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Wednesday, October 28,2009

Michael Jackson’s This Is It

By Armond White
. . . . . . .

Michael Jackson’s This Is It
Directed by Kenny Ortega
Runtime: 112 min.

Fans will cheer Michael Jackson’s This Is It. Haters will sneer (as expected). But Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone and other first-class filmmakers who failed to transition Jackson onto the big screen during his pop-idol years ought to weep at the missed opportunities that This Is It makes apparent.
Based on rough video records of Jackson’s rehearsal process prior to his planned comeback and world tour (plans cut short by his death on June 25, 2009), This Is It captures Jackson at peak inventiveness. His genius is brought closer and clarified. Behind the tabloid image, he’s seen thinking, devising, improvising—and performing masterfully. At age 50, Jackson was still a prodigy; possessed of protean talent and when in the company of collaborators ("These dancers are an extension of Michael" says director Kenny Ortega) he is inspired. He proves/justifies the legend the world already knows.
Several of the rehearsal numbers—especially a nearly acapella "Billie Jean" and a stirring new arrangement of "The Way You Make Me Feel"—immediately rank with the greatest musical performances even seen on the big screen. That’s the opportunity lost by such pop-attuned directors as Scorsese, Stone and, especially, Spielberg—who betrayed Jackson by cutting off ties following the witchhunt and erroneous accusations of bigotry that met the 1995 release of "They Don’t Care About Us." Spielberg’s failure to engage Jackson on a movie-musical project (Peter Pan or Earth Song or Childhood) deprived the world of a possible Minnelli-level masterpiece.
Ortega’s collage work on This Is It shows the same care for dance and spectacle that distinguished his original High School Musical from its poor sequels. He blends behind-the-scenes details with prospective stage concepts so that Jackson’s showbiz vision remains a tantalizing probability. Both marvelous entertainment and post-modern deconstruction, its art value is as high as Jonathan Demme’s Talking Heads film Stop Making Sense (recently remastered on BlueRay DVD by PALM Video, it's an instructive parallel to Ortega's accomplishment). Ortega integrates addition footage commissioned for the world tour--mini music videos that recall Jackson’s great achievements in that field.
The what-if aspect of This Is It has a poignant element. It recalls the posthumous ballet sequence of The Red Shoes (1948) where empty ballet slippers trace a late artist’s well-rehearsed steps. Yet, This Is It is too vital to be elegiac. We’re watching a virtuoso in the midst of creativity. This is pop, after all; plus a dazzlingly accomplished run-through of some of the greatest music of our lifetime—whether the scorching "Black or White" (a song many Americans still can't face that occasions Jackson‘s gracious encouragement of a shy white blond female guitarist) or the magnificent "Jam"—the most powerful rock song ever to masquerade as funk. (His desultory, though hot, Jackson 5 medley shows he has transcended fans’ nostalgia.)
Jackson’s concert version of Smooth Criminal features a new movie-intro where he is inserted into Hollywood mythos, interacting with Rita Hayworth in Gilda as well as Bogart, Robinson, Gloria Grahame and a panoply of movie land immortals. This flamboyant sequence asserts Jackson's physical oddity yet it proves Jackson's fame equaled theirs and surpassed their talent. Just as Richard Pryor had to make his own concert movie to show the rich artistry Hollywood ignored, this Smooth Criminal clip glimpses the new Astaire and Kelly Hollywood should have embraced.
Look at Jackson's "I Can’t Stop Loving You" improvisation: music goes through his body, inspiring physical poetry--pointing, picking notes out of the air like berries on a bush. He’s some kind of pop mandarin whose art (performed at the crossroads of genius and injustice) is just beginning to be understood. This, indeed, is it.
Armond White’s Michael Jackson Video Show premieres at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater on Nov. 22. His new book, Keep Moving: The Michael Jackson Chronicles is available at resistanceworkswdc@yahoo.com

  • Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
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Posted at 12/20/2009 
 
I was genuinely scared this film would disappoint. Yes, Michael doesn't dance or sing full out, but he never has in previous rehearsals for other tours. I knew This Is It couldn't be a return to the glory days of Bad or Dangerous, to expect that would be to expect too much - even from Michael. But I didn't anticipate what I saw either. The film is an emotional journey through Michael's past, and ours - and it moved me. From fear, to exultation, to laughter, and finally - inevitably to a grief I have felt since June 25th. The reality that Michael was no cheap addict trying to get high, but a sensitive man with serious physical burdens and a wounded psyche who was unable to sleep, is not one you'll see promoted in the press - but it is the truth. Personally, I consider myself privileged to have seen the inner workings of a Master - albeit a damaged one. The film is, of course, commercially viable, but it is also a labour of love with an abundance of heart. You can see the crew and the dancers - and Kenny Ortega especially, willing Michael to reclaim the crown he once wore with surety. Did they have their doubts? Did we? Certainly the fact that Michael's re-crowning came via the road-we-will-all-travel-at-some-point, makes these questions more poignant than they were when Michael first announced his tour all those months ago. The Michael we encounter in the film, obviously scarred, obviously older, is no less fascinating than he was at the peak of his career. His charisma on the big screen - the kind that eludes the mulititude of young and restless who assay our cinemas these days - still there. Martin Scorcese called Michael's persona shamanistic, Spielberg described him as ‘an emotional star child, Mark Romanek (director of Scream) remembers him as 'metaphysical, Anjelica Houston - 'a meteor.' Whatever the word used, all of these highly creative individuals were each trying to convey the sense of difference they felt in Michael's prescence. You can hear it in his entire body of work, in every note of his songs. And his voice, my God - that voice. That soft yet hard, delicate yet bullet-bright force of power and beauty he could produce at will. Once heard, it crept inside you, beat a path to the fortress of your innermost being, before offering – everything. It elevated the merely kinetic to the kaleidoscopic, music into magic and a thousand songs into the substance of soul. Some say Michael should be thought of as nothing more than an 80s artefact, a relic of the bad, brash, primary-coloured, Lucas filmed, pre-9/11 times when we thought the whole world loved America and people adored their stars like the old movie idols from back in the day. Maybe. But what they fail to realize is this; every kid I know is discovering Star Wars for the first time. The Sistine Chapel is no less beautiful now than it was when its painter first stepped down and exhaled. True art is immortal and it lives forever. Michael often quoted Michelangelo – who said: ‘I will bind my soul to my work. This is what Michael Jackson did. He put all that young idealism, that thirst for freedom, that yearning to move and be moved, his desire to be the best, his love and joy, his rage, his pain, his sorrow, his confusion and his loss – into his work. And when all the lies and the untruths have faded with time and the predators who even now pick at his memory like vultures to the bone have finished their feasting - his work will remain. In the years to come, perhaps reasons will emerge from the rubble as to why a supernovic talent with a history of unparalleled giving and a persona of complex innocence was systematically and wilfully humiliated, tortured and stripped of his dignity and spirit for a period of over 15 years, on the basis of astonishingly non-credible accusations – and more importantly why this was actively encouraged. What we are left with is youtube, the testimonials of friends, Dvds - and amidst the music, the echoes of an exceptional human being's epic, embattled life here. In the end, how people feel about This Is will pretty much come down to how they feel about Michael Jackson. So see it, don't see it, hate it, love it, whatever - it's your choice. Just don't blame Michael for not being who and what he used to be. That shame rests with Tom Sneddon, Diane Dimond, Evan Chandler, Janet Arviso, and the - mostly American media. What was done to this beautiful man and peerless artist must never be forgotten. Our loss, whether we know it or not - is incalculable.

 

Posted at 11/10/2009 
 
Love lives forever. RIP, Michael Jackson.

 

Posted at 11/08/2009 
 
Armond White is a retarded bitch.

 

Posted at 10/31/2009 
 
Thank you Armond. It is so refreshing to read a review written by someone who loves and understands the uncompromising musical genius of MJ. I don't think anyone but a person of color can understand why we embraced MJ though out his entire life. I took my four African-American grandchildren (two girls and two boys, ages 9-13) to see This Is It and they related to the movie almost as strongly as I did. They too, were moved to tears and laughter. We left the theater singing with pure abandonment. I must read your book.

 

Posted at 11/05/2009 
Dude! Armond White wrote a book! Don't buy it - he's only going to be talking shit about pure film genius like he always does. This is the only good review he's ever done. Seriously, don't buy most of the stuff he says.

 

Posted at 10/29/2009 
 
Yeah, I think Spielberg, Stone and Scorsese wisely recognized two insurmountable impediments to featuring Michael in a movie: the self-inflicted deformities that caused him to look like a reptile are even more repulsive in close-up; and the majority of the public believes that he was a child molester because we find it inconceivable that an innocent man would pay off anyone who falsely accused him of such a disgusting and humiliating crime.

 

 
 


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