For your consideration....

[nitasee]

Reports: Iran planning lawsuit against Hollywood over Oscar-winning movie ‘Argo’

By Associated Press, Updated: Tuesday, March 12, 1:15 PM

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran is planning to sue Hollywood over the Oscar-winning “Argo” because of the movie’s allegedly “unrealistic portrayal” of the country, Iranian media reported Tuesday.

Several news outlets,

Comments

[underlankers]

I know people criticized the movie on grounds of historical acccuracy, but if you're looking to Hollywood to provide a replay of reality, you're looking in the wrong place to begin with. And if Iran thinks it has a snowball's chance in Hell to pull this suit off, they're crazier than I think they are.

[nitasee]

Affleck has been up front that it's not wholly accurate. He's stated that things were changed for dramatic purposes and not to look at the film as pure history.

[everstar3]

I was pretty sure it wasn't purely historical if only because I don't think you could confirm airline tickets instantly in the seventies. Plus, that car/plane chase seemed a little exaggerated.

[kittenmommy]

I don't think you could confirm airline tickets instantly in the seventies.

LOL no, you could not.

[fluffydragon]

It was entirely exaggerated XD. NPR had one of the original hostages on - there was no car/plane chase. I want to go find the entire interview - they said they were not sitting near each other, but ordered drinks as soon as they good and silently toasted each other from across the plane.

[mimblexwimble]

What's the dramatic purpose of getting a country's fucking language wrong?

[underlankers]

People get other languages wrong all the time in movies. You don't see many people up in arms about all the failures of Latin grammar whenever Latin shows up in a movie. Farsi? It's obscure enough that only people who know the language would have detected the errors, and it's not like Ben Affleck, of all people, was going to go Mel Gibson and get every last word and pronunciation right and leave umpty-dozen more problems.

[jenny_jenkins]

It's obscure enough that only people who know the language would have detected the errors

Arabic and Persian have almost no relationship and sound vastly different even to an untrained ear. I don't speak Portuguese or Spanish - but I can easily tell them apart when I hear them (and they are closer relations).

This film was presumably made for people to watch all over the world. Billions of people know what Arabic sounds like. They pray in Arabic. It was unforgivably lazy.

Latin is (with apologies to Dr Haskett - my old Latin professor who used to dispute this) a dead language.

Edited for a split infinitive.

[underlankers]

Well, sure. But do you think the average dumbass in the USA would know what either one sounds like or even that Farsi would have more words that sound familiar than Arabic ever will? As history the film is garbage. As a guide to the Middle East it's more about how to do it wrong than how to do it right. This is par for the course with Hollywood. Criticizing it is like complaining that a cloudburst is a lot of rain. The racist/xenophobic element? Also worthy of criticism, but that is true of far too many films made nowadays. Film is a great medium for propaganda.

[jenny_jenkins]

Oh I agree. I would NEVER go to Hollywood for a history lesson of any kind.

I simply felt that to use Arabic was unforgivably lazy, even by their standards.

[mimblexwimble]

I had a comment here but something ate it. Either way, they got the entire language wrong - not grammar, not syntax, no. It was like having Chinese people speaking Vietnamese. It was non-Arabic people speaking Arabic. If they can't get that right, they're fucking lazy and don't give a shit.

[underlankers]

It wouldn't surprise me if that was in fact the case. We are, after all, talking about a film directed by Hollywood. ;)