During Prohibition Toots Shor was the only Jew in New York�s Irish mob. And when he became a big time player in his own right, he never discriminated. Shor was a Damon Runyon picture of the big-hearted lug. Everybody loved him. The swinging nightclub that bore his name was the toast of the town during the swanky 1940s and �50s. On any given night the bar was crowded with judges and gangsters, ...

In July 2004 John Kerry was pulling ahead of George W. Bush in the polls until the Bush campaign introduced a new word to our vocabulary, swiftboating. As Kerry fumbled in response to the howling pack of lies being unleashed about his war record, Michael Moore decided to hit the road, shambling onto stages across the country and playing the rock star. He aimed the heavy artillery of his politi...

As part of the Community Media Project’s weekend-long African Beyond film fest in the UWM Union Theatre, African American directors Charles Burnett, Kevin Everson and Iverson White will be screening and speaking about their latest films, but Saturday’s panel discussion in the UWM Union, “The Verité Impulse in the Films of Burnett, Everson and White,” is the only time all three filmmakers will appear together...

Making particularly good use of IMAX technology—and wisely appealing to kids’ interest in all things large and roaring—Dinosaurs Alive! is a 35-minute documentary that mixes footage of paleontologists unearthing fossils and then state-of-the-art, computer-animated depictions of what these dinosaurs might have looked like . . .

The often-tense historical relationship between Catholics and Jews is explored in the documentary Constantine’s Sword, a somber account of former Catholic priest James P. Carroll as he makes the argument that Catholic anti-Semitism set the stage for the Holocaust. This stark film screens tonight at 7 p.m. at the . . .

Tom Brokaw popularized the idea of �the Greatest Generation� and more recently the amiable news anchor has focused on his own generation. The History Channel documentary �1968 With Tom Brokaw,� out now on DVD, examines a year that virtually everyone agrees was pivotal. Whether �68 moved the world for better or for worse remains debatable. Brokaw finds voices willing to take up both positions. ...

Les Paul, the �Wizard of Waukesha,� is probably the single most important musician to emerge from Wisconsin. A crack player and an inventive mechanic of sound, he perfected the solid body electric guitar that bears his name, developed overdubbing and multi-tracking, and helped set the expectations for sound recording as we know it today. The PBS program �American Masters: Les Paul�Chasi...

With global climate change, the war on terrorism and the dark roster of Oscar nominees, it�s little wonder that anxious thoughts are turned toward an uncertain future. Apocalyptic daydreams have gained renewed force. While Protestant fundamentalists look forward to a Rapture that will spirit away the �righteous,� leaving everyone else to Armageddon, others imagine a future where no one is spar...

The British Empire brought progress and prejudice to the ends of the earth. It laid the foundation of democracy and sowed the seeds of catastrophe, ennobling and exploiting as it gathered together one-third of the world�s inhabitants by the start of the 20th century. What better narrator for a documentary on the paradoxes of the empire than Art Malik, the Pakistani-born British actor who memo...

Through Thursday, March 20, the Times Cinema hosts screenings of this year’s Academy Award winner for Best Documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side. Like many of its fellow nominees, it’s a lofty account of United States foreign policy. The filmmakers take a look at the country’s torture policies, placing particular . . .