TV Actor

James Garner: Bumgarner, not Baumgarner

2008-08-13T15:24:58.0018Z

Unfortunately, due to incorrect reporting from people like Leonard Maltin, James Garner's birth last name has been misspelled around the web. If you are from Norman, Oklahoma, you know that places with his late brother's name (whose daughter is one of my close friends) show "Bumgarner". Mr. Charles Bumgarner worked for the Norman Public Schools and many plaques posted on buildings around the district, including the Fine Arts Building at Norman High School where I taught from 1990 through 2002 include his name because of his capacity with the school district.

To further clarify and prove my point - go to this link for the Archive of American Television - Mr. Garner even spells his name for the camera!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNZfc6Nzaak

Stephen Colbert: Stephen Colbert for President

2008-07-25T19:06:10.0000Z

flippity floo!

Pierce Brosnan: This is the actor

2008-07-02T07:45:14.0012Z

The tracks are on the soundtrack to Evelyn, a movie in which he appeared. I suppose it’s possible a different musician with the same name was on the soundtrack, but it seems unlikely.

Aliza Vellani: A Future Bond Girl...?

2008-07-02T02:41:29.0005Z

Aliza Vellani is the 15 year-old, Canadian television actor, who currently plays the role of Layla Siddiqui in the very popular TV sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie. Born in Vancouver to Ismaili immigrants from East Africa, Miss Vellani is a high school student who has trained extensively in both acting and dancing, including with the Vancouver drama school Tarlington Training. Playing the part of Layla in Little Mosque is her first professional role.

Miss Vellani is an excellent actor, with beauty and intelligence which may already exceed her skill as a performer. Not for long though, in my opinion, due to the obvious potential she displays during her ever growing parts, in the very popular hit TV series. Her naturally exotic appearance, well groomed hair and the skills being polished on the set of Little Mosque all but guarantee her a prosperous career in the motion picture industry.

I expect that she'll be invited, if not begged to play parts in upcoming Hollywood projects, as well as more Canadian endeavors. I hope she doesn't begin to feel trapped in a conservative stereotype that tempts her to cheapen herself by appearing, scantily clad, on shows which would exploit her already blooming sex appeal. It's hard to maintain admiration for women who do this. It's probably just as hard for women in that industry to turn down offers to expose themselves.

I've been unable to find much information regarding Aliza, and even less in the way of images. I look forward to further links and commentary from others who've become fond of this future star. There is plenty of information on and imagery of Sitara Hewitt, the actress who plays one of the main characters on Little Mosque, and has already succumbed to the temptation to expose herself... But there's very little on Aliza Vellani. I'd like to invite others to offer thoughts and opinions.

Trey Parker: Use of the alias field

2008-04-25T21:58:47.0007Z

This shouldn’t happen again. Thanks for noticing it.

Trey Parker: Use of the alias field

2008-04-25T06:01:48.0007Z

When MusicBrainz tells that X is also known as Y, we don’t necessarily know that Y is a fictional character played by X, as opposed to just a stage name.

It’s definitely a bug that the bot is re-adding aliases previously deleted, though. Sorry about that, and thanks for bringing it to our attention.

Trey Parker: Use of the alias field

2008-04-25T01:27:43.0000Z

It looks like your MusicBrainz bot is still adding improper aliases. Will this be fixed?

Trey Parker: Use of the alias field

2008-04-16T20:48:53.0007Z

You are correct - names of the characters that an actor portrays should not be aliases of that person. This is an artifact of some psuedonym refactoring that was done on musical tracks. In general, if you see another topic like this, feel free to delete the pseudonyms.

Thanks for pointing this out.

TV Actor: Voice Acting?

2008-04-16T20:43:39.0000Z

Voice actors are tv actors - in their tv performances, you can specify that they are the voice for a character.

There is a distinction between tv and film actor, but they are similar in the sense that for both the tv and film performance, you can specify a special performance type of voice.

Trey Parker: Use of the alias field

2008-04-16T18:56:40.0005Z

Should aliases really be used to include roles played by an actor? It seems very inappropriate to me.

TV Actor: Voice Acting?

2008-04-16T18:53:26.0012Z

Does TV Actor include voice acting for animated series? Or should there be a separate type for that? Voice Actor appears to be a separate profession from TV Actor. Also, should there be a distinction between voice acting for TV vs film?

Paul Hampton: IMDb says merge

2008-04-09T03:23:30.0012Z

The IMDb entry says the actor is the musician.

TV Actor: IMDB link for TV actor?

2008-03-10T17:49:25.0007Z

Hi psych0fred,

This was also brought up in another discussion here. Hopefully with property borrowing, we can solve the problem you and duck1123 are describing.

TV Actor: IMDB link for TV actor?

2008-03-07T08:40:42.0000Z

I have a simple problem I can't figure out how to resolve. If an actor has a guest appearance on a TV show I can see it show up under the TV Actor schema but it doesn't correspond to the tv program/show that is also part of the schema. The example I am looking at is actor Tom Noonan who had a guest role in an episode of The X-Files called Paper Hearts. The episode title Paper Hearts shows up but it doesn't list what show it was from (unless you click on Paper Hearts). The way it's displayed in the scheme it appears that the TV show he starred in is also the TV show that he made a guest appearance on. Is it set up right? I figured you could see all of an actors appearances as part of their data set.

John Belushi: Test Discussion

2008-01-14T20:15:53.0012Z

My favorite SNL cast member of all time... I saw him when he was in Second City, and even then you knew there was something dangerous and wonderful going on.

Stephen Colbert: Possibly offensive?

2007-12-12T04:20:38.0005Z

Why is this entry "tagged" possibly offensive? I mean, the actor can be, but, I don't think this article is.

Charlie Sheen: Test post for Charlie Sheen

2007-11-29T21:58:54.0005Z

This is a test post

Zac Efron: Merge - duplicates

2007-11-21T22:36:03.0012Z

Please merge this "High School Musical" star with the other Zac Efron whose only song in Freebase is also from "High School Musical".

Stephen Colbert: Stephen Colbert for President

2007-11-14T23:29:21.0007Z

I agree. Sadly it appears that he's stuck in South Carolina.

Stephen Colbert: Stephen Colbert for President

2007-11-14T19:56:07.0005Z

I think it would be great if Stephen Colbert became a serious contender in the presidential race to shake things up a bit. The famous French comedian made a run for the French presidency in 1980 was at one point had 16% of votes in the polls.

TV Actor: IMDB link for TV actor?

2007-06-07T18:01:49.0006Z

Cool - that would solve the problem.

TV Actor: IMDB link for TV actor?

2007-06-07T02:44:22.0006Z

We need property borrowing! That is, somebody will sensibly create a property on a type without knowing it should be shared by another type (like your IMDB TV/Film example). It is wrong to have on both, clearly, but it's also silly to put it on person, and really confusing and far too abstract put it on a new type called "actor".

Worse, this kind of refactoring would break the API once a schema is mature and being accessed by external applications.

With property borrowing (a currently unimplemented feature), If the TV actor type simply "borrowed" IMDB property in Film actor, then we would be able to keep the data model sane without having to read the future.

Interestingly, the Film IMDB property would be controlled by the film domain, so the TV domain would have no control over the name or other features of that property -- it would simply have to use it as-is and accept when the Film domain admins change the property.

TV Actor: IMDB link for TV actor?

2007-06-06T23:59:12.0006Z

This is a difficult question to answer in data modeling.

A while ago I asked a similar question regarding characters in different media that are represented as different types in Freebase: Book Character, TV Character, Theatre Character, Opera Character, Comic Strip Character, etc. Robert's reply to my post, although does not offer a solution to the emergence of a myriad of similar types across different media, does offer some explanation for why data is modeled this way in Freebase, and the advantages of that.

In the interest of sharing information, you can read my original post and Robert's reply here:
http://www.freebase.com/discuss/view?id=%2Ffictional_universe#%239202a8c04000641f8000000004ff9c64

TV Actor: IMDB link for TV actor?

2007-06-06T22:57:35.0006Z

Re other media-specific entries - we already have computer game voice actor, and I suspect that will become Computer game actor to support video appearances as well. I could see Radio Actor as a possibility too.

TV Actor: IMDB link for TV actor?

2007-06-06T22:49:49.0006Z

looking at Film Actor, TV Actor, and Theater Actor, I see that the only information those types add to Person is about what roles that person has played in those respective mediums. how do we expect these to grow?

will there be more media-specific properties? will there be more media-independent actor-specific properties? I agree that creating an Actor property for one field doesn't make sense, but I wonder if there are other media-independent actor-specific properties that don't belong in Person.

TV Actor: IMDB link for TV actor?

2007-06-06T22:17:48.0006Z

This is both a good data modeling issue and a good UI question for Robert and James - what should we do when we have types with overlapping properties?

1. move the property to a more general type (IMDB page goes from film actor to actor, but this is disruptive to existing schema)
2. tell the UI how to handle this for special cases like Film and TV actor (doesn't disrupt schema, but incurs a lot of pain on the client side)

TV Actor: IMDB link for TV actor?

2007-06-06T20:43:44.0006Z

If we do this, actors who are both film and TV (which will be a lot, maybe even most, of them) will have two "imdb link" properties, which will both be somewhat odd-looking and require developers to query both properties. The only alternative I can think of, however, would be to create a new type just to contain the property (named just "actor" or "IMDB entity" or something), which seems like overkill. Unless anybody else has a brilliant idea?

TV Program and TV episode could also have an imdb link property, now that I think about it. I'll wait to add these properties until we find out whether somebody has a brilliant idea, though.

TV Actor: IMDB link for TV actor?

2007-06-06T20:03:13.0011Z

Many TV actors have IMDB pages. Could we get a property for this, parallel to the property for Film actor ?