I've explained, there are many things about works of art which are more than the sum of their parts, but discussion of the many, many parts as they each occur, as an incorporated part of the main work, would bog it down and cause you to lose the lines of reasoning or plot. So we split them out. But they are important and (for many people) interesting. Which leads us to:
  • The question of interest. Which makes me want to ask what your problem is? Has somebody got you duck-taped to a chair, and is making you read every line of the trivia section of this Wiki out loud, on pain of being bastinadoed if you stop? Got a laser aimed at your groin? What is it? Is your page-down key broken? What makes you care a fig about what's in this Wiki at all, since by definition the whole thing wouldn’t merit a line in the Britannica? Just skip it. Or go over and bother the FUTURAMA people about fancruft. It's much easier for you to skip it, than it is for us to delete it, which means that those who really are interested in it, have to go somewhere else to find it. Which is related to
  • What we're doing. There is something *odd* about Goldfinger, the movie. Nearly everybody in the English speaking world has seen it at least once, from your teenage kids to the folks in the nursing home, and most of those people could identify it from a single scene or a couple of minutes of clip. Which is more than you can say of Citizen Kane or any but a fairly short list of movies. So what happened? How did this odd fact come to be? The same isn't true of every James Bond movie, let alone most action movies. What happened in THIS one? My personal opinion is that the result happened because the makers of THIS movie achieved something which is actually fairly rare in a movie: an almost Poe-like, or perhaps Hawthorne-like purity and unity of writing and filmography which is reminiscent of works like Moby Dick. Perhaps there's more about whales in that book than you wanted to know. But somehow it all adds up. For Goldfinger the text is about gold, Midas, power, money, smelting, wealth, good, evil, adventure, life, death. How audacious do you need to be to rob Fort Knox? Pussy Galore wants to know where Goldfinger is, after he's sucked directly into the heavens. "Playing his golden harp," says Bond. Indeed. From the first moment to the last, it all fits together. But I can't argue this directly. At most, I can only show it indirectly. But showing it involves giving lots of examples of "trivia." Like discussing the use of color in The Scarlet Letter. The trivia is much like the trivia in Moby Dick, but here the trivia is not about whaling. You really have to read it. Melville dedicates Moby Dick, in fact, to Hawthorne. Why? I can't really TELL you, but I can SHOW you. And if you don't get it, it's like Jazz. If I have to explain, you'll probably never get it.
  • So do work through the broad philosophical issues above, and get back to us. They all go far beyond the minor problems in the wiki on Goldfinger. Perhaps you'll want to go first to Jimbo's TALK page and complain that a lot of barbarians are ruining his vision with a lot of trivia. If you're lucky, he's get back to you with something like "What vision??" He didn't really know what he was doing. Neither did Larry Sanger, who contributed an essential piece but still missed the vision (and hasn't quite got it even NOW, if you read the Citizendium comedy).
  • After you do all that, again, would you please prune out the trivia sections in the comic book-related and rock-band related stuff on Wikipedia, before starting in on my own movies of interest? That should keep you busy for months. <grin>. Then, would you mind reading through the list of article titles on Wikipedia, and tag those that don't interest you at all, for immediate deletion as being "uninteresting"? That will occupy you for even longer, and will result in good feedback for you. Good luck, Mr. Phelps. As always, should any of your team be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions… SBHarris 03:48, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Would I be out of line in suggesting that you seem to feel a certain sense of "possession" over this article? That is, you don't appreciate my interference in this article, since it is an article of importance to you? That it is, in a sense, "your" article? This is what I have understood based on the lengthy (and, at times, bitingly sarcastic) response that you have given me above, where you suggest that I address these issues in all other articles before I get to this one. Now, I hope you'll forgive my being a "party pooper" of sorts, but I saw Wikipedia policies being violated on this page and I have pointed them out. I call them as I see them. (FYI, right now, you might be on the verge of violating one yourself; please see Wikipedia:Ownership of articles for details).

Please don't misunderstand my point. Your response takes my statement of trivia being "interesting but not notable" and somehow alters its meaning so as to suggest that somehow I don't find this article interesting. Don't get me wrong. I think some of the trivia listed in this article is pretty neat. All I'm saying is that we should incorporate it into the article somehow. Same thing holds true for the "Myths" section. It doesn't have to go (and, indeed, should be kept), but it needs to be reworded to be NPOV. When we start throwing in sentences like, "This is not plausible," we are interjecting our own analysis and our own opinions, which is not only POV, but also original research.

Also, regarding the fact that Britannica wouldn't have an article such as this one or one on Star Trek, I gently remind you that Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia. Also, if you read WP:Notability, you will find that it is a Wikipedia policy that notability is not subjective.

I hope this clarifies a few things. --Hnsampat 04:29, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm sure I'm as guilty as the next guy in feeling a BIT of misplaced "ownership" over stuff I've worked on, or worked over, or added to. Impossible not to. However, I think that most of this is concern over deletion of *content* which results in citable information lost, when it should remain available somewhere (since content of questionble "notability" is always easier to ignore than to find again after somebody has deleted it). I think that's proper. If you want to change anything that looks too POV in judgement, or looks like OR, feel free to do it. I think Mythbusters (a citable source, and not my opinion) is already cited as much as possible for any direct "plausable" vs. "implausable" comments and judgements on the gold painting and the airplane window. *I* didn't write those sections-- somebody else did. Stuff I've done on this article is mostly getting the trivia/miscellanea sections on gold and gadgets in some kind of sensible order, and I wouldn't like to see that material all re-randomized, or deleted. That's not the same as feeling I own it. If you want to put it back the way it was a year ago, go ahead. Somebody (not my sockpuppet) will doubtless change it mostly back. And if not, I'll be wrong.

As for the Wikipedia "policy" that notability is not subjective, that ROFLMAO you can't hear, is the sound of me doing that (Rolling On Floor, Laughing). In Jimbo or somebody else's fevered dreams or fantasies this may be an objective of Wikipedia, but it will never be a reality. Wikipedia will always (why do I have to even point this out?) reflect the interests and areas of knowledge of its relatively few editors (just 2300 people have more than 5000 edits: [1]), NOT some perfectly distilled essense of the sum of interests and knowledge of the Writers of the World. If the Writers of the World all had an equal interest in Wikipedia (which they don't), and each was willing to do his or her part to contribute his or her Wikifiable thoughts to the project (which they are not), and each actually attempted this (which thank god they don't), there would be a sort of cyberspace explosion and lockup which be the World Wide Web plus academia plus commercial publishing, all trying to cram a subset of itself into a bunch of servers in Florida. But meanwhile, back to reality. I'm tired of Wikipedians trying to tell me what Wikipedia is NOT, ala WP:NOT. That's like trying to command the tides. Wikipedia is what it is, and I can see what it is, for myself. As for what others think it is or should be, they are each welcome to their POV. In actuality, only Jimbo's POV counts there, and that's in regard to what he WANTS Wikipedia to be, but again, is like commanding the tides to think makes the actual product into something which it manifestly is not, and never will or can be. SBHarris 08:32, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

I say once again that I don't wish to delete anything; I merely think that the trivia should be incorporated into the article (rather than having a long trivia section) and that the "Myths" section should not be POV. I won't constrain myself, however, by saying that I won't delete anything at all, because if something seems to me to be either original research or extraordinarily non-notable, I'll be compelled to delete it. Please realize that if you were not willing to have your work be mercilessly edited by others, you should not have contributed it to Wikipedia.

Also, regarding what you say about all the trivia being "citable" information. If it is all citable, why don't you cite it? The only sources cited in this entire article are MythBusters and an external link to a blog (which I am removing as an unreliable source). You seem to know quite a bit about this and since you feel that the trivia is all noteworthy and citable, I invite you to go ahead and add citations. (Just please remember the rules on verifiability and reliable sources.)

I must disagree with your suggestion that Wikipedia "is what it is" and that trying to enforce its rules is like trying to "command the tides." Sure, editors can't control everything that goes on on Wikipedia. However, does that mean that Wikipedians should not "call them as they see them"? That's essentially saying "there's nothing we can do about it, so we shouldn't even try." Or, it's like arguing, "Yeah, there are rules, but nobody follows them, so they shouldn't be enforced." If government was run that way, I'd move to Mars. Fortunately, it isn't. Many people drive over the speed limit, but not all of them get pulled over by the police. But, some do. The IRS won't audit everybody, but some people will be audited. At that point, they can't argue, "That's not fair! If you're going to audit me, you should audit everyone else, too!" (Don't misunderstand, I'm not characterizing your argument as being such. I'm merely using an example.)

It's probably futile for me to quote more Wikipedia policy to you, since you seem to hold them in some degree of contempt, but Wikipedia is not anarchy; there are rules and they are enforced. --Hnsampat 15:40, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

  • Yes, but not by you. You're a fellow editor here with me (and one with less experience, as I see by your edit history), and despite your many authority-metaphors of IRS agents and traffic cops, you are basically just a fellow driver here on this road, driving eratically and motioning me to keep up somehow. Look to your own driving first therefore, please. For example, I see you feel justified in actually alphabetizing [2] a list of meaningless and mostly faceless names of fictional politicians on a TV show (The West Wing), none of which has citation of what episode the information comes from originally (gosh, it's work, isn't it? Reordering info doesn't make you responsible for it, or does it?), and yet at the same time you feel that somebody else's pointing-out that a name of one of these characters from a given state is shared by a real and famous politician from that state, is TOO trivial to include as a fact in that same list [3], and you've deleted that. This is odd behavior, indeed. Where in the world did you get the God-of-What-Really-Really-Is-Trivia-Complex, which allows you to think you can edit differentially, that way? Try to get a grip, and some perspective on what actually is trivial in this world of ours, before launching into lecture-mode on these topics. You haven't thought through them; you don't carefully follow your prescriptions yourself; and (finally) you have work of your own to clean up, before starting on mine. Okay? SBHarris 04:34, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Your response above comes across to me as a personal attack. You are not offering any substantive counterarguments to what I am saying and are instead making irrelevant arguments about my edit history. How I behave outside the course of this discussion is irrelevant to the argument that I am making here. I have been keeping my arguments strictly to the matter at hand and have wandered from it only to the extent to ask you to do the same. You, on the other hand, are not attacking my argument and are instead attacking me as a person, calling me hypocritical and accusing me of some kind of superiority complex.

I'm sorry if I have offended you. I can see how my analogy about IRS agents and traffic cops may have been perceived by you, but it was merely an example to help me make my point. I certainly did not intend to "lecture" or otherwise patronize you. I was simply making the point that Wikipedia has rules that need to be enforced (by any user with any level of experience).

I gently remind you that you don't "own" this article any more than I own the pages that you refer to. If you feel that something is wrong on the pages that you refer to, you are more than welcome to edit them or to point out your objections.

I have no intention, however, of getting into any kind of further conflict with you. You and I have agreed to allow these templates to stay in place for the time being and to work to de-POV and otherwise clean up this article. Nothing more needs to be said for now. --Hnsampat 05:13, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

My own take on Goldfinger "trivia"

Here's my POV. Goldfinger is not the greatest film ever made, up there in the running with Citizen Kane or whatever. But it has consistantly (and this is not just MY opinion--the polls are cited) been the most popular Bond film of a great many, despite having been made relatively early-on, before a lot of money and special effects had been poured in, or invented. Why? My OPINION is that this is largely due to a lot of attention to a great many interlocking artistic details. The film is very tightly shot, and there are no boring scenes, despite the fact that there are a lot of scenes in which there is very little of what we now call "action," in Bond films. How is that? Artistic detail. "Perfection consists of an an endless series of trifles, but perfection is no trifle." (Michaelangelo). These details are what we call "trivia" in another context. But in any artwork, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. This one is a good example. SBHarris 22:03, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Compliments

I compliment you, SBHarris, on your work to de-POV the "Myths" section. While it obviously still needs work, I think that you've de-POV'd it enough to merit removal of the POV and tone tags. I was about to do what you did myself, but you beat me to it! And, as it turns out, you did it better than I would have done it. Kudos. --Hnsampat 05:22, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Skin suffocation

It's a common myth that Shirley Eaton died while filming this movie; although the topic of "skin suffocation" is brought up, this isn't even mentioned... I think it should be, even if it's just under "trivia."

Yoda921 13:08, 18 March 2007 (UTC)Yoda

Do you have a reliable source that describes the prevalence of that myth? If not, then unfortunately we can't include it, as it is non-notable information. (Much of the trivia section, as a matter of fact, probably needs to either be deleted or modified because of the volume of non-notable information.) If the material is unsourced, then we have no way of verifying whether the myth truly is "common" or not. --Hnsampat 13:47, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Subject of theme song doesn't relate to film

Should there be some mention that the lyrics to the theme song don't have anything to do with the film? The song portrays Auric Goldfinger as a skilled lover who kills the women he loves:

Golden words he will pour in your ear
But his lies can't disguise what you fear
For a golden girl knows when he's kissed her
It's the kiss of death from Mister Goldfinger
Pretty girl, beware of his heart of gold
This heart is cold

Is there a reason the lyrics don't describe the Goldfinger of the film? He is neither attractive nor even seemingly interested in any of the women that interact with him. --MrWhipple 16:58, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that this kind of analysis classifies as original research, unless it's actually been stated somewhere by a reliable source. --Hnsampat 18:06, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm wondering where the line falls between "original research" and "obvious truths that can simply be acknowledged."
My point above, I think, falls into the latter category.--MrWhipple 21:20, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
First, it's unclear whether the song is meant to literally suggest that Goldfinger is a skilled lover or whether it's supposed to be some kind of metaphor for his charm and evil. You are drawing your own conclusions based on your own intepretation of the the song and on your opinions of Goldfinger (i.e. that he is unattractive and seems not to be interested in women around him). That is, by definition, original research. Second, let's say you were to state that there's an apparent inconsistency between the song and the film. What next? There's nothing more you can say beyond that. That's a subject that has never been written about and so you can offer no further details. You could only speculate as to the reasons why the song and the film are different. Speculation is also original research. --Hnsampat 21:39, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Plot abridgement

Per WP:007, I have edited down the Plot section; I kept the markup for the images below in case they are needed, but they are not of much use as a narrative aid; certainly images of characters would be better suited to a list of characters or in the Cast section.


[[Image:Shirley4.jpg|200px|thumb|left|[[Shirley Eaton]] as [[Jill Masterson]], who dies of skin suffocation from being fully covered in gold paint.]]


[[Image:HaroldSakata007.jpg|thumb|right|200px|[[Harold Sakata]] as [[Oddjob]], [[Auric Goldfinger]]'s mute head henchman.]]


[[Image:Gold8.jpg|thumb|right|200px|[[Pussy Galore (James Bond)|Pussy Galore]]'s Flying Circus (''Goldfinger'', 1964)]]


[[Image:GertFrobe007.jpg|thumb|left|220px|[[Gert Fröbe]] as the eponymous [[Auric Goldfinger]], impersonating a US Army officer appears on the jet]]


Feel free to revert if you think I've messed up horribly. Editus Reloaded 15:35, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Soundtrack

It needs its own article. Cliff smith 00:10, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

The dumb flags in the film location section

What is their purpose, please? You want to use this article on Goldfinger the film to educate me on what national flags look like? I fixed it for space (which is short) and have been reverted on the grounds that "other articles like this have them." That's not an argument at all. Except one pointing out the regimentation-problems that can be caused by insisting on stuffing all the Bond films into one "Projekt" format. Well, here you are. Nice flags in all your articles. I'm impressed. Blofeld, is this another example of your world domination? :) Nice FLAGS, buddy. SBHarris 23:10, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

You do realize that every film article, stratch that, every article with a list of countries has the flags next to them. Look at video game releases. When it says released in the US and released in the UK, it has the flags next to them. This has nothing to do with Bond or films or anything other than standard Wikipedia formatting. ColdFusion650 00:53, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
I assure you that it's not standard Wikipedia formatting (let's see you find it in WP:MOS if it is), but rather some overzelous wikignome's formatting. Though I admit it looks more widespread than I'd realized. It's complete baloney, however, that every Wikipedia article with a list of nations has these flags. You can, for example, look through the article on United Nations, which has many lists of nations, but no little flags that I can see. And no, I don't suggest doing in and adding them, either, or you'll have an army of blue-helmetted guys after you for wasting the space in their article. It's just silly. SBHarris 23:30, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

light switches and stuff

I simply don't get the use of italics in this part of the Production para:

The scene where Bond pushes down the light switch to turn on his suite's light, discovering the dead, golden Jill, is an English light switch on an English sound stage.

Do light switches in America work in a specific, predetermined way which would make them different from the specific, predetermined way an English light switch would work? Excuse my Central European ignorance here, but I just don't get it. Where I come from, light switches are pretty much left to everyone's electrician's devices, they can go either up for on, or down. TomorrowTime 19:07, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

There's some help in having a standard, so that you know where to "look" for a switch in a dark room, and what to do with it. In the England of the early 60's, it was indeed most common to have a room light toggle-switch flip down, for "on." And in America, it nearly universal, even now, to have it the other way. SBHarris 21:38, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Deletion of sections

I see that somebody has offloaded all the soundtrack into its own article, leaving nothing but a "please expand" note. That's about as polite as leaving a sinkful of dirty dishes after eating.

Look, I don't care if you think some of this is too long. But if you condense it, make sure the info is SOMEWHERE on wikipedia. Summarize main articles spun off. If you think everything is repeated in mythbusters, then you should leave a short summary and link to there. Etc.

SBHarris 01:44, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I did not do what happened to the soundtrack article, I merely placed a tag, I did not remove any of it. Also, I shall adress your concern with the Mythbusters info. However, note that I only moved sections into what they should be, per WP:FILMS, and following the example of the A-class article Casino Royale (2006 film). Cliff smith 01:46, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Okay, but please remember that each film is different. There are a lot of artistic and stylistic touches in Goldfinger that are simply lacking in the last Casino Royale, so there's no point in addressing them. SBHarris 01:49, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
I understand this. I did not remove anything, I just moved it to sections with different names. And I made a link to Mythbusters. Cliff smith 01:52, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Thank you, but please remember also that we do not simply delete trivia sections as being "unacceptable." Again, getting rid of them requires work, not a push of a button. From WP:TRIVIA Don't simply remove such sections; it may be possible to integrate some items into the article in a more organized fashion. Some facts may belong in existing sections; others can be grouped into a new section of related material. Convert bullet points to prose where possible, although in certain cases a narrowly-focused list may be appropriate, such as Cameos or Continuity errors. See the point? Again, dirty dishes. Don't delete good information in Wikipedia. Reorganize and add so that nothing is lost. A note linking back to the IMDb isn't good enough. We might as well do that with ALL film entries here, and leave them blank, if that was the idea. So link to somewhere where the info exists in Wikipedia, so the reader knows it's there, and can go if they like to see it. SBHarris 02:01, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

There is a link to a German website with pictures of the location where Goldfinger was shot at by Tilly Masterson. Should we keep or delete this? Cliff smith 17:50, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Failed "good article" nomination

This article failed good article nomination. This is how the article, as of July 16, 2007, compares against the six good article criteria:

1. Well written?: Overall not bad, gererally sound prose, but the article could have better fluidity. Here are some areas for improvement:
  • James Bond craze should be in quotation marks
  • " United States during filming," - that should end with a semi-colon and not a comma
  • "in Europe, primarily" - there should be a dash (not a comma) between Europe and primarily
  • This sentence

    The scene where Bond pushes down the light switch to turn on his suite's light, discovering the dead, golden Jill, is an English light switch on an English sound stage.

    is seriously jarring. Probably context should be added to it to show how it fits in the narrative. For example, "Evidence in the film of it's European location include..." or something like that. Alternately, it can be added as a footnote.
  • This part

    The golf club scene was shot at Stoke Poges Golf Club in Buckinghamshire in May 1964.[1] The scene in which Tilly Masterson attempts to snipe Goldfinger was filmed near the Pilatus Aircraft Factory, Stans and Furka pass.[1][2] The evening car chase in which Bond uses some of the gadegetry of his Aston Martin was filmed at Black Park, Buckinghamshire.

    is written like a laundry list of trivia. You should have a paragraph devoted to locations, and some type of introductory statement that unifies these statements. Like "Many scenes from Goldfinger were shot on location." Something. In fact the second two paragraphs in that section are very fragmented in general.
  • "gadegetry" should be spelled "gadgetry" (unless that's the correct British spelling, which I doubt)
  • "team on their 'vivid imaginations'" - is that a compliment or a left-handed compliment (insult).
  • "though they had to be removed to emplace a large bulletproof shield in the rear of the vehicle" needs to be in parentheses
  • "was depicted to have been a feature on the actual vehicle, though it was actually a separate rig that was filmed in a studio" is too wordy. Try "was depicted as a feature of the actual vehicle, when it was actually a separate rig filmed in the studio"
  • " the gearshift – and all of " - end the (severely long) sentence with gearshift. Delete and and begin new sentence with "All".
  • This sentence

    Bond foils Goldfinger's cheating at gin rummy, by distracting his employee, Jill Masterson, who is reporting Goldfinger's opponent's hand.

    is confusing. Maybe split it into two sentences, and give some context. We (the readers) read one sentence about receiving a message, and, without skipping a beat, go to a poker game.
  • "where he meets Tilly Masterson" - who is "he"? Bond or Goldfinger?
  • "when she attempts " - when should be where
  • "Bond drives his car attempting to leave the plant" - good. Better? "Bond attempts to leave the plant by car"
  • "image of his own car" - car is used too much in this sentence. Say vehicle.
  • "He is tied to a gold table underneath" - say "He is then tied" to help with the narrative. Also, who ties him? It sounds so vague.
  • "table, and Bond, in" - use dashes instead of commas
  • "He lies that another Double-O agent who possesses the same information about Operation Grand Slam that he does, will replace him ." - Who does he lie to? Also, "who possesses the same information about Operation Grand Slam that he does" should be in parenthesis.
  • "take the risk of" = "take on the risk of"
  • "On landing" - "Upon landing"
  • " lecture's" - that's an odd word choice. Was it a lecture? or a meeting?
  • "and guards recapture" - "and the guards recapture"
  • "60 years; and to" - that should be a dash, not a semicolon
  • "Circus distribute gas" - odd phrasing. I would say "Circus release gas"
  • "unknowingly persuading" - this needs clarification. You can't unknowingly persuade someone to do something. Persuasion is done conscientiously by both the speaker and the listener. Bond could have "unknowingly convinced" (he didn't know she was actually convinced) or take out unknowingly (because there is no way she wouldn't know she was persuaded).
  • "who have" - who had
  • "the entirety of Fort Knox, which had been faking death" - Huh? The entirety of Fort Knox refers to all of it - walls, doors, grass outside, etc... Do you mean all the personnel? That needs clarifying. Also, why were they collaborating to fake death? That needs to be explained, and probably earlier on.
  • "In the vault, Bond kills Oddjob" - How, if he's strapped to the atomic device?
  • "sparing seven seconds" - "leaving seven seconds"
  • "seconds: the" - that should be a semicolon, not a colon
  • The sentence that begins "With Fort Knox safe..." should start a new paragraph. The previous sentence should be merged with the previous paragraph.
  • "Release and Reception" - reception should be lowercase
  • "United Kingdom; and on" - that should be a comma instead of a semi-colon
  • The paragraph that begins "Goldfinger is the first James Bond..." should come after the paragraph that begins "At the 1965 Academy Awards, Norman..." (chronologically)
  • "Notes and References" - references should be lowercase
2. Factually accurate?: Not bad, but I put in a few {{fact}} tags to show what needs to be referenced.
3. Broad in coverage?: What is here is excellent. But there could be a little more mention of critical responses (maybe some critics of the day).
4. Neutral point of view?: Great here as well.
5. Article stability? Great here!
6. Images?: Image:007Goldfingerlaserclassic.jpg has no fair use rationale. See WP:FURE for suggestions.

When these issues are addressed, the article can be resubmitted for consideration. If you feel that this review is in error, feel free to take it to a GA review. Thank you for your work so far. — Esprit15d (talk ¤ contribs) 19:34, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Goldfinger_(film)/Archive_1&oldid=1142762339"