In his new comedy DVD Kill the Messenger, Chris Rock remarks that people always feel sorry for dogs that belong to homeless guys. It never occurs to them to feel sorry for the homeless men. Director Kelly Reichardt’s spare drama Wendy and Lucy uses a canine companion to magnify the audience’s empathy for its drifting heroine.

Michelle Williams plays Wendy, a young woman from Indiana driving across America with a dog named Lucy and a vague plan to find work in Alaska. She keeps some cash in a money belt, but strictly rations the reserves to bankroll her trip. When her car breaks down in a former mill town in Oregon, Wendy suffers a series of misfortunes — some avoidable, some not — that emphasize the tenuousness of life on razor-thin financial margins. Even audiences with money will feel familiar pangs of nervousness while wondering whether an auto mechanic (Will Patton) will make a bank-breaking diagnosis.

Lucy’s disappearance exacerbates Wendy’s desperation, as she struggles to track down the dog while having no car, phone or place to live. Wendy’s attachment to Lucy, and her guilt over the pet’s disappearance, help cultivate our sympathies for a character who otherwise keeps an emotional remove. The script doesn’t explain how she entered such dire straits. Reichardt and Williams embrace a kind of working class American minimalism — clearly inspired by the Italian neo-realists — that keeps us from getting inside Wendy’s head in a conventional, Hollywood way.

Che, Steven Soderbergh’s epic-length consideration of Latin American revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, feels almost like the director’s bid to atone for his Ocean’s 11 movies. The star-driven caper comedies celebrate Las Vegas, superficial glitz and the joys of money for nothing. What better way to compensate than an austere cinematic portrait of an iconic figure who gave his life in opposition to materialism and poverty?

Watching Che certainly feels like an act of penance. Soderbergh and producer/leading man Benicio del Toro present what could be called an anti-biopic, studiously avoiding the kind of big gestures and historical oversimplifications that define more crowd-pleasing films about real personalities. Guevara’s background as a doctor, his formative experiences, even his wife and children barely get passing mentions in the film’s four-and-a-half hour running time.

Instead, the film splits into two parts to take a clinical look at Guevara during two of the most significant periods of his life. The first half (unofficially called “The Argentine” in reference to Guevara’s Argentinian origins) focuses on Guevara’s crucial, decidedly unglamorous work as a guerilla fighter in the Cuban revolution in late 1950s. Part one switches from the lush greens and yellows of the Cuban jungles to black-and-white recreations of Guevara’s New York visit in early 1960s, granting interviews and addressing the United Nations. The second half, “Guerilla,” follows Guevara’s doomed bid to bring the revolution to Bolivia in the mid-1960s.

Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim are human beings. We can all agree on that. But does that disqualify them from being honorary cartoons?

True, they’re not particularly exaggerated in appearance. Tim looks like the towheaded, pie-faced boy next door all grown up, while Eric’s a bespectacled, sideburned galoot with plenty of height and a crooked smile. They were both born in Pennsylvania in 1976 and would draw little attention as white-collar employees alongside the water coolers of Middle America.

The late-night TV audience first glimpsed the duo's animated alter egos when they played the title characters in “Tom Goes to the Mayor” on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim programming block. Since 2007, they’ve appeared in the flesh as the stars of Adult Swim’s “Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” a surreal but emphatically not-animated sketch comedy series. Using green-screen technology to plop themselves into seemingly any environment, Tim and Eric play a host of weirdos, including tone-deaf singers whose faces drip with eczema, half-deranged corporate pitchmen, and would-be swingers obsessed with shrimp and white wine.

1) The St. Olaf Choir performs at Emerson Concert Hall with conductor Anton Armstrong.

2) Ali Velshi signs Gimme My Money Back at CNN Center.

3) Sonic Generator plays at Georgia Tech's Alumni House.

4) The Brave New Works Festival kicks off at the Schwartz Center

5) Preston Craig's Service Monday goes down at the Graveyard Tavern.

(Photo courtesy the St. Olaf Choir)

Skurby (with Will): On a freight train. It’s the most amazing thing you can ever experience. You go over bridges, the scenery, the stars and everything. It’s the most awesome thing ever. Freedom. Bring canned food. It gets cold on the train so bring a sleeping bag. I did it from Philly down to Columbus. You just hop on and off the freight train and travel around wherever it takes us. I don’t want anything from a person other than companionship. I was nervous the first time, but once it starts going, it’s amazing.

Penny (with Cristal): I’m probably taking her to the Aquarium. There’s all that wetness, all that moisture. It’s hot. It's very suggestive. We'll have some sushi, some unagi. It’s supposed to be an aphrodisiac. Then we'll go bowling. Then go somewhere on Cheshire Bridge and maybe find a bouquet of flowers made out of condoms. That way she knows what’s on my mind. Then the Glenn Hotel, downtown. They have rooms where you can see the showers from the bedroom. That’s pretty hot. And then invite a girl over to the hotel and get the sushi delivered — and eat off of her.

Patrick (with Grace): A perfect rainy day, waking up with the person who’s your better half. You’re pretty much stuck inside with them all day, and you just hang out together. Dinner and hang out together all day. That’s perfect. You’re forced to be alone with each other, away from society, which is going to make you appreciate yourselves that much better. We appreciate each other all year round. We just don’t take one day out of the year. We treat every day like it’s Valentine’s.

1) Mauritius continues at Actor's Express.

2) Zoroaster plays East Atlanta Icehouse.

3) Popaganda continues at Beep Beep Gallery.

4) SCAD professor Sarah Phillips Collins discusses Unmentionables Mentioned: The History of Underwear at Ivy Hall.

5) Check out our top 10 list of Super Bowl parties.

(Photo by Eric Hermann)

My friend says Christians weren't actually thrown to the lions in ancient Rome, but when I was at the Colosseum, I saw a big cross there in honor of all the Christians martyred at that spot. He insists this was just made up by the church to perpetuate their religion. What gives?

— vbunny

The story has its suspicious aspects, I guess. According to the historian Tacitus, Christians during Nero's time (at least) were mainly torn apart by dogs, crucified, or burned alive – no mention of lions. The Romans did throw people to lions on occasion, and Tertullian, writing later, remarks that the Romans were always ready to exclaim, "Away with the Christians to the lion!" whenever times got tough. However, Tertullian doesn't claim he witnessed any martyrdoms-by-lion personally, and anyway he was a Christian himself. Fact is, while the Romans evidently fed Christians to animals, and people to lions, we have no source stating directly that they specifically fed Christians to lions. So theoretically it's possible the whole Christians-lions thing was a Christian ploy for sympathy.

Read more from The Straight Dope.

LEAD STORY: They're either earnestly civic-minded or people with issues, but in several dozen cities across the country, men (and a few women) dress in homemade superhero costumes and patrol marginal neighborhoods, aiming to deter crime. Phoenix's Green Scorpion and New York City's Terrifica and Orlando's Master Legend and Indianapolis' Mr. Silent are just a few of the 200 gunless, knifeless vigilantes listed on the World Superhero Registry, most presumably with day jobs but who fancy cleaning up the mean streets at night. According to two recent reports (in Rolling Stone and the Times of London), unanticipated gripes by the "Reals," as they call themselves, are boredom from lack of crime and (especially in the summer) itchy spandex outfits.

Read more from News of the Weird.

1) Photojournalist Kristen Ashburn speaks about her exhibit Bloodline: AIDS and Family at Atlanta Photography Group Gallery.

2) Fringe Factory celebrates its one-year anniversary at the Highland Inn Ballroom Lounge.

3) Silver Scream Spook Show screens Giant Monsters All-Out Attack at the Plaza Theatre.

4) The Features and Selmanaires play the Earl.

5) The Rialto Center hosts Swamp Gravy, a folk-life play about Georgia.

(Photo by Kristen Ashburn)

(Photo by Joeff Davis)