Acquiring movie info

Question

This code gives me info of a movie and the movies directed/acted by corresponding director and actors. It is working as the way I expected but I included lots of try and except statements and as a result my code is slow. Is there anyway to speed this up?

from imdb import IMDb


def rating(name):
    p1 = ia.get_movie(ia.search_movie(str(name))[0].getID())
    return p1
ia = IMDb()
a = ['Gravity', 'Argo']
i = 0
for i in a:
    movie_list = ia.search_movie(i)
    # print movie_list
    k = movie_list[0].getID()
    movie = ia.get_movie(k)
    movie_rating = movie['rating']
    print "Name of the movie: ", movie
    for i in movie['director']:
        print "Director: ", i
        director = ia.search_person(i["name"])[0]
        ia.update(director)
        print "Movies directed by %s:" % director
        for movie_name in director["director movie"]:
            p3 = rating(movie_name)
            try:
                p3['rating']
                print movie_name, "\t", p3['rating'], "\t", p3['year'], "\t", p3['genre'][0]
            except:
                print movie_name, "unrated", "\t", p3['year'], "\t", p3['genre'][0]


    actor = movie['cast']
    print "Cast: "
    for ie in actor[:2]:
        print "\t", ie
        for j in ia.search_person(str(ie))[:1]:
            full_person = ia.get_person(j.getID(), info=["filmography"])
            try:
                # b = full_person["actor"]
                bb = full_person["actor"]

            except:
                bb = full_person["actress"]
                print "Movies Acted by %s:" % j
                for movie_name in bb:
                    p3 = rating(movie_name)
                    try:
                        p3['rating']
                        try:
                            p3['year']
                            try:
                                p3['genre']
                                print movie_name, "\t", p3['rating'], "\t", p3['year'], "\t", p3['genre'][0]
                            except:
                                print movie_name, "\t", p3['rating'], "\t", p3['year'], "\t", "no genre"
                        except:
                            try:
                                p3['genre']
                                print movie_name, "\t", p3['rating'], "\t", "No release year", "\t", p3['genre'][0]
                            except:
                                print movie_name, "\t", p3['rating'], "\t", "No release year", "\t", "no genre"
                    except:
                        try:
                            p3['year']
                            try:
                                p3['genre']
                                print movie_name, "\t", "No rating", "\t", p3['year'], "\t", p3['genre'][0]
                            except:
                                print movie_name, "\t", "No rating", "\t", p3['year'], "\t", "no genre"
                        except:
                            try:
                                p3['genre']
                                print movie_name, "\t", "No rating", "\t", "No release year", "\t", p3['genre'][0]
                            except:
                                print movie_name, "\t", "No rating", "\t", "No release year", "\t", "no genre"
            else:
                print "Movies Acted by %s:" % j
                for movie_name in bb:
                    p3 = rating(movie_name)
                    try:
                        p3['rating']
                        try:
                            p3['year']
                            try:
                                p3['genre']
                                print movie_name, "\t", p3['rating'], "\t", p3['year'], "\t", p3['genre'][0]
                            except:
                                 print movie_name, "\t", p3['rating'], "\t", p3['year'], "\t", "no genre"
                        except:
                            try:
                                p3['genre']
                                print movie_name, "\t", p3['rating'], "\t", "No release year", "\t", p3['genre'][0]
                            except:
                                print movie_name, "\t", p3['rating'], "\t", "No release year", "\t", "no genre"
                    except:
                        try:
                            p3['year']
                            try:
                                p3['genre']
                                print movie_name, "\t", "No rating", "\t", p3['year'], "\t", p3['genre'][0]
                            except:
                                 print movie_name, "\t", "No rating", "\t", p3['year'], "\t", "no genre"
                        except:
                            try:
                                p3['genre']
                                print movie_name, "\t", "No rating", "\t", "No release year", "\t", p3['genre'][0]
                            except:
                                print movie_name, "\t", "No rating", "\t", "No release year", "\t", "no genre"

Answer 1

In terms of removing the awkward try: except: sections, note that the following achieves the same outcome:

rating = p3.get('rating', 'No rating')
year = p3.get('year', 'No release year')
genre = p3.get('genre', ['No genre'])[0]

print '\t'.join((movie_name, rating, year, genre))

---

Your rating function is:

1. Badly named (it doesn't just return the rating, it returns a dictionary of movie information);
2. Reliant on the global object ia being accessible; and
3. Lacking any documentation to explain what it does.

You also have similar functionality that isn't, for whatever reason, encapsulated in a function.

---

You have too much code at the top level of your script. You should wrap it all in a function called e.g. main (as a bare minimum - much better would be restructuring it to multiple short, single-purpose functions) and add:

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

to the bottom of the script. This allows you to easily import the functionality you've developed elsewhere later.

---

Many of your variables are not very clearly named (ie? ia? i? a?) - please adopt meaningful names, it will make your code so much easier to follow and understand (which is good for you, too!)

---

There is no need to "initialise" i in the following:

i = 0
for i in a:

indeed, if you're going to, 0 is a really bad choice, as all of the actual values i takes are strings, not integers.