Michael Jackson is tied to Halloween for only one reason: Thriller. But that’s it. And yet for some reason, CBS has announced that it’s making an hour-long Halloween special—for children!—“with Michael Jackson’s acclaimed music as its soundtrack.”
The original X-Men trilogy helped kickstart the modern superhero movie boom—and it gave us iconic takes on characters like Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine and Patrick Stewart’s Professor X. What that casting might have been though, according to the people behind it, paints a totally bizarre alternate picture.
Headlines like that are why we do what we do.
Ross Garfield is the farthest thing from a household name. But if you’ve even listened to Nirvana’s Nevermind, Metallica’s black album, Michael Jackson’s Bad, Blood Sugar Sex Magik by the Red Hot Chili Peppers or dozens of other seminal records from big-name artists, you’re already familiar with his work.
Captain EO has been a Disney park staple since 1986, the height of Michael Jackson’s post-Thriller fame—but the Francis Ford Coppola-directed, George Lucas-produced short will shut down December 6 to make way for new attractions. A new oral history sheds light on all the making-of drama.
The music of Michael Jackson is so popular that it’s pretty much universal and probably timeless and can even transcend instruments. I mean, just watch Yoshimi Tsujimoto play Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal on a shakuhachi (a bamboo flute) with the help of two backup koto instrument players. It’s Michael Jackson…
BECAUSE OF COURSE HE DID.
An incredible thing happened on July 17, 2007. A video of several hundred inmates wearing orange jumpsuits and performing an immaculately choreographed dance to Thriller appeared on a small website called YouTube. Two years later, Michael Jackson was dead, and YouTube had changed history.
Everybody knows how the 13-minute-long, zombie-laden adventure that is the Thriller video shaped the history of music and saw the birth to a little phenomenon called MTV. Michael Jackson was primed to reinvent the medium from the start, though, with his very first music video.
Horror director John Landis has spilled the beans on his plans for a Thriller, 3D re-release. Landis told the New York Daily News, "there is something happening with Thriller. It is going to reappear in a highly polished and three-dimensional way that is very exciting on the big screen." Hell yes. And they have plans…
In 1981 Freddie Mercury recorded "There Must Be More to Life Than This," which originally featured additional vocals from Michael Jackson. The song was eventually released without Jackson's voice, but thanks to the new compilation Queen Forever, you can finally hear Freddie and Michael together.
Until recently, I was one of those people who refused to believe that Michael Jackson was really dead. I know, I know, I'm probably crazy, but look, I grew up on the guy's music, OK?
Last night's Billboard Music Awards brought Michael Jackson back from the dead in the form of a hologram—and you can watch the footage right here. Spoiler: there is moonwalking.
If you strip away all the music from your music video and your talent still shines through and makes the video entertaining as hell to watch, well, you're a music God. Because usually when you axe the music from music videos, they get incredibly awkward. Not with Michael Jackson. His 'The Way You Make Me Feel' music…
If you don't care about the Mileys and the Biebers like most sane humans of this world, one of the most iconic music videos to you is probably Michael Jackson's Thriller. Or maybe Billie Jean. Or is it Smooth Criminal? Beat It? Actually, it can be five more MJ creations. But Thriller is somethin'. And it's even more…
We've seen Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video reenacted by LEGO minifigs before, but Annette Jung takes a different approach, creating a stop-motion animation using LEGO bricks as pixels.
In 1985, Ebony ran this hopeful image of Michael Jackson, projecting what he would look like at the age of 40. Today it's like a wistful imagining of what might have been, if Jackson's career had taken a different turn. These pictures are just one part of a fascinating article on black retro-futurism by Rebecca…
Yes, that Michael Jackson. In the '80s. And yes, it's America's fault, obviously.
Fans of forward-looking music have at least two things to be excited about this spring: new albums from Boards of Canada (which is teasing fans with the rarest vinyl released this year) and Daft Punk, whose Random Access Memories is set for a May 20th release.
Motion-capture has totally altered our movie-going experience in just a few years. From the Na'vi to Gollum to Mark Ruffalo's Hulk, our favorite movie characters are increasingly a blend of computer animation and an actor's real performance.