Michael Jackson: a (very) brief filmic overview

A sentence I never thought I´d see..but it´s true...Michael Jackson is dead!!!

By this moment it would be stupidely unnecessary to summary Jackson´s carrer, because:

1. It's to long to summary 50 years of entertainment trayectory





2. Probably everybody else has done it already





3. We would be out of the path of this blog's mission...movies!!!

So I considered It would be less repetitive to recall only his carrer from a filmic angle.


SO...

When we have The king of Pop in mind, several images appear in our heads, and not necessarily the same from one generation to another, because....it's difficult to maintain the whole 30 years of carreer valid for every decade plus the new stuff, but certainly there's a place in your heart...wait, that's a Wacko's song...there's a few icons of his carreer that bind every generation together to worship him...Thriller is practically the strongest generation-to-generation link to remember how big he was not only for the great creativity behind the concept of the video, but also for the revolution in music business that started.

Directed by John Landis (known for directing american werewolf in england and Animal House)Thriller was a revelation for the industry in many levels. In first place, by the time Thriller aired for the first time, music videos only lasted no mre than five minutes,revealing its 13 minutes of terrorizing pop, MTV was eceptic, and actually was going to broadcasting for the worst kind of reason: racism.

MTV declined transmiting Thriller claiming that black artists already had their space (don't remember the name of that channel , it was the Spike TV of the time), so the record company threated MTV to remove all their catalogue from VH1 networks...the rest is history (I'll avoid criticizing MTV because this is not their space (in your face MTV)).

As you can see, this bad boy practically opened the big gate for black artist to the mainstream, also

MJ had a lot of participation within the filmic insutry, unfortunately, non of them had good critics; a good example of this was "The Wiz", a 70's funky verson of the Broadway musical, based on the classic "The Wizzard of Oz", in which Jackson had a supporting role as the Scarecrow with Diana Ross as Dorothy, I saw it like 3 times, wasn't that bad, but still wasn't good. Another participation was..actually before this one, and was only as part of the soundtrack, but because of his talent, made the song as important (surely more) as the movie it was based on; the movie was Ben a rat that apparentely turns as a little boy's BF (best friend)

Maybe the legendary failure of his movie entries is the hyper-over-wastedbig budget movie "Moonwalker", directed by Colin Chilvers (basically for his experience in special effects, because his trayecyory as director is poor and not so successful): a compilation of stories/acid trips from the mind of Jackson himself (where else?) using many different techniques, only as prelude to the main story, in which Jackson has to save himself and his dear friends (the only surprise there was the black boy as his best friend instead of a blonde one) from a villain who wanta to conquer the world (Joe Pesci´s worst performance). I don´t undertand why critics were so harsh on him; only because he passes from a some kind on peter pan/foster parent character to a smooth criminal and a robot that turns into a ship, only to transport his kids to the safety of ...a concert of his(mmm...in order to be condescendent I won´t say anything about the abstinence of sense of narration... and logic).

Maybe the only well-done filmic projects he had were some of his videoclips, the majority around the times of "Thriller", and maybe tha last descents videos he had were "Who is it?" and a Pepsi commercial where he sings with himself as a boy (TRIVIA: During the filming of the ad, he request the director to use a white blonde kid to represent his child self, obviously they rejected and because of the contract (thank God) he was not in position to say anything against it).

Fortunately for him, Michael Jackson will always be remembered for his musical carreer, because if it depended on his filmic presence...I'd rather the fame as pedophile homosexual...ok that was over the line , I apologize...Oh look!!! a blue car...