The best documentaries tell you more than you think you’d ever want to know about a subject, perhaps fulfilling a curiosity you didn’t know you had. That’s the case with Kevin Macdonald’s Bob Marley documentary Marley, which stretches out at a languorous two hours and 24 minutes without dragging or getting bogged down in extraneous details. Everything in it – from interviews with the singer’s bandmates and his widow, Rita, to vintage and contemporary images of his hardscrabble birthplace of St. Ann Parish, Jamaica, to live-performance footage that captures his extraordinary charisma – feels essential, albeit in a relaxed way. By the end you feel you’ve learned something about the man, yet his mystique emerges intact.
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This is lovely: Ridley Scott is executive producing the "self-portrait" doc Japan in a Day, in the crowd-sourced collected footage vein of Kevin MacDonald's Life in a Day, to draw attention to and benefit the survivors of Japan's devastating 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster. Fuji will donate 200 cameras to the project, which will cull from submissions uploaded to Youtube on March 11 with all profits reportedly going back to the victims. Now that's how you show support, Hollywood. [Deadline]
After debuting to geek enthusiasm at Butt-Numb-a-Thon in December, Joss Whedon's long-awaited Cabin in the Woods will have its official world premiere at SXSW 2012 this March, the festival announced today. Also on deck to headline the film portion of the annual Austin conference are Jonas Akerlund's Small Apartments, Kevin MacDonald's music documentary Marley, and Lena Dunham's post-Tiny Furniture, Judd Apatow-produced HBO series GIRLS, which will preview its first three episodes. More details after the jump.
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Channing Tatum may be the brawny face of this week's Roman period adventure The Eagle, but British actor Jamie Bell is its scrappy, spirited conscience. As Esca, a Scottish slave guiding Tatum's Roman centurion through hostile territory on a mission of honor, Bell flirts with an ominous ambiguity that easily makes him the most watchable performer on the screen. And when you're sharing said screen with Donald Sutherland, Mark Strong, and Channing Tatum's abs, that's really saying something.
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