Article posted: 2/22/2013 11:00 AM

In fact-based films, how much fiction is OK?

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Bryan Cranston, left, plays Jack O'Donnell and Ben Affleck portrays Tony Mendez in "Argo," a rescue thriller about the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis.

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There's crackling filmmaking in "Argo" — except that some of it never happened. Ben Affleck and Chris Terrio, whose film is an Oscar front-runner, never claimed their film was a documentary, of course. But still, they've caught some flak for the liberties they took in the name of entertainment. And they aren't alone — two other high-profile best-picture nominees this year, Kathryn Bigelow's "Zero Dark Thirty" and Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln," have also been criticized for different sorts of factual issues.