Wikipedia:Peer review/Jessica Chastain/archive1

Jessica Chastain

My first FAC attempt on an American actress. Would be glad to receive constructive criticism on how to strengthen the article. Thanks, Krimuk|90 (talk) 04:01, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Comments by Caeciliusinhorto

I know nothing about Jessica Chastain, so these will probably be mainly comments on style/prose.

Lead:

• "Chastain is reticent to publicly discuss aspects of her troubled childhood.": I can't explain why, but this sounds wrong. "Chastain is reticent about aspects of her troubled childhood" or "Chastain is reluctant to publicly discuss aspects of her troubled childhood" would both be OK, but "reticent to discuss" just sounds incorrect.
• "gained her an Academy Award for Best Actress nomination": per WP:SURPRISE I would reword this to "gained her a nomination for Best Actress at the 2012 Academy Awards". As it is, I thought on my initial reading that she had won the Oscar until I got to the word "nomination", which is jarring.
• "Chastain is the recipient of several accolades, including a Golden Globe Award and has been nominated for two Academy Awards and two British Academy Film Awards.": Too much "and"ing here. I would write something like "Chastain is the recipient of several accolades including a Golden Globe; she has also been nominated for two Academy Awards and two British Academy Film Awards" to avoid the repetition of "and".

Early life and background:

• "Her parents were both teenagers when she was born, and while reticent to publicly discuss this aspect of her childhood, was estranged from Monasterio and has claimed that no father is listed on her birth certificate." A few things here:

1. this "reticent to" construction again.
2. we know from the lead that it is Chastain who is reticent about this, but in this sentence it is unclear who "reticent" is referring to.
3. There are two sources given for this sentence. One is cited to the Telegraph, but is actually in the Independent, and doesn't appear to back up any of the sentence whatsoever; the other supports that no father is listed on her birth certificate ("has claimed" seems to me to imply a doubt (see WP:CLAIM) which is not backed up by the source, however. "has said" would be more neutral.). Neither support the claim that she is reluctant to discuss her biological father.

Career:

• "Having struggled for a breakthrough in film for a number of years, the year 2011 was noteworthy for Chastain. She had six film releases that year and gained wide acclaim and recognition for her roles in several of them." This can just be one sentence, something like "After struggling for a breakthrough in film for a number of years, in 2011 Chastain had six releases, gaining widespread aclaim and recognition for her roles in several of them." The "the year was noteworthy" is just unnecessary editorialising.
• "which she filmed back in 2008." this reads as colloquial/informal to my ear; I would put "which she had filmed in 2008" or "which had been filmed in 2008".
• "the film premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival to a polarizing reception from the audience". I suspect it was the film which was polarizing; the reception would have been polarized (or simply "mixed"!).
• "...and eventually won the Palme d'Or prize." I don't think "eventually" or "prize" are necessary in this sentence. "...and won the Palme d'Or" is fine.
• "which marked the third installment of the lucrative Madagascar franchise". "which marked" is unnecessary, I suspect "lucrative" is too.
• "Zero Dark Thirty received critical acclaim but was controversial for its depiction of enhanced interrogation techniques". "enhanced interrogation techniques" is a non-neutral euphemism. The article also masks the fact that the film was not so much controversial for its depiction of torture per se as the fact that it portrays torture as "valuable in finding Bin Laden" when it wasn't. I suggest something like "was controversial for portraying torture as effectively contributing to the search for Osama Bin Laden, which Glenn Greenwald called a 'false assertion'".
• The subsection on 2014-15 is subtitled "success in science-fiction films", but discusses only two scifi films versus 3 non-scifi films, and the only one of the five films to get an entire paragraph to itself is A Most Violent Year, not one of the scifi films.

Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 22:52, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Caeciliusinhorto So sorry about this. I was on a long vacation and completely forgot about the peer review. Thank you so much for taking the time out to comment here. I've addressed all your concerns except the last one about the section header. I've named it "success in science-fiction films" because two of her most successful films were of that genre, even though she did gain praise for her dramatic roles. Do you recommend something else? Krimuk|90 (talk) 07:57, 16 July 2016 (UTC)