I got a bunch of interesting responses to my question about Zero Dark Thirty and its portrayal of torture. Something like 3/4 of the responses agreed in some fashion with my take — that the movie didn’t seem as pro-torture as its critics had led me to suspect. But there’s probably some level of sample bias involved in that breakdown.

Here’s one response from TPM Reader ST that takes the contrary stance …

I did not have your reaction. I just saw the movie this week as well and I had the opposite reaction – despite my wanting Kathleen Bigelow to succeed because I really value her artistic voice.

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An interesting take from Hollywood-based TPM Reader MJ on what was really behind the commotion over Zero Dark Thirty and some of the decisions made in the movie itself. After discussing some of the ins and outs of who should have won which Academy Award, MJ gets to the topic at hand …

Don’t underestimate groupthink in Hollywood. There were two movies in the zeitgeist that presented a face about U.S. Foreign Policy to the world: Argo and Zero Dark Thirty. Which face do you really think was better for business? (And I say this as a person who believes if it was a choice between Argo and ZDT…I’d take Argo every day of the week).

Zero Dark Thirty also twisted itself into knots, bent over backwards to make sure President Obama received as little credit as possible in this movie.

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Now Rove says he can imagine the next GOP presidential candidates supporting gay marriage.

FromJim Messina’s interview on ABC this morning. Yep, they were freaked by the first debate too … Read More

I finally saw Zero Dark Thirty last night. Liked it a lot as a movie. Found it sort of hard to imagine in retrospect how Argo (which I also liked) beat it for Best Picture. But then I thought Les Miserables should have won and I never saw Lincoln. So who knows? But it’s the issue of torture that makes me bring it up. Read More

Here’s a sort of surreal video package of Pope Francis meeting today with his predecessor, Benedict XVI, at the papal retreat at Castel Gandolfo. Benedict seems even more frail than he looked a few weeks ago. After the jump … Read More

When Chris Christie met Shaq.

Top Saudi cleric indicts Twitter as unjust place for “jokesters”.

By popular demand, we’ve added comments to the mobile version of TPM stories.

Cable news seamlessly splits their time between the indictment of a groundhog and a flurry of Senate activity, known as “vote-a-rama”

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