Blu-Ray Review: This is It
Even if you caught this amazing documentary in theaters during its brief run, this Blu-Ray contains 90 minutes of never-before seen features so we had to check it out for you…It’s the closest anyone will ever get to the late King of Pop’s concert and how it was meticulously put together…
From Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Michael Jackson’s This is It – Blu-Ray
Special Features – Although some of this material is seen in the actual film, the extras contain both extended versions of what you’ve seen and things that are entirely new.
Broken down into various sub-heads, two making-of featurettes include "The Adventure Begins" and "Beyond the Show," ; over an hour’s worth of detailed coverage of the show coming together, assembling the huge crew with comments by director Kenny Ortega, cast members and heads of the various departments. Jackson is present for a great deal of these meetings offering his opinions etc. These are very well worth watching and keeping.
You also get three featurettes between 10 and 16 minutes long. “The Gloved One” is a detailed show and tell of each costume Michael would have worn designed by Zaldy with close-ups of every stitch. This was my favorite part of the extras. The young designer tells us what he wanted to accomplish with each costume, how Michael reacted to it etc. Just love it!
“Auditions: Searching for the World’s Best Dancers” is also great as you see Ortega and crew call in 600 young, hopeful dancers and pare them down to 11! This is sort of like watching the musical “A Chorus Line” complete with personal dreams either shattered or fulfilled. Just great!
“Memories of Michael” contains tributes and personal stories by cast and crew. One producer tells a loving tale of Michael allowing the guy’s young son to take the megastar’s boa constrictor to class for show-and-tell and going along with the boy to the delight of his entire school. Good stuff.
Blu-Ray exclusives are cool too: You get a really pristine-looking showing of the entire new film for “Thriller” that would have run on stage followed by the live action show. Same with the film shot for “Smooth Criminal” and then a very interesting and fun “Making of ‘Smooth Criminal’” in which we learn exactly how Jackson performed his green screen action that was combined with classic gangster films for the final product. Very cool.
Wrapping Up: Throughout this entire doc/concert video and the special features on the Blu-Ray, I constantly caught myself saying “That would have been amazing!” Though we’ll never see the actual stage show M.J. wanted to give to the world, this presentation is awe-inspiring on its own.
Just as the film got my highest rating so does this amazing Blu-Ray! Whether you ever saw Jackson in concert, listened to his records as your parents played them while you grew up, or discovered him yourself, you’ll be amazed and glued to the screen watching every move… and probably getting up and dancing along. So totally worth adding to your collection.
Songs included are:
"Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'"
"Jam"
"They Don't Care About Us"
"Human Nature"
"Smooth Criminal"
"The Way You Make Me Feel"
"Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)"
"I Just Can't Stop Loving You"
"Thriller"
"Beat It"
"Black or White"
"Earth Song"
"Billie Jean"
"Man in the Mirror"
"This Is It"
