Talk:Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Written by
"The film's story and screenplay are written by Bryan Burrough, Allan Loeb and Stephen Schiff, respectively."

The use of the word "respectively" in this sentence makes absolutely no sense, and yet it has remained in the intro of this article for a year or more, through hundreds (thousands?) of revisions.

Respectively means "singly in the order designated or mentioned" (thefreedictionary.com), "separately or individually and in the order already mentioned" (dictionary.com). The important aspect here is the "singly"/"individually" aspect. You might say, for instance, that the movie Usual Suspects was directed, written, and edited by Bryan Singer, Christopher McQuarrie, and John Ottman respectively. Three things requires three names. Three names requires three things.

There are no exceptions to the "one-to-one" matching requirement of respectively. You can match one-to-one between items and pairs of items, of course; for example, consider the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. "Gore Verbinski and the team of Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio respectively directed the film and wrote the screenplay": that's a proper use of respectively, describing the mapping between two activities (directing and screenwriting) and two doers-of-action (one the director, one the writing team). But you can't say "Gore Verbinski, Ted Elliot, and Terry Rossio directed and wrote the screenplay, respectively" (whether you use the serial comma or not). Intuitively you can't say it because you can't tell from that sentence who did the directing and who did the writing, because it's listing 3 people and 2 actions. Another example in the other direction: you can't say "Usual Suspects was directed, written, edited, and scored by Bryan Singer, Christopher McQuarrie, and John Ottman, respectively", because you can't tell how the 3 people map to the 4 actions. You could almost say something like "Usual Suspects was directed, written, and edited and scored by Bryan Singer, Christpher McQuarrie, and John Ottman, respectively", but while this is at least "correct" it's still too obscure a usage for most people to decipher, which is why it's better to insert the explicit pair-formation as with "the (writing) team of" in the previous example. But for a construction with three names and two actions, it's better to just rewrite it as two independent clauses and give up "respectively" entirely.

The above sort of ambiguity is why I haven't fixed the original sentence in this Wall Street article--I have no idea who did what, since I can't see the IMDB Pro page. There's no way to know what the sentence means unless you already know who did what, in which case you wouldn't need to read it in Wikipedia in the first place. 24.16.57.110 (talk) 19:08, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Budget
The Los Angeles Times is reporting the budget to be $60 million ($50 million after tax credits). The source being used in the article (New York Times) says $70 million.  Mike   Allen   02:45, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Hmm, in most cases the more reliable source would be used, but both the NY Times and LA Times are reliable publications and neither of them is reporting the budget cost based on a claim by someone involved with the film, so I'm not sure which one should be used in the article. MikeAllen, which source due you think is more reliable? Crystal Clear x3 08:20, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I think both should be added.  Mike  Allen   04:02, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Plot summary plagiarized/copied
The plot summary posted in this article appears to have been, at one point, a word-for-word copy/paste from this website, http://themoviespoiler.com/Spoilers/wallstreet2.html This is the addition in question: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wall_Street:_Money_Never_Sleeps&diff=387237564&oldid=387209696

Would a removal/complete rewrite of this section be in order? Compassghost (talk) 22:45, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I say this is highly likely. I don't think the IP wrote all of that themselves. But it says on that website to "send in your 'spoilers'".  So... it could be possible that someone sent the summary from Wikipedia to that site.   Mike   Allen   22:51, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I find it more likely that it was copy-pasted from the website than vice-versa, simply because the writing style is "spoilery" summary rather than a "plot summary," describing every bit of detail as it progresses. Does Wiki staff normally conduct at least e-mail correspondence with websites if they believe copyrights have been violated?Compassghost (talk) 23:35, 28 September 2010 (UTC) a saleman. it --Raskollnika (talk) 17:16, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
 * -the told story on the page remains me of the dramatugie of the death of

Not sure how to edit citations
But for footnote 7 here is the weblink to the article in question

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/12/entertainment/la-ca-sneaks-wallstreet-20100912 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.223.176.244 (talk) 16:44, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

==Swift!== I' miss the names of the female actresses, roles are told... Drifting zeroes are the storys effect, vanished envelopes inclusive. The short sellars don#t argue with existing values, but with an account of asses. Something real visible and the dead brother appears in an old man#s shape. Do you think it's possible biological females may earn money and feed their own insurance?!--Raskollnika (talk) 09:14, 22 October 2010 (UTC) gender folio/ university of massachusetts
 * Pages like these are informativ and out of a man's world, so she look likes.

Copyedit May 2011
Hi all

During the copyedit a few things came to light that may need attention:


 * Plot
 * I have cut it down to approx 1,100 words - though guidelines are for 700 or so, I cannot see any way to reduce it by much without removing details of the three storylines. MoS (film) recommends that it can be bigger for more complex plots and so I am leaving it at this for now.


 * General
 * Websites can be italicised now as per MoS, though importance is an issue in determining which should and should not be italicised. I have left some lesser-well known ones.

Chaosdruid (talk) 21:49, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Advice going Toward GA Review
After copyediting the article, I noticed some things that'll probably come up at the GA review.

1. The lead needs to be expanded. For an article this length, it should be three good sized paragraphs. Make sure all aspects are touched on.

2. Synopsis needs to be cut further. To about 700 words, that means a third of it needs to go. Try to only include the parts which are mentioned elsewhere in the article, everything else merits just the briefest sketch. E.g. Gekko and Moore go to a fundraiser dinner. Then later discussion, for instance of the cameos, will say "Bud Fox met Gekko at the dinner party". We don't need details about how he got there, the article's not a substitute for watching the film.

3. It's a shame that all the information and insights from cast and directors are tucked away as titbits in the production sections. There's no cohesive analysis of the themes and questions about the world of finance that the film is so ostensibly about. I would consider stripping them out and adding them with a more financy review of the film.

Overral it's a nice article, well formatted with a little more work it could be a GA. Best, --Ktlynch (talk) 14:28, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Minor vandalism evident
Someone or something appears to have been mucking with the article. I see names of celebrities who obviously had no involvement with the film being mentioned as cast members, as well as writers who weren't involved in the screenplay either. I am going to revert it to the version that makes the most sense, but a lock may have to be placed on this page temporarily to keep it from being altered. I have placed it on my watchlist and will be stopping by periodically to check on it. I just watched the movie for the first time today, so I am familiar with the story, and I am also using the IMDB page as an outside reference. Stentor7 (talk) 22:13, 22 September 2011 (UTC)Stentor7