Michael Jackson's "This Is It" movie
I went to see the Michael Jackson movie "This Is It" yesterday with my family. I thoroughly enjoyed it because it made me feel like a kid again.
I don't know anything about music theory and I don't play any instruments. I couldn't tell you if Michael Jackson's music is really good or not. I just know that I have liked it since I was a kid. The movie itself could probably be categorized as a crappy execution of a documentary. At it's heart it's nothing more than 2 hours of hodge-podge reherasal footage from the tour he was planning just before he died. The camera angles are terrible, some parts are out of focus, and none of it has a live crowd (since the tour never happened).However, the movie does do a great job of showing that this concert would have been a massive production. All of the old songs with new videos produced just for this show, somthing about a 3D element, and a stage that seemed to have endless transformations for each song experience. It also focuses on Michael Jackson as a perfectionist. Going over and over just certain pieces of a song and timing. Just what you would expect from the Michael Jackson entertainment machine.As I watched the movie I remembered times when a Michael Jackson performance was a big deal. This was before YouTube and DVRs and was just barely the beginning of VHS. I remember waiting for his videos to come on Friday Night Videos. If you were lucky enough to have a VHS recorder, you could even record it (and then break the little tab off so that nobody could record over it.) It was a special occasion when his videos would 'come on'. It seems weird to think about that now, in a time when I can sit here at my PC and easily find thousands of videos of his at my fingertips maybe it's just not special anymore. I think this is part of the reason why people are so emotionally attached to Michael Jackson. It has far less to do with the fact that he was best friends with a chimpanzee and had a major plastic surgery problem. I think people are drawn to him because of his ability to get people excited about his work and then deliver on that cliffhanger promise.I remember watching live TV when it was a big deal that The Jackson Five were going to perform on TV together after being broken up for a long time. That was supposed to be cool, but the coolest part happened directly after when Michael Jackson took the stage with his single rhinestone glove and performed Billy Jean with the moonwalk for the first time. I could never understand why I couldn't wear my church shoes with white socks after that.
I was barely 8 years old when Thriller came out. I remember watching the Thriller video and the part where he starts to turn into a werewolf and yells at the girl to "GO AWAY" was one of the scariest things I had seen. So scary, in fact, that it still makes me feel weird when I see it today. The video goes on and gets to the dancing part that everyone knows so well. So well, that hundreds of people have recorded themselves doing the Thriller dance at all sorts of events everywhere. My siblings and cousins were no different in 1983. We would practice small performances in the basement of my grandparent’s house before Sunday dinner. After perfecting our dance moves and break-dancing tricks, we would call all of the adults downstairs and put on a performance set to music on my auntie's stereo system. My auntie was one of the first people that I knew who had a Hi-Fi stereo system with the big tall speakers (and dual tape decks).
My sister took her boy to see the movie as well. He likes dancing and stuff that you would expect from 6 year old. Part of the movie shows what they were planning to do as a remake of the Thriller video. It was supposed to be some kind of 3D movie with even scarier, more realistic zombies etc. My nephew didn't care for that part of the movie so much. Now he has his own story to tell about how scary Thriller was for him.I could make a grocery list of reasons why Michael Jackson is a freak. But in the end, listening to his music makes me happy.
