Talk:Sleeping Beauty (1959 film)

Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske, and Wolfgang Reitherman

Why didn't Hamilton Luske direct this film if he directed the previous four Disney Animation Cannon films along w/ Wilfred Jackson and Clyde Geronimi? I think Wilfred Jackson was replaced by Wolfgang Reitherman from then on. I know that Jackson was replaced by Eric Larson as director & that Eric Larson was replaced by Clyde according to references on the article for this movie in the production delays part of the Production section but again, the latter of the four was already a director of the previous three films from Walt Disney Animation Studios (then Walt Disney Productions). I wonder why Wolfgang Reitherman was chosen. Evope (talk) 17:24, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't know about the internal politics of the Disney studio at the time. But the only directorial credit of Hamilton Luske in the late 1950s was Donald in Mathmagic Land (1959).

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Sleeping Beauty (1959 film)/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: De Disney (talk · contribs)

Reviewer: Thebiguglyalien (talk · contribs) 08:14, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Hello! I'll have a review written for this within the next few days. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 08:14, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

De Disney, I started by looking at the sources, and there are several of them that might not meet Wikipedia's standard for reliable sources. I've listed the issues below. I know that this article has already had one unsuccessful good article review, so I'll leave it up to you. If you want to fix the sourcing in this article over the next week or so, then I'll hold the review open so you can do that. If you want more time or if you'd like to revisit this later, then I can close the review so you can work on it and renominate it at your leisure. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:51, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Hello, OK, I'll look up for different sources today/tomorrow. De Disney (talk) 04:48, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Hello, I have corrected all the sources that you have listed. All unreliable sources have either been deleted (Blogger and Discogs) or replaced with more reliable ones (I have only kept a couple of sources from Animated Views that feature interviews with people involved in the production and restoration of the film). I also deleted all YouTube links that were not authorized videos (I only left two as they were officially published by Disney). De Disney (talk) 18:36, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

Great! Now I'll look at the rest of the article and have a review posted in a few days. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:54, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Hello, regarding your latest comments on the sources:

• Barrier (2014) – Thomas: Yeah. Tom Oreb had some great drawings on the girl; she looked like Audrey Hepburn. Very nice things. But I don't know who could have drawn them that we had at the time. Jerry Rees could have, in later years, but I don't think Marc could even have drawn them. And he felt the same way: You have to have construction. That was the way Marc did his work, and he was the animator on it, so that's the way I'll draw it. I didn't object so much to the design of the characters by the animators like Marc, and even Tom [Oreb]'s suggestions; I was skeptical of it—I said, "Boy, this looks like you're going to have a hard time with it." We debated the colors, because you'd get a scene, and you'd work and work and work with this rigid design, trying to get a scene that had life and vitality in it, and a little sparkle, and the fairies going around baking a cake and stuff, and you'd finally get a series of scenes—"Ha! These are coming off!" And Walt looked at the stuff and said, "Yeah, the fairies are doing what we want them to now." So you think, yeah, let's see them when they're in color. And [sucking sound] sucks all the vitality out of it. Someone who was fey and very feminine was suddenly in this heavy Marine Corps green. This killed me; they'd never dress that way—for the personality. That was a big battle, because we, and some of the other animators, wanted the personality to be dominant, because that was what we thought was the most important thing in communicating with the audience. Other people didn't think that was as important as the design, and Eyvind didn't think anything was as important as his backgrounds. When you get a busy figure in movement, and put it over a background that's just all covered in detail, you're never going to see it. Eyvind didn't care, because he wanted his backgrounds to dominate. He would never admit that the animation was equal in importance to the backgrounds. My feeling at the time—my recollection of my feeling today—is that I would have no quarrel with no Eyvind's interpretation of the color and design that he thought the picture ought to have. My whole quarrel with him, then and now, is that he would not work with anybody to build together to something that was solid; he said, "This is the way it's going to be, and that's it."
• Bohn (2017) p. 164. It was recommendation indeed, it was also confirmed by Bruns himself in his interview from Didier Ghez's book Walt’s People – Volume 11: Talking Disney with the Artists who Knew Him (pages 306-307): https://www.google.com/books/edition/Walt_s_People/3YmdyNAmh8YC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=ward+kimball+george+bruns+sleeping+beauty&pg=PA307&printsec=frontcover
• Canemaker (2001), p. 81. That's another source, not 2001 book, but 1996 one, Before the Animation Begins: The Art and Lives of Disney Inspirational Sketch Artists.
• Tuttle (2019). It was released as a part of this collection, but it's extremely hard to find any proper source for that is not a YouTube review or something like that.

For the rest, I will make all necessary corrections to the citation. De Disney (talk) 11:32, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Done. De Disney (talk) 16:07, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

After further review, this article isn't ready for the GAN process just yet. I've looked at the sources, and there are a few major issues that require more thorough fixing. First, the way they're arranged makes verification difficult. I'll take one sentence as an example:

By mid-1952,[73] Disney had planned to release Sleeping Beauty on Christmas in 1955.[74]

Source 73 says that in 1952 they wanted 1955, and source 74 says they wanted Christmas 1955. This is potentially WP:SYNTH, where it combines facts from different sources to create new facts that they don't directly support. For all we know, they had a 1955 release in mind by mid-1952, but they hadn't decided on a Christmas release until 1953. This sort of thing happens throughout the article. I suggest looking at some other articles that have already passed GA to see how they're sourced. You'll notice that most of them have one or two citations at the end of the sentence, and those citations will support the sentence as a whole in a straightforward manner.

The other major issue is close paraphrasing. I didn't see too much of this, but enough that it was a problem. Copying the text of a source and then changing a few words or flipping a phrase around is still a plagiarism/copyright issue. Only raw information/facts should be taken from the source, and then paragraphs should be written based on everything gleaned from all the sources (with citation tags accompanying where each fact was learned). The page I linked explains it better than I do.

I'm going to close this review so you can fix this article at your leisure or revisit it some other time. This particular article is an ambitious project, and it might help to promote a shorter article to GA before nominating this one again, if that's something you're interested in doing. I'm also going to leave the other notes that I wrote below, but they're not comprehensive. If you need help with some of these issues or anything else on Wikipedia, you can use the teahouse or the help desk. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:53, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Well-written

General:

• Whenever the article says "Disney", I don't know if it's talking about Walt Disney Productions or Walt Disney himself.
• The article uses "however" several times. This is a filler word and it can pretty much always be removed without changing the meaning of the sentence.
• Semicolons are a little overused in this article.

Plot:

• No issues.

Voice cast:

• No issues.

Production:

• and the ultimate in animated filmmaking – Unclear what this is trying to say.
• attempting to surround the castle with a protective circle and Maleficent's comically-incompetent vulture sidekick – They tried to surround the castle with Maleficent's vulture? This should be reworded so it doesn't imply this.
• Costa recorded for three years – Do we know if this was off and on? Is it in the context of dialogue or singing specifically?
• Hench made sketches inspired by the museum visit, and background artist Eyvind Earle made trial paintings based on those drawings. – Are "sketches" and "drawings" referring to the same thing here? If so, it would be clearer if they were called the same thing.
• Disney made Earle both the film's color stylist and artistic director, with unprecedented control of the film's visual appearance – Does this mean Earle was given unprecedented control, or that Disney used unprecedented control to give him these positions? The article should clarify.
• which had to be stylized to match Earle's style – stylized to match a style is a little redundant.
• who had to work with very large sheets of paper – Any chance we can say how large?

Verifiable with no original research

Resolved

Are those YouTube links to officially authorized videos? Even if they help with verification, Wikipedia's copyright policy doesn't allow links to pirated or illegally uploaded content, even on YouTube. SYS-CON Media redirects to a Twitter account Fan-run or amateur websites aren't reliable sources. I can't find evidence that these sources have any sort of editorial oversight, and they probably aren't reliable: Animated Views Laughing Place DVDizzy Jim Hill Media LDSfilm The BigScreen Cinema Guide Rotoscopers DLP Guide Disney Dreaming Interviews are generally given more leeway, because the interviewee is speaking independently of the source. But for other uses, there needs to be some evidence that these sources have a professional editorial team or are written by someone who's published in the film history or media journalism industries. These sources are user-generated and are definitely unreliable: Blogger Discogs If you're going to work on the sourcing, a few other things to keep in mind. These issues are beyond the scope of GA and they won't affect the results of the good article review, but they're good practice. Books and academic articles are usually higher quality sources than websites. There are some good ones in the bibliography, but using that type of source more would be even better. You likely have access to The Wikipedia Library, which gives you access to lots of academic collections and publishers. It's also good to use sources that are independent of the subject. Sources operated by Disney can be helpful, but they're not impartial in what information they provide and they shouldn't be the main type of source used. I've spot checked these sources to ensure that they support the content referencing them and that there aren't any copyright violations by copying straight from the source. Most of the notes here are just minor suggestions or technicalities that should be fixed. The only major issue is that one citation did not match the source and seems to have been placed in error. Barrier (2014) – What part of the source supports "their design and color styling inhibiting character animation"? I'm not saying it isn't there, but it's a long source and I couldn't find it after skimming. Bohn (2017) p. 164 – This is subjective, but this seems more like a suggestion than a recommendation. I don't get the impression that Kimball actually knew Bruns and was familiar with his work, just that he thought they should give him a chance. Canemaker (2001) p. 48 – Y p. 81 – Is this the right source? This page doesn't say anything about Nielsen and Hench's paintings, and a search didn't find it anywhere else in the book. p. 137 – Y p. 284 – Y Gabler (2006) p. 559, checked all five uses – YYYY – On the fifth use, I don't like how it mixes Tytle's quotation and then the actual text from the book into a single quote. Not a major issue, but it wouldn't hurt to rearrange it. Gonzalez (2003) – The source says "limber, giddy", not "limber and giddy". With a quotation, it should be precise. I also don't see anything in the source about character animation. Greenbaum (1989) – "nothing more than versions of the film" is the exact wording of the source. You can't really put it in quotes because that would imply it was Disney's exact words. I suggest paraphrasing. Sigman Lowery (2013) – Y Smith (2012) p. 11 – Y p. 35 – Y Tuttle (2019) – This is a minor detail, but technically the source only says it will be re-released as part of the Signature Collection. We don't know whether that actually ended up happening.

• I compared some of the character descriptions against their sources as I went, and they didn't seem to connect. For example, the cited sources don't say that Aurora is romantic or that Philip is bold. All of the character descriptions should match what the cited sources say; we can't have our own interpretations of the characters.
• animators such as Milt Kahl blamed him for the many delays – This isn't supported by Barrier 2007 p. 273.

Broad in its coverage

• The production section is very long, and out-of-scope content should be trimmed. Any long descriptions or blow-by-blow recounts of an event can be summarized to just give the main idea. Detail is good, but too much makes it hard to read the article. I suggest giving a quick skim of the section to see if there are any other minor details you think could be removed or condensed.
• One thing that stands out is that it often says "[name], who also worked on [film], [film], and [film]". Details like this can be removed, because the reader can click on the link to see who the person is and what they've worked on.

Neutral

Stable

No recent disputes in the edit history or on the talk page. It's unlikely that the content will need to be significantly changed in the near future.

Illustrated

This article uses four non-free images. Movie posters are commonly used, but the other three are more tenuous. The rule is that the article should use as little non-free content as possible to adequately explain the film. File:MaryCosta&MarcDavisSB1958.jpg doesn't look essential because you can just explain in the prose that they worked together, so it should probably be removed. Characters and concept art have a better argument, but it's borderline.

There is some good news though. Since the movie trailer is public domain, you can use any frame of it as a public domain image in the article. Most frames are covered in words, but there are a few blanks ones of the castle and a few of Aurora sleeping, and screenshots of these can be added to the article.

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.