“This Is It” and “Elvis: That’s the Way It Is”

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:26:00 +0000

British director Peter Hall once said of another British Peter, one named Sellers, "It's not enough in this business to have talent. You have to have the talent to handle the talent."

This dark art of handling the talent and dealing with deification is the tie that binds this week's Double Bill, which would be today's release of "This Is It," and its doppelgänger, the 1970 documentary "Elvis: That's the Way It Is." Obviously, it does not take any particular genius to point out connections between Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley. Haunted relationship with parent, incomprehensible musical genius, pet chimps, oh yeah, Lisa Marie, to count off just four of the easiest ones.

“This Is It” is only the beginning

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:45:00 +0000

In the days and weeks after Michael Jackson's death last June, I was less surprised by the extensive public outpouring of grief over this sudden and painful pop-culture loss than I was by the surly presence of those who carped that the response was just "too much." The latter group seemed to consist largely but not exclusively of past-middle-aged white guys dressed in figurative, if not literal, Buffalo Springfield T-shirts. Jackson wasn't that great, or that important, they grumbled. Other camps also derided what they saw as the media's Jackson grief overkill, holding his death (an apple) up against, say, the war in Afghanistan (an obvious orange), before launching into a screed along the lines of "If the media spent even one-quarter as much time focusing on the important stories ..."

Salon.com > This Is It

“This Is It” and “Elvis: That’s the Way It Is”

“This Is It” is only the beginning