Star Trek: "By Any Other Name"

Data
Title: Star Trek: “By Any Other Name”
Year: 1968
Network: NBC
Episode: the twenty-second (of twenty-six) from season two; 50 minutes
Creator: Gene Roddenberry
Director: Marc Daniels
Writers: D.C. Fontana & Jerome Bixby, story by Bixby
Starring: William Shatner
With: Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Warren Stevens, Barbara Bouchet, James Doohan, Stewart Moss, Robert Fortier
Cinematography: Keith C. Smith
Music: Alexander Courage (theme); Fred Steiner
I saw it: on video and TV several times, most recently a few days ago (have on DVD)
Synopsis: a scouting party for an intergalactic invasion hijacks the Enterprise

My reaction
Concept:
Story:
Characters:
Dialog:
Pacing:
Cinematography:
Special effects/design:
Acting:
Music:
Subjective Rating: 7/10 (Good, ). It has some good moments of suspense. The humor actually works for a change. (What's this? A woman who's not instantly seduce-able by Captain Kirk? She'll come around...) The resolution to the problem is corny and very predictable, but they have a pretty good time getting there.
Objective Rating (Average):

Ip Man

Data
Title: Ip Man
Year: 2008 (China); 2010 (US)
Length: 106 minutes
Director: Wilson Yip
Writer: Edmond Wong
Starring: Donnie Yen
With: Simon Yam, Siu-Wong Fan, Ka Tung Lam, Yu Xing, You-Nam Wong, Chen Zhi Hui
Cinematography: Sing-Pui O
Music: Kenji Kawai
I saw it: on video (rented from Netflix), a couple days ago
Synopsis: an occupying Japanese general challenges a Chinese martial arts master

My reaction
Concept:
Story: Did you know that Japan surrendered WWII because Ip Man united the Chinese people? I didn't know that, either. (This history lesson brought to you and approved by the People's Republic of China.)
Characters:
Dialog: It probably doesn't help that we watched the dubbed English version.
Pacing:
Cinematography:
Special effects/design:
Acting:
Music:
Subjective Rating: 5/10 (Indifferent, ). Meh. It's all about the action, and the action's not shot very well. There's some very cool stuff in the fights, but with the fast cuts and closeups, you can barely tell what's going on. There's none of the athletic impressiveness of classic Kung Fu movies.
Objective Rating (Average):

[note: I don't really see a compelling reason to watch a second part of this, so I've removed Ip Man 2 from my 2010 Leftovers Marathon and replaced it with Unstoppable.]

Murder, My Sweet

Data
Title: Murder, My Sweet
Year: 1944
Length: 95 minutes
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Writer: John Paxton, based on a novel by Raymond Chandler
Starring: Dick Powell
With: Claire Trevor, Anne Shirley, Otto Kruger, Mike Mazurki, Miles Mander, Douglas Walton, Donald Douglas, Ralf Harolde, Esther Howard
Cinematography: Harry J. Wild
Music: Roy Webb
I saw it: on video (rented from Greencine), a few days ago
Synopsis: a private detective's client is murdered

My reaction
Concept:
Story: A meandering, hard-to-follow mess. That's exactly what it's meant to be, but whatever.
Characters: I like Powell's Marlowe better than Bogart's Marlowe, but neither of them really gets it right. Marlowe's personality is what holds this book together, but there's very little of it in the movie. The other characters are just plot devices.
Dialog:
Pacing: Kind of fast - not much time for atmosphere.
Cinematography:
Special effects/design:
Acting:
Music:
Subjective Rating: 6/10 (Okay, ). It's all very nice and noir-y, but there's nothing really memorable to it - nothing that's not better in the book.
Objective Rating (Average):

Watership Down

Data
Title: Watership Down
Year: 1978
Length: 101 minutes
Director: Martin Rosen
Writer: Martin Rosen, based on the novel by Richard Adams
Starring: John Hurt
With: Richard Briers, Michael Graham Cox, Denholm Elliott, Zero Mostel, Harry Andrews, Hannah Gordon
Music: Angela Morley ("original music"), Malcolm Williamson ("incidental music"), Mike Batt (song)
I saw it: on video (rented from Netflix), a few days ago
Synopsis: a group of rabbits find a new home

My reaction
Concept:
Story: Hard call. The story in the book is great, and this is the exact same story. It just doesn't work as well in the movie.
Characters: This is where they really botched the adaptation. There are enough characters to have a few new ones in every single scene. So naturally there's no time to get any of their depth or development across; they're just there because they were there in the book.
Dialog:
Pacing: Everything about the style and content of this movie says they weren't even pretending to make a children's movie. So why is it so short? There's enough story here for four hours of movie, and they squeeze all of it into about an hour and a half. Also, there's the Art Garfunkel sequence.
Cinematography:
Special effects/design: A lot of the animation is crazy great. Some of it is kind of bad.
Acting:
Music:
Subjective Rating: 7/10 (Good, ). The book seemed unfilmable, but somehow they managed to make a good movie out of it. It's not anywhere near as good as the book, but it's still quite good.
Objective Rating (Average):

VSM: 2010 Leftoevers

2011 is half over, which means movies I missed in 2010 (even foreign ones that weren't released in the US until a few months ago) should be available on video by now. And so, the first of what I expect will be an annual summer tradition: Last Year's Leftovers.

Very Slow Marathon #4 - 2010 Leftovers
[note: I'll update this list with links as we go, and you can find it above in the Very Slow Marathons tab.]

- Another Year (8/10, 3.6/4)
- 13 Assasins (7/10, 3.4/4)
- The Book of Eli (3/10, 1.3/4)
- Biutiful (3/10, 2.7/4)
- Buried (8/10, 3.3/4)
- A Film Unfinished (6/10, 2.7/4)
- Get Low (6/10, 2.7/4)
- Marwencol (7/10, 3.0/4)
- Inside Job (3/10, 1.2/4)
- Ip Man 2
- Shutter Island (6/10, 2.3/4)
- Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2/10, 1.7/4)
- Unstoppable (7/10, 2.3/4)
- Waiting for "Superman" (4/10, 1.9/4)

Lynn's Druthers VSM wrap-up

Well. The Lynn's Druthers Very Slow Marathon ended up taking about six months, when I'd thought it would be two or three. Note to self: don't count an entire TV series as a single item in future marathons.

I don't really have much to say about this bunch of titles that I haven't already. I tried to get Lynn to write a wrap-up, but she won't. I think she lost interest in her own marathon months ago. I know I did. I'm eager to get on to more manageable, compact and, hopefully, interesting marathons. So I'll just rank these titles and be done with it.

(ordered by “subjective score,” with ties broken by “objective score”):

Tier 1: notable
1. The Shop Around the Corner, 1940 (8/10, 3.0/4)
2. The Producers, 1968 (8/10, 2.7/4)
3. Lars and the Real Girl, 2007 (7/10, 3.0/4)
4. A Town Called Panic, 2009 (7/10, 2.9/4)

Tier 2: solidly entertaining
5. MASH: Season Three, 1974-1975 (7/10, 2.8/4)
6. MASH: Season Four, 1975-1976 (7/10, 2.6/4)
7. Flight of the Conchords: Season One, 2007 (7/10, 2.5/4)
8. MASH: Season Two, 1973-1974 (7/10, 2.5/4)
9. MASH: Season One, 1972-1973 (7/10, 2.5/4)

Tier 3: yeah, I guess these are fine, too
10. Ponyo, 2008 (7/10, 2.5/4)
11. Date Night, 2010 (7/10, 2.3/4)
12. An American in Paris, 1951 (7/10, 2.2/4)
13. Enter the Dragon, 1973 (7/10, 2.2/4)
14. Mad Men: Season One, 2007 (6/10, 3.0/4)
15. Capote, 2005 (6/10, 2.6/4)

Tier 4: kind of a waste of time
16. Big, 1988 (6/10, 2.0/4)
17. Dexter: Season Three, 2008 (6/10, 2.0/4)
18. Semi-Pro, 2008 (5/10, 1.9/4)
20. Sahara with Michael Palin, 2002 (4/10, 1.3/4)
21. Full Circle with Michael Palin, 1997 (4/10, 1.0/4)
19. Dan in Real Life, 2007 (3/10, 1.9/4)
22. The Walking Dead: Season One, 2010 (3/10, 1.5/4)

Tier 5: crappity crappity crap
23. Defiance, 2008 (3/10, 1.4/4)
24. Run, Fat Boy, Run, 2007 (3/10, 1.3/4)
25. Drunken Master, 1978 (3/10, 1.1/4)
26. Talladega Nights, 2006 (3/10, 1.0/4)

Sahara with Michael Palin

Lynn’s Druthers Marathon, part 26 (final)

Data
Title: Sahara with Michael Palin
Year: 2002
Network: BBC
Episodes: 4, at 50 minutes each
Directors: Roger Mills, John-Paul Davidson
Writer: Michael Palin
Starring: Michael Palin
Music: Elizabeth Parker
I saw it: streaming from Netflix, over the past few days
Synopsis: Palin wanders around northern Africa

My reaction
Concept: I don't know why he's there. Maybe someone thought it would be funny if he got a really bad sunburn?
Story:
Characters:
Dialog:
Pacing:
Cinematography:
Special effects/design:
Acting: n/a
Music:
Subjective Rating: 4/10 (Eh, ). Not as boring as Full Circle. It has some educational value, if not entertainment.
Objective Rating (Average):