I don't know if this is an original idea, but I couldn't find it via a quick search on the subject, so here goes.
It finally hit me how I can make very cool movies from CM games. They are not interactive like the 1-minute VCR files at the end of each turn (i.e., they are like videos: you can't control the camera position).
I hooked my digital video camcorder to my PC which has a TV out on the video card. Then I simply recorded video of the turns running, one at a time. This is VERY cool, because you can use the camera controls of CM to do things that Speilberg would envy. You can change shot angles, shoot the same moment a few times from different angles, and so on and so on. Use your imagination...it's great.
Then I connected my DV camcorder to my Mac and brought the video into iMovie2 and edited things together. (If you haven't seen how easy iMovie is, you'll be stunned.) You can add music, narration, titles, etc. easily.
Then you can either output to the camera and you could then go to VHS and watch them on TV. Or you can output to a Quicktime movie. Quicktime is very easy to work with, but it's a memory hog if you want anything large (720x640, I think). (A 4.5 minute movie took a gig of drive space...) There are ways to compress that, but that involves getting deeper into the DV software with something like Cleaner 5, etc.
If there is interest in more details, I'll reply or maybe make a smaller Quicktime video and post it as an example. It's very cool - your battles now become movies, and you're the director!
The one downside of this easy route is that the control bar from CM (bottom of the screen) is visible, as is the mouse cursor. But I can live with that!