Oh, Michael Jackson Death Profiteers. Don’t stop ’til you get enough, isn’t that how it goes? Even as This Is It continues to play in theaters, Billboard reports that the DVD and Blu-ray editions of the Kenny Ortega-directed movie will be released on January 26, 2010. (D’oh! How’d they miss Christmas?)
Both versions of This Is It will include more than 90 minutes of extras, including the mini-documentaries “Staging the Return: Beyond the Show” and “Staging the Return: The Adventure Begins.” But if you’re a Jacko fan, the Blu-ray edition wins out, as it will contain the uncut music videos for “Smooth Criminal” and “Thriller” from the movie.
Meanwhile, the DVD release of This Is It will come shortly after the six-episode run of upcoming A&E reality series The Jacksons: A Family Dynasty is ending. Why does this not seem like mere coincidence? More »
Last night’s BMI Urban Awards in Los Angeles honored the Jacksons for “lifetime achievement,” and featured Lloyd singing “I’ll Be There,” which sadly has not shown up on YouTube yet. More »
The rise of groomed-from-birth-to-be-a-star David Archuleta, the premiere of the Danny Bonaduce-hosted TV show where stage parents compete to be the least crazy ones, and the recent travails of such former child stars as the Spearses and [insert recent TMZ featuree here] have got me thinking a lot lately about the upside to being a child star, for both the parents and the children. Sure, the paydays can be decent in the short run, but the long-term effects can be deadly, from the dreaded, unshakable feeling of having peaked way, way early in life to the current state of celebrity culture, in which any D-lister of yore has the “opportunity” to humiliate themselves on TV and keep their names in the press. Well, yesterday’s New York Post story on the current travails of the Jackson family–one is currently bagging groceries at Vons; another is a boomerang child–only served to further my suspicions about the sanity anyone who wants to make their kids a star. Namely, they’re crazy.
Thanks to soulbounce for reminding us of Jermaine Dupri’s assertion that the Jackson 5 would show up at his Atlanta club Studio 72 on New Year’s Eve. More »
Everybody’s getting back together this year: The Smashing Pumpkins, Rage Against the Machine, the Spice Girls–heck, even Al Qaeda has reassembled to put on a bunch of secret shows throughout Pakistan. More »
