Talk:Sparkle (1976 film)

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment[edit]

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Bguh.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 09:57, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Themes uncited[edit]

The entire section titled "Themes" in this article apparently defies the WP:NOR rule. Except for a few direct quotes, the vast majority of this section appears to be original research without any citations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chaotic22 (talk • contribs) 04:42, 20 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Blatant uncited POV[edit]

I asked Discographer on his talk page to discuss this, and so far he has seemed unwilling. He is exhibiting WP:OWN purely to insert his own personal, uncited opinions into the article, in violation of WP:VERIFY and other policieis/guidelines.

Let's break it down:

Sparkle was a successful film, and is something of a cult classic among African-American audiences.

Who says? Uncited claim. "Successful" is a subjective term. Commercially successful? Critically successful? "something of a cult-classic among African-American audiences"? Who says? And why "something of a" — is it or isn't it?

Its success was inspirational in the creation of the musical that would eventually debut on Broadway in 1981 as Dreamgirls. In fact, one of Dreamgirls' central characters is named "Effie", the name of the Mary Alice character in Sparkle.

Who says? Uncited claim. Could be coincidence — and if the creators of Sparkle weren't paid royalties or given credit with Dreamgirls, then ir probably is a coincidence. "Effie" is not an uncommon name in this context.

The film's soundtrack album, featuring Aretha Franklin in place of the actresses in the film, was also a success.

Again, uncited. Who says? And "successful" is a subjective term.

Two of Sparkle's stars, Dorian Harewood and Irene Cara, portray Alex Haley's parents in the 1979 miniseries Roots: The Next Generations.

Tangential and irrelevant. Do we make special mention every time actors in any film happen to work together again? Do we mention every other film Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon did together after their first movie in every article about them?

Sparkle was released on VHS in the early 1990s.

Uncited claim.

After being long out of print and unavailable save for television broadcasts...

Uncited claim

... Sparkle was released on DVD in 2007.

Uncited claim.

An abbreviated edition of the accompanying Aretha Franklin album was included on a bonus disc.

Promotional blurb for the DVD. WP:NOTADVERTISING

This is such an egregious violation of Wikipedia policies and guidelines that it's astonishing to me any editor could re-insert such blatantly uncited personal opinion. Reinserting clearly violative material verges on vandalism. Could other editors weigh in, please. --Tenebrae (talk) 14:38, 2 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed on all points. Reinserting this material without proper sources would violate WP:BURDEN and would constitute disruptive editing IMO. If it's the same editor reinserting, I'd say you've got a case of edit-warring. Give them the traditional warning and see if that gets a helpful response. Doniago (talk) 15:30, 2 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Was Sparkle a box office failure or merely a box office disappointment?[edit]

The article stated in the lead that it was "box office disappointment" while in the Box Office section it used the word failure instead. The two terms are not synonyms. The former suggest that it didn't make the type of box office revenue it was projected or expected or hoped to make, even if it made back its budget or made a profit. Thus "disappointment" comes with a subjective element as a different film company with much lower expectations could describe it as a success even if it only just made back its budget or made a slight profit. The problem here is we don't know just how much the film cost to market and promote and such after the theaters cut was removed from box office revenue. It says it cost $1 million to make and took in $4 million in box office which is 4x it's production costs. If the theaters took half (did they take half in the 70's?) that still leaves $1 million after production costs for the studio with the next question being how much was the promotional costs? Was it over $1 million in which case it indeed was failure financially. If was about $1 million then they broke even which would be a disappointment but not objectively a failure since they didn't lose money on the film. This is why a swapped "disappointment" for "failure" though the latter still needs a citation that supports this claim specifically not WP editor trying to extrapolate this from a comparison of the box office vs production costs which is potentially problematic as explained above. --2600:1700:56A0:4680:3492:E789:230C:7958 (talk) 21:00, 24 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]