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Greg Oden’s foul troubles followed him to the NBA.

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A long, serene, lyrical, pastoral film, based on an earlier, kinder, gentler version of the D. H. Lawrence novel. Swept the French Oscars (the Cesars), is loved by most critics, but left me unmoved, despite the quality of performances by Jean-Louis Coulloc’h (cq) as the gamekeeper and Marina Hands as Lady Chatterley. Too much icing, not enough cake.

by Roger Ebert

Note: I was recovering when “The Departed” was released last year, and given its Oscar-winning stature, I wanted to double back and review it.

Most of Martin Scorsese’s films have been about men trying to realize their inner image of themselves. That’s as true of Travis Bickle as of Jake LaMotta, Rupert Pupkin, Howard Hughes, the Dalai Lama, Bob Dylan or, for that matter, Jesus Christ. “The Departed” is about two men trying to live public lives that are the radical opposites of their inner realities. Their attempts threaten to destroy them, either by implosion or fatal betrayal. The telling of their stories involves a moral labyrinth, in which good and evil wear each other’s masks.

This New Zealand comedy/horror/gross-out picture isn’t really baaaad, but it does get tedious after a while. Turns out that watching livestock eat people is not all that much more fun that watching them graze on vegetation. Jim Emerson

Q. I got a chuckle out of the Movie Glossary entry titled “The Walk.” This shot, of the characters lined up and walking meaningfully toward the camera, became so hackneyed it was used three times in each and every episode of the reality TV game show “Fear Factor.”

The earliest film I can think of to use “The Walk” is “A Clockwork Orange,” as Malcolm McDowell and his gang walk along the harbor, just before McDowell attacks his gangmates. Both the director, the late Stanley Kubrick, and the film seem like likely places for other filmmakers to draw their influences.

Before I saw Tarantino’s “Kill Bill, Vol. 1,” I would have said the last time this shot was effective or looked cool was in his “Reservoir Dogs.” In “Kill Bill,” it seemed to me that both the music and the motion were noticeably faster paced than normal for “The Walk.” How is it that Tarantino manages to take an element so familiar and make it his own and so seemingly original?

Nick Fovargue, Toronto

A. There’s something so quirky and personal about Tarantino’s style that even when he’s ripping off an old movie, you say “That’s a Tarantino shot!” As I tirelessly repeat, it’s not what the film is about, but how it’s about it. By the way, film critic Peter Debruge claims an earlier Walk in “The Wild Bunch,” as shown on the poster.

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Hall of Famer Lenny Wilkens, stripped of his title as the Seattle SuperSonics’ President of Basketball Operations when general manager Sam Presti was hired in June, has resigned.

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Kevin Durant’s first NBA summer league shot was swatted. But he still showed his stuff, taking plenty of shots. Chris Sheridan has the summer hoop scene in Las Vegas.

The Atlanta Braves placed pitcher John Smoltz on the 15-day disabled list on Friday after an MRI found inflammation — but apparently no structural damage — in his right shoulder.