Tag: Ben Affleck

The Shortsighted History of ‘Argo’

Exclusive: The Oscar for Best Picture went to Ben Affleck’s Argo, an escape-thriller set in post-revolutionary Iran. It hyped the drama and edged into propaganda. But Americans would have learned a lot more if Affleck had chosen the CIA coup in 1953…

Hit Movies Miss Mideast Realities

From the Archive: Two Oscar favorites “Argo” and “Zero Dark Thirty” purport to tell real-life stories about America’s troubles in the Middle East, one an escape-from-Iran thriller and the other a get-bin-Laden film. But neither confronts some hard realities, wrote…

Waking Up to Iran’s Real History

From the Archive: An Oscar frontrunner for best picture is “Argo,” depicting a little-known chapter of the U.S-Iran hostage standoff in 1979-81. Yet, while focusing on this story of six hostages escaping, “Argo” missed bigger dramas, before and after, as…

New Movie Glamorizes CIA in Iran

The Right often demonizes Hollywood as “liberal” and surely there are some TV shows and movies with liberal themes but most of what the U.S. entertainment industry produces is either apolitical or super-patriotic. “Argo,” a new movie on Iran, fits the…