In order to get the wmv I ripped from web in to iMovie it needs to be just about anything other than wmv. I looked pretty hard but found no easy/cheap GUI apps for either Windows or OS X that suited my needs. So, as I did before I went back to linux.

Using mencoder, I transcoded it to an avi. This is the command:
mencoder tomthomson-030208.wmv -ofps 23.976 -ovc raw -oac pcm -o tomthomson_cbc.avi
which produces an enormous (340-ish MB) file using raw frame video and pcm audio
Alternate codecs include x264 etc. More info at the mplayer site.