- Songs: Negroid or White , Heal The World (Super Bowl version) , Remeber the Time , Will You Be There , In the Closet , Gone Too Soon , Jam , Heal the World , Give In to Me , Who Is It , Dangerous Format: DVD AUDIO Genre: MUSIC DVD Rating: NR Age: 074644916492 UPC: 074644916492 Manufacturer No: EVD49164
Description
Songs: Negroid or White, Heal The World (Super Bowl version), Remeber the Time, Will You Be There, In the Closet, Gone Too Soon, Jam, Heal the World, Give In to Me, Who Is It, Dangerous. 112 minutes.
Michael politician – Dangerous: The Short Films
Originally posted 2009-10-27 07:32:30.
Dangerous was the project on which Michael Jackson began to lose sight of reality — not just physical, but artistic grasp of reality.
“Smooth Criminal” is in my estimation the last great video he’d made, but even on that classic, you can see two incongruous personae emerging in Jackson’s music-video approach. The celebrated nightclub dance sequence is understandably considered a landmark in the art of music video, but if we jog our memory, we’d also remember there’s a long, boring, glitzed-up, and utterly foolish sci-fi plot built up around that sequence. (Joe Pesci as a drug villain and Michael Jackson the giant robot, anybody?)
Well, on the videos from Dangerous, Jackson let his love of Steven Spielberg and fantasy filmmaking take over, and lost sight of the musician and performer. There are some moments in these videos that are entertaining and remind us of vintage Michael Jackson videos, but these moments are never the centerpiece. Eddie Murphy and “Magic” Johnson hamming it up delightfully in “Remember the Time”, Naomi Campbell’s sensuous writhe in “In the Closet”, and the ripping hard-rock performance by Slash, Gilby Clarke and Muzz Skillings in “Give In to Me” are great — but they are also always pushed to the back by other far less interesting elements. The worst part is, there isn’t a single video on here that uses Jackson’s greatest visual gift, which is dance. Not a single precision-choreographed dance sequence (as seen in “Beat It”, “Smooth Criminal”, “Thriller”, “Bad”…) among these videos, just utter chaos with fifty people each doing something different in the muddled, cacophonous dance “scenes” in “Black or White”, “Remember the Time” and “Jam”. Was there even a choreographer? And did s/he actually work with the director to figure out the moves and angles? These videos pale alongside Janet Jackson’s videos from Rhythm Nation: 1814, just a couple of years prior.
Jackson also seems to acquire a kind of visual ADD in these videos, pulling together elements that don’t mesh at all. The intro to “Black or White”, while amusing in a juvenile way, has nothing to do with the song; the special effects in “Remember the Time” look cheesy, and “Jam” is nothing but a bunch of amusing cameos (Heavy D, Michael Jordan, Kris Kross) and mashed-together shots with no method to the madness. And let’s not forget that utterly moronic “panther” ending to “Black or White”…if the sequence actually had something to do with Jackson’s message and the song, I believe the controversy over that segment might have been less pronounced. Looking at it over a decade later, this sequence remains what it seemed, gratuitous destruction and lewd, aimless, undisciplined dance moves aimed to shock, and with no narrative, musical or thematic context whatsoever.
The only self-contained and coherent videos here are “Who Is It” and “Give In to Me”. The former, though opaque in its imagery, at least achieves stylistic unity, while the latter is a straight-ahead rock performance video. Poor editing spoiled its rock-out impact, though — it makes you yearn for “Dirty Diana”. And in the end, the only lasting moment of transcendence here, and the only piece up to the par of Jackson’s Thriller and Bad videos, is the famous “morphing” sequence in “Black or White”. It’s visually attractive, fun, and helps get across the message of the song. Something most of these videos fail to do; it’s little wonder that Jackson’s later DVD collections tend to include very few of the Dangerous videos. They really are the nadir of his music-video oeuvre.
And after having bought four Michael Jackson music-video DVDs (not even counting the concert DVD that came with the Ultimate Collection boxed set, and my old VHS copies of Moonwalker and The Legend Continues), I’m compelled to slam those fascistic “Brace Yourself” intros that Jackson always slaps at the beginning of his video collections. Wagner-sized vocal chants, marching death squads, and hysterical masses? Who does that remind us of? That same megalomania, which makes Jackson constantly bombard us with messages of how great he is, is what had eventually sunk his music and videos to such pathetic levels as we’ve seen in the last 10 years. He never rediscovered the joy of music as we’d heard on Off the Wall and Thriller, and with the way his career is going now, it’s not likely we ever will again.
Rating: 2 / 5
Michael gets a little too involved with himself, which makes his DVD’s boring. I’m sure this concert would have been better in person, it did get a little long and boring.
Rating: 3 / 5
ANY REAL FAN OF MICHAEL’S SHOULD OWN THIS. YOU WON’T REGRET IT. I PROMISE.
Rating: 5 / 5
If you love Michael Jackson’s videos, you will love this DVD.
Rating: 5 / 5
you can’t mess with the KING OF POP.the Music is slamming REmember the time.it’s about time somebody showed how Eygpt really Looked? JAm was great as music&video.IN The Closet was slammin’ as well the song is still tight&the Video with NAomi Campbell is tight.NAomi Looks Great.Black Or WHite was a catchy song but the Video was Groundbreaking.a fantastic OVerView on the KING OF POP.
Rating: 5 / 5