Tom Cruise looks a bit stiff in an eye patch and a Nazi uniform in the trailer for Valkyrie, but we�ll withhold judgment until seeing the movie after its release next month. Meanwhile, a new documentary gives the facts behind the subject of Cruise�s film�the failed military coup against Hitler in the summer of 1944. Operation Valkyrie, out now on DVD, offers a quick run-through on Nazi Ge...

A hero descends into a subterranean labyrinth to battle a monster with a taste for human flesh. The ancient Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur is at the root of three thousand years of grim sagas and fairy tales and Gothic adventures on page and screen, not to mention role-playing and video games. The monstrous Minotaur was said to dwell on the island of Crete beneath the palace of King Mino...

Life in North America was rough in 10,000 B.C. The great reptiles were long gone, but giant mammals took their place, roaming the countryside where �paleo-Indians� hunted and gathered. There were sloths the size of cars, bears twice as big as grizzlies, four hundred pound saber tooth cats and the Columbian mammoth, an elephantine behemoth dwarfing the pachyderms of the present day. And th...

Milwaukee’s buy-local organization, Our Milwaukee, hosts a series of events and promotions this week to remind shoppers about the economic and cultural benefits of frequenting local businesses. Many of their points are mirrored in the 2005 documentary Independent America, which they’ll screen free...

Searching for evidence of the Ice Age in Death Valley may sound paradoxical, but to find that evidence is proof that the world�s climate was once vastly different than it has been since humans have kept records. The documentary �A Global Warning?� reminds us of what science has long known: the Earth has undergone not just one Ice Age but several significant climate shifts whose effects were etch...

The documentary You�re Gonna Miss Me (available on DVD) doesn�t begin on stage but in a courthouse where Roky Erickson�s relatives are battling for control of his life. The latest episode of a troubled, decades long family history finds one of the songwriter-singer�s brothers suing to replace his mother as Roky�s guardian. By then a childlike figure with the build of an oversize teddy bear, Roky...