'Argo' producer scours for the next stranger-than-fiction story

Hunched over a desk in his spartan Westwood apartment, David Klawans squints at his computer monitor and knits his brow in concentration. "I'm perusing," he says.

His eyes dart between headlines almost indecipherable on a Web page displaying about 800 stamp-sized images of newspapers from 90 different countries.

"Two kids running? What's that?" he exclaims before clicking on a photo. "Oh, it's refugees. Whatever. Moving on."

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Nearly every day, for upward of 10-hour stretches, the independent film producer speed-reads police blogs, articles from RSS feeds and niche-interest journals in dogged pursuit of an elusive prize: a story on which to base his next movie.

His biggest hit to date is "Argo." Before the film landed seven Oscar nominations (including one for best picture) and two Golden Globes (including best drama picture), before it generated more than $180 million in worldwide grosses, "Argo" existed as a declassified story in the quarterly CIA journal Studies in Intelligence, which Klawans happens to have been perusing one day in 1998.

"It's like going on the beach with a metal detector," the self-described news junkie says of his process. "Like Kanye West looks through records to sample on his songs, I'm looking for stories to turn into films."

Klawans, 44, has established himself as Hollywood's least likely movie macher by heeding the advice of his mentor, the old-school producer David Brown ("Jaws," "A Few Good Men"): "Read everything you can get your hands on."

Indefatigable in his quest to root out oddball, overlooked true-life stories, Klawans spins material most others ignore into cinematic gold.

OSCAR WATCH: "ARGO"

"Argo" took nearly 14 years to reach the big screen after Klawans read about CIA exfiltration expert Tony Mendez's rescue of six American diplomats hiding in Tehran during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. Mendez (portrayed in the movie by "Argo's" director, Ben Affleck) posed the group as Canadian filmmakers scouting locations for a science-fiction film, created a fictitious production company and planted articles about the bogus project in Hollywood trade papers.

Throughout the '90s Klawans was scraping by as a production assistant for an L.A.-based Japanese TV commercial firm. He didn't own a car, so he bicycled to UCLA's magazine archive to check the story. In microfiche files, he came across the CIA's planted articles in the Hollywood Reporter and Variety from January 1980. "My jaw dropped," he says.

Problem was, Mendez already had representation at Creative Artists Agency and was preparing to publish a memoir, "The Master of Disguise." Even so, Klawans persuaded Mendez to let him attempt to set up a movie project. He eventually bought the rights to Mendez's life story as well.

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"I'm cycling to pitch meetings wearing a backpack with a change of clothes. It's summertime and I'm sweating. And I'm getting to know studio security. They call me 'bike boy,'" remembers Klawans, who would switch from bike to business attire outside the studio gates. "I would basically throw my backpack behind a bush — I was embarrassed to look like a messenger guy."

The New York University film school graduate was born in Chicago. His family moved to Belgium when he was 2 and he grew up in Europe and the U.S. consuming a steady diet of sci-fi and fantasy films including "Star Wars."

He came close to setting up the "Argo" project as a cable TV movie. But when that deal fell through, Klawans says, "it hit me that Tony had planted stories in Variety and Hollywood Reporter as a cover. For the CIA, it's all about illusions and perception. I thought, 'That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to plant an "Argo" story in a magazine.'"

The producer had met former L.A. Weekly staff writer and "This American Life" contributor Joshuah Bearman through friends who thought the two shared an appreciation for offbeat material. Bearman also had experience turning a magazine story into a movie; an article he reported for Harper's became the 2007 documentary "The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters," about two die-hard video game players vying for the world's highest score in the vintage arcade game "Donkey Kong."

Klawans handed over his research and contacts to Bearman and proposed that the journalist write "Argo" as a magazine article that would entice movie backers.

Bearman landed an assignment from Wired magazine, then interviewed everyone he could: Mendez, officials in the State Department with knowledge of the exfiltration and Ken Taylor, the Canadian ambassador to Iran who housed some of the fugitive American diplomats, as well as the six embassy "houseguests."

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The Physics of Awesome People

Who doesn’t love epic videos like this? Not only that, there are some great physics assignments in here. Let’s break it down and see what kind of questions can be asked in this video. There’s a lot there. You can consider this homework if you like.

Goal Line Flip

Here, Jerome Simpson does a flip going into the end zone. Oh. I already did this one. I guess you could consider it an example to go on. Here, I looked at how high he jumped and what kind of power it took. Also, is it real or fake? It’s real of course. It was on TV, you can’t fake that.

Double Front Tuck Over a Car

Notice how I said “front tuck” instead of “flip”? That’s because I know all the gymnastics lingo that my daughters use. Well, I still can’t spell “Yurchenko”, but it is fun to say.

In this part of the video, you could make a plot of the guy’s vertical and horizontal position as a function of time. It would be cool to see that his center of mass is just like a tossed ball. Oh, he does push off the front of the car. Also, if he wanted to do a triple front tuck, how fast would he have to spin? With the rotation rate he has in this jump, how high would he have to jump to make a triple front tuck?

High Jumping Basketball Guy

How high does he jump? Does moving his arms like that help him get higher? What about his center of mass?

Rope Swing

You will need to make some estimates here – but I think you can do it. How fast would she be going at the bottom of the swing? How long would she feel weightless? (You can say weightless is an apparent weight less than 10% of standing on Earth). What if you include air drag – how much will that change your answer? I already did something like this before – but not for this exact video.

Giant Basketball Shot

Really, I have done this one before too. Well, I haven’t looked at THIS shot, but similar ones. I have several posts on this, but maybe I will just link to this one. In short, you need to model the motion of a thrown basketball including air resistance forces. Really, the only way to do this is with a numerical model. Python would be a good choice. In the linked post, I looked at how much a thrower could vary the initial throw and still make the shot.

Giant Blob Jump

Have you noticed how many of these titles have the word “giant” in them? Well, I have already looked at the Giant Blog Jump before. How high does the launched person go? What kind of acceleration would the person have on launch? How much energy is lost from the original jumpers to the launched person?

Triple Behind the Back Football Catch

This is Chris Chambers from an NFL Fantasy Football commercial. I don’t know for sure, but I think this is fake. If you want, you could try to show it’s indeed a fakeorama. How? Well, first is to look at the background motion due to the motion of the camera. For many fake videos, they record with a tripod and then add a fake camera shake. Next, you could try to plot the motion of the football – but it might be difficult with the camera angle. You could look at the time of flight and compare that to a ball thrown from some similar distance. I suspect you could estimate the distance pretty easily. There is one last thing. What kind of frictional force would have to be exerted by the glove on the ball to catch it like that?

Behind the Back Baseball

I’m almost positive this one is fake also. In fact, I think I recall reading an article about it being fake. Anyway, you could analyze this one just like the previous football scene.

Giant Skateboard Jump

Do you notice how I am sticking with the “giant” theme whenever possible? This isn’t the coolest video, but it looks like it would work very well with video analysis. The camera is stationary and mostly perpendicular to the motion. You could at least see how fast he was going.

64 Inch Box Jump

I already looked at this one too. It’s not fake.

Rope Swing Jump – It’s Giant

This is another rope swing, so let’s look at something different. How many flips does this guy do? If he pulled his knees in just a bit tighter, he would reduce his moment of inertia. Estimate the number of turns due to this change in position.

Motorcycle Flip

I’m not sure I have a great question – but the video would be easy to do a video analysis of. At least you could find the speed and height of the jump.

Homework Help

Someone is going to ask: “What chapter in the book is this homework from?”  The answer: Chapter 1-8, the video analysis section.  Here are some video analysis resources for you.  Note that some of these are used with an older code, but they still check out.

Sorry, I had more but they are past the expiration date.  I need to make some more video analysis tutorials.

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“Zero Dark Thirty” hits the U.K.: did critics zero in on torture scenes?

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “Zero Dark Thirty” landed this week in the United Kingdom, where the Kathryn Bigelow drama continued to stir debate over its depiction of the use of torture in the CIA’s decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden.

As they have in the U.S., some critics accused the filmmakers of implying that enhanced interrogation techniques could be a useful form of intelligence gathering, while others believed that Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal were more ambiguous in their portrayal of torture’s efficacy.

Most reviewers were floored by the propulsive storyline, the performance of star Jessica Chastain and the gripping dramatization of the raid on bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan.

In the Evening Standard, David Sexton argues that the film is ambivalent about waterboarding and other brutal methods, noting that a key piece of information is only discovered after interrogators ply a detainee with food and kindness.

“This has proved offensive to those who, to avoid having to accept there may be negative consequences from taking the moral high ground, prefer to believe that torture must always be ineffective as well as wrong,” Sexton writes. “Some of these critics – most notably nitwit Naomi Wolf, who has tastefully compared Bigelow to Leni Riefensthal and dubbed her ‘torture’s handmaiden’ – have claimed the film’s disturbing representation of torture amounts to a blithe commendation of the practice, not really a possible interpretation for those who have actually seen the movie.”

In a four-star review, Sexton went on to hail “Zero Dark Thirty” as “terrifically good” and said the depiction of the raid was a “masterclass in action filmmaking.”

In The Independent, Anthony Quinn praised the film for avoiding simplistic conclusions about America’s controversial interrogation methods.

“The waterboarding, the beatings, the dog collars, all the stuff you’ve heard about is here, and perhaps some you haven’t – the spectacle of a man being forced inside a small wooden box is as harrowing as any,” Quinn writes. “Is this an abhorrent crime? Would the information be impossible to gain by other means? The film isn’t saying either way; it is asking us to make up our own minds.”

Quinn also argued that the film is more effective because it was directed by a woman and that because of her gender, Bigelow has a less “gung-ho” relationship to violence than a Ridley Scott or Michael Mann might bring to the same material (he may not have seen “Point Break”)

Robbie Collins maintains in his review of the film in the Telegraph that Bigelow and Boal leave it to audiences to decide whether torture is right or wrong.

“These scenes are every bit as hellish to watch as they should be, and Bigelow’s genius is to make them feel at once gratuitous and necessary,” Collins writes.

He also praised the film for eschewing jingoism and for having the courage to end on a deflated note.

“Where, then, does Zero Dark Thirty leave us?” Collins asks.

“In the same place it leaves Maya: with our thirst for justice quenched, but our sense of rightness shaken. “Where do you want to go?” a pilot asks her, and she starts shedding tear after tear. This, finally, is what victory looks like, and its likeness to defeat is terrifying.”

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian was more unsettled by the film’s relationship with torture and seemed to wish it had taken a firmer position.

“There is nothing in Zero Dark Thirty comparable to Gavin Hood’s soul-searching 2007 movie, Rendition, in which Jake Gyllenhaal’s CIA agent denounces waterboarding information as valueless; he quotes Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and says torture victims ‘speak upon the rack,/ Where men enforced do speak anything,’” Bradshaw writes. “I can well believe that, but for me the most sinister depiction of torture is non-depiction. Many Hollywood movies about the war on terror have managed to ignore the subject, implying non-existence. Despite its fence-sitting, I prefer Bigelow’s account.”

Bradshaw was also less enamored of the film on an artistic level, writing that “It is well made, with a relentless, dour drumbeat of tension and a great final sequence, but nowhere near as good as the first season of Homeland.”

Empire Magazine’s Kim Newman mostly skirted the political debate surrounding “Zero Dark Thirty,” but was ecstatic about Bigelow’s directing, the film’s pacing and star turns.

“Like Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, it’s a relatively new kind of American patriotic war movie, counterprogramming jaded paranoid fantasies like the Bourne movies or the liberal horror stories (Redacted, Rendition, In The Valley Of Elah, Green Zone etc.) thrown up by the War On Terror,” Newman writes. “It’s measured, seething with suppressed emotion, unafraid of slow stretches and false trails, snapping shut like a mantrap when blood is shed. If it grips in a more intellectual, journalistic manner than its Oscar-winning predecessor, it’s because Chastain’s character is necessarily absent during the climax – though she has a terrific post-traumatic outburst when the case is closed.”

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Recipes for Health: Gluten-Free Banana Chocolate Muffins

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

My son Liam still doesn’t know that the muffins he has been devouring all week are gluten-free. I am a big believer that there is no need to forego gluten unless you are truly gluten intolerant; indeed, nutritionists are concerned that a gluten-free diet can be lacking in essential nutrients and digestive enzymes. But I have a sister who is gluten intolerant, so this year I finally made some forays into gluten-free baking in preparation for her annual visit. When she comes I make sure to pick up plenty of gluten-free pasta and bread for her, and we go to holiday parties armed with gluten-free crackers so she doesn’t have to forego hors d’oeuvres.

This year I decided to experiment with gluten-free pastries. I substituted a commercial gluten-free flour mix for all-purpose flour in a pâte sablée recipe and the resulting cookies and tart shells had a wonderful texture – no threat of toughening the dough by working the gluten too much. But I wasn’t crazy about the flavor because the commercial mix I used had a fair amount of bean flour in it and it tasted too strong.

So I put together my own gluten-free flour mix, one without bean flour, and turned to America’s favorite Gluten-Free Girl, Shauna James Ahem for guidance. I was already thinking about making muffins and I wanted a mix that could replace the whole wheat flour I usually use in conjunction with other grains or flours. Her formula for a whole-grain flour mix is simple – 70 percent ground gluten-free grain like rice flour, millet flour, buckwheat flour or teff (the list on her site is a long one) and 30 percent starch like potato starch, cornstarch or arrowroot. For this week’s recipes, I used what I had, which was brown rice flour, potato starch and cornstarch – 20 percent potato starch and 10 percent cornstarch -- and that’s the basis for the nutritional analyses of this week’s recipes. I used this mix in conjunction with a gluten-free meal or flour, so the amount of pure starch in the batters is much less than 30 percent.

When you bake anything it is much simpler and results are more consistent if you use grams and scale your ingredients. This is especially true with gluten-free baking, since you are working with grain and starch formulas. Digital scales are not expensive and I urge you to switch over to this method if you like to bake. I have given approximate cup measures so the recipes will work both ways, but scaling is more accurate.

Gluten-Free Banana Chocolate Muffins

These dark chocolate muffins taste more extravagant than they are. Cacao – raw chocolate -- is considered by many to be a “super food.” It is high in antioxidants and an excellent source of magnesium, iron, chromium, manganese, zinc, and copper. It is also a good source of omega-6 fatty acids and vitamin C.

75 grams (approximately 1/2 cup) buckwheat flour

75 grams (approximately 3/4 cup) almond powder (also known as almond flour)

140 grams (approximately 1 cup) whole grain or all-purpose gluten-free flour mix*

32 grams (approximately 6 tablespoons) dark cocoa powder

10 grams (2 teaspoons) baking powder

5 grams (1 teaspoon) baking soda

3.5 grams (rounded 1/2 teaspoon) salt

100 grams (approximately 1/2 cup) raw brown sugar or packed light brown sugar

2 eggs

75 grams (1/3 cup) canola or grape seed oil

120 grams (1/2 cup) plain low-fat yogurt or buttermilk

5 grams (1 teaspoon) vanilla extract

330 grams ripe bananas (peeled weight), about 3 medium, mashed (1 1/4 cups)

115 grams (about 2/3 cup) semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate chips or chopped bittersweet chocolate

*For the gluten-free flour mix I used 98 grams (about 2/3 cup) rice flour and 42 grams -- about 1/3 cup -- of a mix of cornstarch and potato starch)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Oil or butter muffin tins. Sift the dry ingredients into a large bowl. Pour in any bits that remain in the sifter.

2. In another large bowl or in the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the whip attachment beat together the oil and sugar until creamy. Beat in the eggs and beat until incorporated, then beat in the yogurt or buttermilk, the vanilla and the mashed bananas. Add the dry ingredients and mix at low speed or whisk gently until combined. If using a mixer, scrape down the sides of the bowl and the beaters. Fold in the chocolate chips.

3. Using a spoon or ice cream scoop, fill muffin cups to the top. Place in the oven and bake 30 minutes, until a muffin springs back lightly when touched. Remove from the heat and if the muffins come out of the tins easily, remove from the tins and place on a rack. I like these best served warm, but if they don’t release easily allow them to cool, then remove from the tins.

Yield: 16 muffins (1/3 cup capacity)

Advance preparation: These keep for a couple of days out of the refrigerator, for a few more days in the refrigerator, and for a few months in the freezer.

Nutritional information per serving: 217 calories; 10 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 2 grams polyunsaturated fat; 3 grams monounsaturated fat; 24 milligrams cholesterol; 29 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams dietary fiber; 251 milligrams sodium; 4 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Media Decoder Blog: Dodgers, Signing Lucrative TV Deal, Plan to Start Regional Sports Network

The owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers said Monday that they intended to start a regional sports network in southern California, confirming weeks of reports about the team’s plans.

The network, to be named SportsNet LA, will be backed by Time Warner Cable, one of the main television distributors in the region, with a commitment of $7 billion to $8 billion over the next 25 years. The price tag, though not made public by the parties, was confirmed by a person with direct knowledge of the deal. Analysts said it was the most lucrative television deal for a single team in sports history.

Time Warner Cable will carry the Dodgers network and will be in charge of convincing others to carry it, as well. In exchange, Time Warner Cable will keep all the advertising revenue that it sells for the network. The Dodgers owners said in a news release on Monday that SportsNet LA would carry all the team’s games and “comprehensive behind-the-scenes Dodger programming.”

The multibillion-dollar deal with the Dodgers seemingly flies in the face of Time Warner Cable’s public statements about tamping down on the rising costs of programming. SportsNet LA is likely to amount to $4 to $5 a month per subscriber in southern California, and some of that cost will be passed on subscribers through their monthly cable bills, with Time Warner Cable also absorbing some of the cost.

But Time Warner Cable says that doing business directly with the Dodgers cuts out the middleman, in this case Fox Sports, which was also bidding for rights to the Dodgers games. The company said the same thing when it outbid Fox to carry Los Angeles Lakers games in 2011, a 20-year deal valued at $3 billion.

“This deal, like our Lakers’ deal, furthers our efforts to attain greater certainty and control over local and regional sports programming costs,” David Rone, the president of Time Warner Cable Sports, said of the Dodgers agreement in a statement.

Fox Sports, owned by the News Corporation, disputes this notion, in part because its bid for the Dodgers was significantly less than Time Warner Cable’s bid. Dodgers games will continue to be televised on Fox Sports’ Prime Ticket network until the new network starts in 2014.

A group led by Magic Johnson and financed by Guggenheim Partners bought the Dodgers last year in a deal valued at $2.3 billion. “We concluded last year that the best way to give our fans what they want — more content and more Dodger baseball — was to launch our own network,” Mark Walter, the founder of Guggenheim Partners and the chairman of the Dodgers franchise, said in a statement.

The network will be operated by American Media Productions, a subsidiary of the Dodgers ownership group. “The creation of AMP will provide substantial financial resources over the coming years for the Dodgers to build on their storied legacy and bring a World Championship home to Los Angeles,” Mr. Walter said.

The financial terms of the arrangement were not released. The arrangement will require the approval of Major League Baseball.

Assessing the impending deal last week, the Nomura analyst Michael Nathanson said Time Warner Cable should “be careful what they wish for.” In a note to investors, he pointed out that the News Corporation is likely to use the high rates for the Lakers and Dodgers channels as negotiating leverage for other regional sports networks. News Corp. recently acquired 49 percent of YES, the Yankees channel in New York, and full ownership of a channel that carries the Cleveland Indians in Ohio. Time Warner Cable is a major distributor in New York and Ohio.

Mr. Nathanson said Los Angeles, which will have six regional sports networks once the Dodgers network starts, is “experiencing significant price inflation.” It’s too soon to know, he said, “whether these levels of investments will prove to be justified many years down the road or if we have reached the top of the sports-rights bubble.”

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Death toll in Brazil nightclub fire hits 245

BRASILIA, Brazil—

A fire swept through a crowded nightclub in southern Brazil early Sunday, killing at least 245 people and leaving at least 200 injured, police and firefighters said.

Police Maj. Cleberson Braida told local news media that the 245 bodies were brought for identification to a gymnasium in the city of Santa Maria.

That toll would make it one of the deadliest nightclub fires more than a decade.

The cause of the fire is not yet known, officials said. Officials earlier put the death toll at 180.

Civil Police and regional government spokesman Marcelo Arigoni told Radio Gaucha earlier that the total number of victims is still unclear and there may be hundreds injured,

The newspaper Diario de Santa Maria reported that the fire started at around 2 a.m. at the Kiss nightclub in the city at the southern tip of Brazil, near the borders with Argentina and Uruguay.

Rodrigo Moura, whom the paper identified as a security guard at the club, said it was at its maximum capacity of between 1,000 and 2,000, and partygoers were pushing and shoving to escape.

Ezekiel Corte Real, 23, was quoted by the paper as saying that he helped people to escape. “I just got out because I'm very strong,” he said.

“Sad Sunday”, tweeted Tarso Genro, the governor of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. He said all possible action was being taken and that he would be in the city later in the day.

Santa Maria is a major university city with a population of around a quarter of a million.

A welding accident reportedly set off a Dec. 25, 2000, fire at a club in Luoyang, China, killing 309.

At least 194 people died at an overcrowded working-class nightclub in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2004.

A blaze at the Lame Horse nightclub in Perm, Russia, broke out on Dec. 5, 2009, when an indoor fireworks display ignited a plastic ceiling decorated with branches, killing 152

A nightclub fire in the U.S. state of Rhode Island in 2003 killed 100 people after pyrotechnics used as a stage prop by the 1980s rock band Great White set ablaze cheap soundproofing foam on the walls and ceiling.

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Lace 'Em Up: 4 Running Shoes Reviewed

Hitting the streets to get fit by spring? We review four new specialty sneakers for runners.

Adidas' Adizero Feather 2.0 runners are so light (barely 7 ounces) and so responsive, running in them feels more like bouncing on fluffy clouds than pounding on pavement. OK, I'm exaggerating, but I was really blown away by the light weight when I took them out on long-distance runs. So effective was the feather-weight design on a 5-mile outing, I could actually notice the reduced effort in my legs.

The shoe is topped with a barely-there breathable mesh that runs from the toes all the way back to the heel. Ventilation is therefore excellent, with a constant flow of cool air delivered directly to your piggies. And, unlike most shoes that make use of fancy, lightweight materials, they're actually quite sturdy.

These sneaks are compatible with Adidas' miCoach data reporting system and its companion apps. So if you already have a miCoach Speed_Cell sensor, just lift up the shoe's insert and pop it in (You can also attach the sensor to your laces). The sensor can be synced with your iPhone to track your speed, acceleration, distance, and pace during runs.

The only problem is that the miCoach system needs some work, including the inconsistent syncing and the iPhone app's interface. If you're used to the Nike+ app, you'll be struggling to work your way through using Adidas' lesser creation. That said, it's an add-on to the shoe and not a primary feature, so miCoach's shortcomings don't detract from the sneaker's quality.

WIRED Obscenely light at only 7 ounces. Flexible mesh upper keeps your tootsies cool and dry. Durable, despite the lightweight design. miCoach-compatible for tracking your runs. Great styling. Affordable at $115. Men's and women's versions.

TIRED If you're not into light shoes, these aren't for you. The miCoach system needs a lot of work -- it's adequate, but could be so much better.

Photos by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Rating: 8 out of 10

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‘Argo’ wins Producers Guild Awards

LOS ANGELES (AP) — “Argo” continues to shake up the Oscar race by taking the top honor at the Producers Guild Awards on Saturday.

Ben Affleck, coming off winning Golden Globe Awards for best motion picture drama and director for the real-life drama, received the award handed out at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

“I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that I’m still working as an actor,” he said in his acceptance speech.

Affleck also stars in “Argo” as the CIA operative who orchestrated a daring rescue of six American embassy employees during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. George Clooney and Grant Heslov share the producer award with Affleck as “Argo” beat out the Civil War saga “Lincoln,” which has a leading 12 Academy Awards nominations.

Other nominees in the PGA movie category were “Les Miserables,” ”Zero Dark Thirty,” ”Beasts of the Southern Wild,” ”Django Unchained,” ”Life of Pi,” ”Moonrise Kingdom,” ”Silver Linings Playbook,” and Skyfall.”

Along with honors from other Hollywood professional groups such as actors, directors and writers guilds, the producer prizes have become part of the preseason sorting out contenders for Academy Awards.

The big winner often goes on to claim the best-picture honor at the Oscars on Feb. 24.

Disney’s “Wreck-It Ralph” won the guild’s animation category, beating “Brave,” ”Frankenweenie,” ”ParaNorman” and “Rise of the Guardians.”

“Searching for Sugar Man” took the documentary prize, beating “A People Uncounted,” ”The Gatekeepers,” ”The Island President,” and “The Other Dream Team.”

Showtime’s “Homeland” won the producer’s award for television drama series, which beat out “Breaking Bad,” ”Downton Abbey,” ”Game of Thrones,” and “Mad Men.”

The ABC sitcom “Modern Family” took the prize for best comedy series for the third straight year, beating “30 Rock,” ”The Big Bang Theory,” ”Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and “Louie.”

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Well: Ask Well: Squats for Aging Knees

You are already doing many things right, in terms of taking care of your aging knees. In particular, it sounds as if you are keeping your weight under control. Carrying extra pounds undoubtedly strains knees and contributes to pain and eventually arthritis.

You mention weight training, too, which is also valuable. Sturdy leg muscles, particularly those at the front and back of the thighs, stabilize the knee, says Joseph Hart, an assistant professor of kinesiology and certified athletic trainer at the University of Virginia, who often works with patients with knee pain.

An easy exercise to target those muscles is the squat. Although many of us have heard that squats harm knees, the exercise is actually “quite good for the knees, if you do the squats correctly,” Dr. Hart says. Simply stand with your legs shoulder-width apart and bend your legs until your thighs are almost, but not completely, parallel to the ground. Keep your upper body straight. Don’t bend forward, he says, since that movement can strain the knees. Try to complete 20 squats, using no weight at first. When that becomes easy, Dr. Hart suggests, hold a barbell with weights attached. Or simply clutch a full milk carton, which is my cheapskate’s squats routine.

Straight leg lifts are also useful for knee health. Sit on the floor with your back straight and one leg extended and the other bent toward your chest. In this position, lift the straight leg slightly off the ground and hold for 10 seconds. Repeat 10 to 20 times and then switch legs.

You can also find other exercises that target the knees in this video, “Increasing Knee Stability.”

Of course, before starting any exercise program, consult a physician, especially, Dr. Hart says, if your knees often ache, feel stiff or emit a strange, clicking noise, which could be symptoms of arthritis.

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J. Richard Hackman, an Expert in Team Dynamics, Dies at 72

J. Richard Hackman, a Harvard psychology professor whose fieldwork sometimes took him to the cockpit of an airliner to observe the crew in a nearly five-decade quest to determine the dynamics of teamwork and effective leadership, died on Jan. 8 in Boston. He was 72.

The cause was lung cancer, his wife, Judith Dozier Hackman, said.

Dr. Hackman, the author or co-author of 10 books on group dynamics, was the Edgar Pierce professor of social and organizational psychology at Harvard.

In one of his best-known books, “Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances” (2002), he replaced the popular image of the powerful “I can do it all” team leader with that of someone who, as he wrote, had the subtle skills “to get a team established on a good trajectory, and then to make small adjustments along the way to help members succeed.”

The conditions for a successful team effort — among them “a compelling direction, an enabling team structure, a supportive organizational context and expert team coaching” — “are easy to remember,” Dr. Hackman wrote.

“The challenge,” he continued, “comes in developing an understanding of those conditions that is deep and nuanced enough to be useful in guiding action, and in devising strategies for creating them even in demanding or team-unfriendly organizational circumstances.”

Besides tracking the interplay of pilots, co-pilots and navigators aboard civilian and military planes, Dr. Hackman observed corporate boards, sports teams, orchestra players, telephone-line repair crews, hospital workers and restaurant kitchen staff members.

And in recent years, for his 2011 book, “Collaborative Intelligence,” he was allowed to observe interactions within the American intelligence, defense, law-enforcement and crisis-management communities.

“Although my main aspiration has been to provide guidance that will be useful to team leaders and members,” he wrote, “there are no ‘one-minute’ prescriptions here — creating, leading and serving on teams is not that simple.”

Anita Woolley, a professor of organizational behavior and theory at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said, “The key thing about Dr. Hackman’s work is that it stands in contrast to some of the more popular models of leadership that focused very much on style or how leaders behave, versus what they do.”

Rather than viewing pay as a prime motivator for good performance, she continued, “he focused on features of people’s jobs that made them more intrinsically satisfied: the freedom to determine how they conduct their work, having a variety of tasks, having knowledge of the ultimate outcomes of their work, knowing how their work affects or is received by other people.”

He also liked to overturn some of the received wisdom about teamwork. In a 2011 article for The Harvard Business Review, Dr. Hackman listed “Six Common Misperceptions About Teamwork.” Among them was this:

“Misperception No. 2: It’s good to mix it up. New members bring energy and fresh ideas to a team. Without them, members risk becoming complacent, inattentive to changes in the environment, and too forgiving of fellow members’ misbehavior.

“Actually: The longer members stay together as an intact group, the better they do. As unreasonable as this may seem, the research evidence is unambiguous. Whether it is a basketball team or a string quartet, teams that stay together longer play together better.”

John Richard Hackman was born in Joliet, Ill., on June 14, 1940, the only child of J. Edward and Helen Hackman. His father was an oil pipeline engineer, his mother a schoolteacher.

Dr. Hackman received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill., in 1962, and a doctorate in psychology from the University of Illinois in 1966. He soon joined the psychology and administrative sciences department faculties at Yale, where he taught until 1986, when he moved to the psychology and business departments at Harvard.

Besides his wife, who is an associate dean at Yale, he is survived by two daughters, Julia Beth Proffitt and Laura Dianne Codeanne, and four grandchildren.

After Dr. Hackman died, The Harvard Crimson wrote that for years he had “devoted countless hours to improving one team in particular — the Harvard women’s basketball squad, for which he volunteered as an honorary coach.”

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