Documentary

The relationship between some members of the Baltimore Ravens and the community runs deeper than just on-field victories. And Friday, the USA cable channel features one of the those players, linebacker Jameel McClain, in a film about the way he reached out to a homeless boy in our city. "NFL Characters Unite," an hour-long documentary of professional football players sharing stories of obstacles they have overcome, features Justin Tuck (New York Giants), Troy Polamalu (Pittsburgh Steelers)

"12 O'Clock Boys," a documentary looking at West Baltimore dirt bikers, will get its world premiere at next month's South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas. Director Lotfy Nathan's film was one of eight documentary features chosen to be screened at the festival, out of more than 900 submitted for consideration. The film centers on 13-year-old Pug, who desperately wants to join the West Baltimore dirt-bike gang that gives Nathan's work its title. The SXSW website says the film "presents the pivotal years of change in a boy's life growing up in one of the most dangerous and economically depressed cities in the U.S. " Director Nathan, who began working on "12 O'Clock Boys" in 2008, is currently trying to raise $30,000 through kickstarter.com to complete post-production on the film, including color correction, sound design and mixing, music licensing and getting to SXSW.

Baltimore Ravens linebacker Jameel McClain seems an unlikely victim of bullying - as an adult, that is. But as a child, he was mocked for his threadbare clothing and the place he called home for about a year - a Salvation Army shelter. "People always think about bullying [as] … the big guy, the big brute, the guy that's just pushing people around," said McClain, who at 6 foot 1 and 245 pounds has done his share of that on the football field. "But mentally, verbally abusing someone is the thing that has the longest effect.

Local film fans may have a leg up on the competition when it comes to their Oscar pools, thanks to the folks at the Maryland Film Festival and Chesapeake Film Festival. "Beasts of the Southern Wild," which enjoyed a long run at The Charles Theatre last year, received four nods among the Oscar nominations announced Thursday morning in Los Angeles. The film had its Baltimore premiere June 5 at MICA, before an audience culled from members of the Maryland Film Festival's Friends of the Festival program.

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured distant reaches of the universe over the past 22 years, but with the end of the space shuttle program, has not been repaired since 2009. A filmmaker is challenging that decision with the documentary "Saving Hubble" and will speak in Baltimore on Tuesday. David Gaynes will speak at the Space Telescope Science Institute with his message about saving Hubble, which is expected to continue operating only through next year. NASA is focused on replacing Hubble with the James Webb Space Telescope in 2018.

Filmmaker Oliver Stone will be in Baltimore Thursday, screening his new documentary and fielding questions about it. "Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States," a series that re-examines American foreign policy, is now airing on Showtime. Stone was lured to Baltimore because the documentary's key researcher is University of Baltimore historian Eric Singer. The 10-part documentary that delves into everything from the Cold War to the fall of Communism, to Vietnam and terrorism, is getting a lot of buzz in history circles -- even actor John Cusack, who saw it the other day, called it "really excellent," tweeting: "Stone's new doc series is measured powerful and serious - if not the untold at least the largely ignored history of crucial periods.

Before sitting down to watch CM Punk: Best in the World , I had already heard a lot about it. Most people unanimously praised it, going so far as to say it was the greatest WWE DVD documentaryever created. The words “honest,” “open” and “real” were often used. I can confirm these sentiments. The DVD is honest, open and real. But what I found most intriguing about the DVD is how much I found myself relating to CM Punk, and how likely it is that many working-class people watching the DVD will also relate to CM Punk's trials and tribulations, even if you don't have much in common with him. The DVD follows a logical life timeline, with sprinkles of Punk's interests and happenings in between chapters.

Actor William H. Macy, will offer a bit of Hollywood glamour to a documentary about his home state. According to the Cumberland Times-News, Macy is going to appear in the Maryland Public Television production "Our Town," which takes a look at Cumberland and Frostburg. Macy graduated from Allegany High School in 1968, the paper says. “Getting Bill Macy was beyond our wildest dreams,” Rick Lore, vice president of MPT told the paper, adding the program will open and close with the actor, who was nominated for an Oscar for his role in "Fargo.

UPDATES with reaction to the film from Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's office... Using digitalmedia once again to end run the cable TV industry, Al Jazeera English posted its latest documentary, "Baltimore: Anatomy of an American City," online Tuesday morning. The film will premiere on the channel at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, with multiple plays throughout the week. I believe it's outrageous that cable TV operators have kept the channel off its systems in cities like Baltimore, despite stellar coverage of major stories in the Middle East and endorsements ranging from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the leading academic experts and authors on global media.

Al Jazeera English will premiere a thought-provoking and hard-hitting documentary about Baltimore tonight, but viewers here won't be able to see it on cable TV. That's outrageous, ignorant and maddening. That's the conclusion I came to last week while reporting a Sunday story on the documentary and the bleak picture of Baltimore it would be presenting to a potential audience of 260 million homes elsewhere in the world. Read that story here . But that lack of access to Al Jazeera English on cable TV also makes me wonder what kind of sheep we are as media consumers -- and what kind of mice we have as media critics that cable companies can get away with not offering this option even as they they offer a sea of channels devoted to shopping and reruns of lame network shows from previous decades.