jasonhenley

Things That Fly Missing Places Promo 2010

This is It

It was so strange seeing Michael Jackson in his movie This Is It. Coming all the way from his reclusion to this over the top best-of performance, all I can think to say is "What a shame." This man ruins his reputation all through his life and then finally at the moment of possible redemption he kicked the can.

As a long time Michael Jackson fan, I loved the movie. This Is It is basically a movie substitution of what his show would have been, had he gotten the chance to actually perform it. 

To me the movie has have a bitter subtext to it which says, "Look what you could have had..." (insert person you wish to blame here ___________.) The whole time you know the Michael Jackson you see on screen is only days away from death which is enough of a bummer. I however think his appearance was much better then we've all seen lately over the past several years. To be fair the camera rarely ever went in too tight on his face but he had the 90's Michael Jackson stingy hair again instead of that weird straightened thing he had been doing.

The love and effort that went into that show was really special. You see Michael drilling his musicians into playing the songs EXACTLY like how they were played on the albums because he said that's what the audience was expecting. Almost every song had a newly produced video counterpart to play alongside the performance. For Smooth Criminal they spliced MJ into some Humprey Bogart film noir movie. For Thriller they shot all kinds of zombies in 3D, yes the audience was to wear 3D glasses during Thriller, could you expect anything less?

Despite Jacko occasionally restraining his voice, you wouldn't know this was rehearsal footage. The effort and passion that went into all of his dancing seemed to match what you would expect from an actual live performance. It was great to see that after all this time has gone by, he is still passionate about doing these songs proper justice.

Michael Jackson is a musical and dancing genius, however communication didn't seem to be his thing. During one scene he stops a song and casualy tattles to the director that, "My ear monitors feel like some's pushing their fist right into my head, I know you all mean well but I can't concentrate. But I tell you with love, that's L-O-V-E, love." 

The show's director responds, "Okay...So do you want them to change the volume or the mix? Do you want to hear more of something?"

After an awkward moment of contemplation Michael responds,"No, let's just bring things down." 

The movie is 1 hour and 51 minutes. I could have handled longer, the wife could have handled shorter. The theater gave away these cool faux-backstage passes so you felt special and I did!

On a side note, doesn't Jacko kinda look like the Other Mother from Coraline?

 

This Is Not It ....is stupid

My mom sent me the link to www.this-is-not-it.com. This website assumes that the Michael Jackson died by the hand of greed and that the movie is somehow tainted by it.

They are claiming that greed allowed Michael to die unnecessarily. Obviously no one wanted to Jacko to die, and AEG's interest in him was purely a financial one, as would be any concert promoter, that's their job. Before Jacko died he was completely broke, he was in a position where he had to make money somehow, regardless how his health was. It's reasonable to speculate that AEG encouraged him to do things that may not have been in his health's best interest but he's a big boy. Plus it's been pretty well known that Michael Jackson's kind of a stubborn fellow when it comes to taking other's advise anyway, he's going to do what he wants. But I'm sure AEG is responsible at some level but ultimately it was Michael's fault. It's just an unfortunate situation is all.

As for the movie painting an an unreal and idealized version of his last few days, I don't know I haven't seen it yet. No one ever made a promise that it was going to be a revealing provocative documentary, I always understood it was the video substitution for what the concerts were going to be. After all, AEG lots bazillions of dollars on his death, this way they make some money back and the fans get a little something, everyone's happy. 

Intro to Quicktime

Like any man oozing with sex appeal I've had video codecs on my mind for the past few weeks. Having finally taken the full plunge into HD video, I've had  to interact more often with various video formats which I think can be damn confusing. So today I thought I'd talk a moment about how Quicktime works.

Think about your home theater setup and all the various devices you hook up to it. There's DVD, Blu-ray, DVR, game consoles, CD players, MP3 players, etc. All of these devices function differently and all have their own specific uses. Media is created with a specific format in mind. If you were a musician, you wouldn't create your music album as a video game or a Blu-ray disc, that wouldn't make any sense, you'd create a CD or MP3. People who make music, movies, video games, TV all have their own very specific technological needs. The unifying factor within this popuri of devices is the TV and speakers. No matter what video will always show up on your TV and audio always plays through your speakers. This collection of audio/video equipment is collectively dubbed "The Home Theater."

Since imaginary equipment is so much fun, Imagine stripping down all the physical components from a home theater, you would be left with just software from the equi and data-only version of the home theater. Quicktime is the software only version of the home theater. The software's interface acts like a TV and speakers and its codecs act as unique devices, all you need to add is the media.

Pretend I want to play a Blu-ray disc at your house but you don't have a Blu-ray player. To play that media you are required to go out to a store and purchase a new device to make your home theater compatible with my media. In the purely digital world of Quicktime, physical devices are irrelevant, and acquiring updated technology is only a matter of a quick download and not and expensive purchase (sometimes). If you aquire media files but lack the software to handle them, you simply download those software instructions or codecs. The term codec refers to code/decode which basically means how audio/video is created assembled from data.

All Quicktime files carry the file extension .mov. Don't be confused into thinking that all .mov files are the same. All .mov means is that this particular file belongs in the digital home theater, it does not say anything about what kind of media it is. There is an obscenely large number of codecs for Quicktime and I still only understand a small handful of them, but for some reason I find this interesting.

Doesn't Billie Joe Armstrong look like Mr. Tumnus?

Doesn't Billie Joe Armstrong looking a little bit like the fawn from Narnia.

American Idol Live

Ashley's Mom paid an unreasonably large amount of money to get us into the 4th row at last night's American Idol concert in Baltimore. This incarnation of the TV show maintained the family friendliness one thousand fold. Everyone attending was either younger than 16, or older than 40. Little girls were wearing homemade t-shirts adorned with bubble painted banners expressing support for their favorite Idol. Mommies held homemade neon yellow posters while Daddies held the itty bitty digital cameras and the completely unnecessary cases they were stored in. During the concert Ashley and I were standing up just taking in the show when some older guy behind us barked for us to sit down cause he couldn't see, awesome.  

From start to finish the entire show lasted about two and a half hours. At the halfway point there was a hilarious surprise... an intermission. Come on people, who can't hold it in for two and a half hours? Really now an intermission, really? Is it the 1930s at the cinema again? Then one more surprise, at the end the Idols joined up for a group performance of "Don't Stop Believing" (you know the song conveniently being showcased in the upcoming FOX series Glee, but I digress). The song built and built, there was a bubble machine, everyone was at their feet, all the piano playing Idols were banging away on the ivory, then disco ball starts going, it was feeling huge.  Then the song ends and the house lights immediately turned on. Ashley and I look at each other with the 'what's happening face,' nope, no encore, no curtain call, no games, just get in and get out, the kiddies have school and the oldies have work in the morning. 

I've giving the concert a hard time, but really it was fun. One of my more favorite moments was the reveal of Scott MacIntyre. Having always been amused by the awkwardness his lack of vision caused on the show, I frantically scanned the back of the stage to try and see him wander out. Alas, Scott MacIntyre majestically rose like a blind-piano-playing god from a trap door in the stage floor. At one point during his set, Ashley told me he looked at her, and I bet he did too. He was fun to watch and a very good sport by joking with the audience about the infamous high five with Ryan Seacrest.

Of course Adam Lambert was who people wanted to see, and of course he delivered. He was 65% hardcore and 35% totally gay with equal absolute perfection!  He teased the audience by thrusting his junk all over the place and mock masturbating a microphone stand. Didn't quite match the wholesome nature of the family show, so god bless him.

All in all, I had a really good time. It was great to see all these people we spent so much time watching on TV.

Green Day at Verizon Center

Last night Ashley and I went with my brother Jeff, and his lady JR to see Green Day play at Verizon Center. Having been Green Day fans since 8th grade, this was me and Jeff's 7th time seeing Green Day. I won't call it a show, it was a concert. 

The set consisted of 2 massive screens, one of which was irregularly shaped with the outline of a city, really cool, the screen physically had the silhouette of a cityscape! This was particularly cool because at the beginning you don't realize that this imposing city backdrop is actually a video screen!

Because the band used these massive screens to display things other then simply live video of them, they were afforded the ability to create unique backdrops for each song. You know how music videos typically have some conceptual portion and then a performance portion, well thanks to these screens the effect was just that and as a viewer I got to enjoy a concert length music video for each song.

I was so thankful, they definitely did not need to provide such an overly elaborate show, but they definitely made the money well spent.

Here are a few pictures of Green Day's visit to the White House: