Click on the headline to link to a "YouTube" film clip of the movie trailer for "Michael Jackson: This Is It".
DVD Review
Michael Jackson’s: This Is It, starring Michael Jackson, dancers, singers, and musicians, Columbia Pictures, 2009
I have done a fair number of musical reviews in this space from old country blues tunes to Cole Porter to Billy Holiday to Bob Dylan and so on. All either reflected my personal interests or represented a segment of, mainly, American cultural expression that I thought was important to take note of. Some groups and individuals like the Beatles, most, but not all, hip-hop, Joan Baez and others have gotten short shrift in this space not because they are not important components of the modern cultural scene but out of sheer personal preference. The late performer, Michael Jackson, with or without the Five, fit very comfortably in that niche for me. No longer though after viewing the film documentary, although performance is a better term, “”This Is It”, based on rehearsals for what was to be Michael Jackson’s last world tour.
I am not sure, and in any case it is not important to this review, whether the film footage here would have seen the light of day if Michael Jackson had not died in 2009. The core of the film is a series of rehearsals that Jackson and his cast of singers, dancers, and musicians went through in preparation for a “This Is It” last Jackson world tour that was planned to begin just after his untimely death. The concept, according to Jackson, was to give his fans one last extravagant chance to hear and see him perform his greatest hits.
Now these kinds of world tours, last ones or not, are all in a day’s work in the entertainment business. As are behind-the scenes “reality” looks at how certain cultural events are put to together. What make this film extraordinary are the fire, the imagination, and the sheer stage presence that Michael Jackson brought to the whole enterprise.
Did you read that right? This reviewer, who has spend the last forty or some years happily ignoring Michael Jackson, his music, his dancing, his off-stage antics, and his legal difficulties was totally transfixed, totally riveted by Jackson’s work here. In rehearsal, of all places. Christ, as the headline indicates, he is probably one of few men who have ever lived who did not turn into a cartoonish character while wearing orange pants during some of his numbers. Although this film also demonstrates the very deferential way in which those who worked with him treated him, which may be a key to some of his off-stage problems going back to his childhood days, and I am positive I would not want to work with him this man, as singer, dancer and stage personality comes through. This kind of personality does not pass through this earth all that often. Watch what you missed. Watch what I missed.
DVD Review
Michael Jackson’s: This Is It, starring Michael Jackson, dancers, singers, and musicians, Columbia Pictures, 2009
I have done a fair number of musical reviews in this space from old country blues tunes to Cole Porter to Billy Holiday to Bob Dylan and so on. All either reflected my personal interests or represented a segment of, mainly, American cultural expression that I thought was important to take note of. Some groups and individuals like the Beatles, most, but not all, hip-hop, Joan Baez and others have gotten short shrift in this space not because they are not important components of the modern cultural scene but out of sheer personal preference. The late performer, Michael Jackson, with or without the Five, fit very comfortably in that niche for me. No longer though after viewing the film documentary, although performance is a better term, “”This Is It”, based on rehearsals for what was to be Michael Jackson’s last world tour.
I am not sure, and in any case it is not important to this review, whether the film footage here would have seen the light of day if Michael Jackson had not died in 2009. The core of the film is a series of rehearsals that Jackson and his cast of singers, dancers, and musicians went through in preparation for a “This Is It” last Jackson world tour that was planned to begin just after his untimely death. The concept, according to Jackson, was to give his fans one last extravagant chance to hear and see him perform his greatest hits.
Now these kinds of world tours, last ones or not, are all in a day’s work in the entertainment business. As are behind-the scenes “reality” looks at how certain cultural events are put to together. What make this film extraordinary are the fire, the imagination, and the sheer stage presence that Michael Jackson brought to the whole enterprise.
Did you read that right? This reviewer, who has spend the last forty or some years happily ignoring Michael Jackson, his music, his dancing, his off-stage antics, and his legal difficulties was totally transfixed, totally riveted by Jackson’s work here. In rehearsal, of all places. Christ, as the headline indicates, he is probably one of few men who have ever lived who did not turn into a cartoonish character while wearing orange pants during some of his numbers. Although this film also demonstrates the very deferential way in which those who worked with him treated him, which may be a key to some of his off-stage problems going back to his childhood days, and I am positive I would not want to work with him this man, as singer, dancer and stage personality comes through. This kind of personality does not pass through this earth all that often. Watch what you missed. Watch what I missed.
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