The Man Can Dance

Tonight, checking out Michael Jackson's This Is It! And believe it or not, I'm actually excited to see it! Rock and pop and dancing and show--a spectacle that never was, in the end.  Which makes it all the more haunting. Dead man's dance.  A tribute hitting on all cylinders.


**** Stars, 100/100 rating by Roger Ebert
BY ROGER EBERT / October 27, 2009

"This Is it," Michael Jackson told his fans in London, announcing his forthcoming concert tour. "This is the final curtain call." The curtain fell sooner than expected.

The film has been assembled from rehearsals from April through June 2009 for a concert tour scheduled for this summer. The footage was "captured by a few cameras," an opening screen tells us, but they were professional high-def cameras and the sound track ii full-range stereo. The result is one of the most revealing music documentaries I've seen.

Never raising his voice, never showing anger, always soft-spoken and courteous to his cast and crew, Michael with his director, Kenny Ortega, micro-manages the production. He corrects timing, refines cues, talks about details of music and dance. Seeing him always from a distance, I thought of him as the instrument of his producing operation. Here we see that he was the auteur of his shows.

His movements are so well synchronized with the other dancers on stage, who are much younger and highly-trained, that he seems one with them. This is a man in such command of his physical instrument that he makes spinning in place seem as natural as blinking his eye.

But the concert they worked so hard on was never to be.

This is it.    ---Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, October 2009