User talk:Arbitrary arbiter

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[edit] Soderbergh

From Pondbrilliance to AA...

You're right. I shouldn't have written that "practically nil" line. It was my personal opinion. I believe that the box office slumps have to do more with the quality of films that distribution patterns, but that's my opinion.

You're doing a great job improving the Soderbergh article. I'm not sure that the last section you added, though, is a great idea. The films that you're creating subsections for all seem to have articles of their own, and WP users ought to be directed to those pages for more information on them. It's not ideal to have detailed information on the same subject in two different places--I would suggest moving the info to the relevant film articles if those do not adequately cover the information you're providing. Nareek 17:10, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your compliment.

I think that the amount of involvement in which Soderbergh applies himself justifies more detailed descriptions of his films. If he were strictly a director, I suppose that the details of the plot and characters of sex, lies, and videotape would be unnecessary. But because he wrote the script, I think that the scenario speaks to Soderbergh's character as a filmaker. (I'll concede that it may not come across that way in the most recent draft.)

I would eventually like the section in question to evolve from a back-of-the-box press release to more of a behind-the-scenes artistic insight. For example, how during the production of Solaris, a movie about love and distress, he was coping with his own divorce; how his involvement in the film may have served as therapy. Would it suffice if I deleted the who-played-who and sticked with information directly pertinent to Soderbergh? (Needless to say, that requires research not readily aviavible.) Arbitrary arbiter 18:29, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I would encourage you to look at the Soderbergh article and the articles on his various films as a group of articles that should work together. There is certainly going to be some overlap, and perhaps some details about the making of the films that belong in the Soderbergh article and not in the particular film article--the detail about his divorce might be a good example (though I should warn you about the [WP:NOR|original research] temptation). But in the end, readers are best served if the information is organized along the lines suggested by the titles of the articles--with information about Soderbergh's life and an overview of his work in the Steven Soderbergh article, and more detailed information about particular films in the respective articles.

I recently did some work on the page of Octavia Butler, a science fiction writer. It didn't have much in the way of biography, so I expanded that section a lot, but I actually cut out a lot of the discussion of her work--moving it to new pages created for the purpose. I did something similar with Mary Renault, the historical fiction writer. You might take a look. Nareek 20:23, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I think that a short summarization of his films is actually beneficial to the reader. If a person who was oblivious to Soderbergh's work were reading the article just to get a general idea of who he was, I doubt that that person would take the time to read about every one of his films via links. If, however, said movies summarized in the article in question, not only would that person be more likely to read about the movies that Steven Soderbergh makes (and thus learn more about Steven Soderbergh), but he or she would most likely make more informed decisions as to which of Soderbergh's movies they would like to learn about, if any.

Besides, my tidbits do not serve as any sustitude for their respective actual articles. Instead, the aim is to provide a brief insight into the movies which Soderbergh makes and thus gain a better understanding of his achievements, a la Spielberg article. The result will be a more informed reader. Arbitrary arbiter 21:57, 19 March 2006 (UTC)