Cinema Verite?

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It's an occupational hazard in Hollywood: make a film based on real-life events and, predictably, you're going to have people grousing over inaccuracies. So it is with the latest crop of fact-based dramas. A bigger mystery: what Tolkien fans did before they had Peter Jackson's movie to pick apart.

--By Jyoti Thottam

A Beautiful Mind

CRITICISM Where to begin? In the grand tradition of sanitized biopics, the film about genius mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr. omits his illegitimate child and his alleged liaisons with men, as well as his divorce from and remarriage to Alicia Nash, who helps him battle schizophrenia.

RESPONSE Scriptwriter Akiva Goldsman says the "architecture" of Nash's life mattered more than the facts.

Ali

CRITICISM Howard Cosell sits ringside for the rumble with Foreman. Actually, he left Zaire before the fight. Also, the lawyer in Ali's draft case calls him from a motel as Martin Luther King Jr. is shot there. Dubious.

RESPONSE Director Michael Mann says he tried "to represent the totality" of the Cosell-Ali bond and the tumult of 1968.

Black Hawk Down

CRITICISM It used real aircraft, but the film cut the number of men defending the chopper and put names on the helmets, a practice discontinued years ago. Somali casualties remain nameless.

RESPONSE Director Ridley Scott was worried that the audience would lose track of the characters. No comment from the studio about the portrayal of Somalis.

The Lord of the Rings

CRITICISM Yes, hobbits are imaginary, but you wouldn't know it from the outrage over the anthropological errors alleged in the film. Example: fans say a hobbit wears shoes in one scene when everyone knows they leave their hairy, oversize feet unshod.

RESPONSE Producer Mark Ordesky says he double-checked and swears there's no shoe.