There’s a simple disclaimer at the beginning of Michael Jackson’s This Is It. It reads, “For the fans.” It shouldn’t be ignored. Those that stuck with the troubled pop icon after his universe shifted from the charts to the tabloids probably will find equal measures of inspiration and heartbreak in the documentary. For everyone else, it’s a strange offering.
Pieced together using a reported 120 hours of rehearsal footage shot at Los Angeles’ Staples Center just before Jackson’s death on June 25, it’s a concert film without an audience. There’s no discernible beginning or end. It’s padded with mind-numbing scenes of dancers learning their moves. And the star, whose name appears in the title, seems completely unaware that he’s on camera.
Directed by Kenny Ortega, the choreographer who was helping the 50-year-old Jackson prepare for his marathon run of farewell concerts at London’s O2 Arena, This Is It certainly doesn’t offer any real insight on Jackson’s condition during those final days. He appears physically fit. But mentally? It’s hard to tell.
The rehearsal clips are as exhilarating as they are frustrating. They appear to have been shot on just three separate occasions — often out of focus, grainy and almost always filmed by a handheld camera by someone standing as far back as possible.
When we move in closer, Jackson looks like he’s distracted, lost in his own world. Subtitles appear every time he speaks, but they don’t always make it easier to understand what he’s saying.
Ortega, who also made the High School Musical and Hannah Montana movies, treats Jackson like one of his 15-year-old charges. In one scene, as Jackson rises up on a cherry picker, the choreographer yells loudly and slowly, “Michael, please hold on!”
Jackson doesn’t quite come off as a musical visionary as a nitpicker whose entire focus falls on how the songs end. He repeatedly instructs the musicians to, “let it simmer.” He complains about the in-ear monitors that have become a standard part of performing live. “It feels like a fist in your ear,” he says. And judging by the reactions of those around him, his presence at the rehearsals is a rarity.
There’s also no getting over his appearance — the ski-jump nose, exaggerated chin and trembling white fingers — blown up large on the screen. During the elaborate production for Thriller, which aims to modernize the original video with live dancers, there’s a grim chill that comes from watching the pale man in his Ed Hardy sweatpants and black bomber jacket, now deceased, dancing in front of a throng of zombies.
It’s when Jackson’s muscle memory kicks in during loose performances of I’ll Be There, Human Nature and Beat It (sometimes with the studio tracks playing on top) that everything comes together, giving this film most of its thrust. After putting his heart and soul into Billie Jean, Jackson shrugs, “At least we get a feel for it.”
There’s no doubt that if they actually happened, the concerts would have been spectacular.
But there’s no payoff at the end of This Is It. Not only do we not get to see opening night, but we don’t get to see what happened when that fateful phone call came on June 25, leaving many walking out of the theater asking, “Was that it?”
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would