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Janet Jackson

JANET JACKSON From Janet To Damita Jo (Virgin) Rating: NNNN Rating: NNNN


The biggest complaint about this compilation of Janet Jackson videos covering the Virgin years is what’s not on it. There’s about an hour of empty space on this DVD, and if Virgin didn’t want to compress, I’d have gladly sacrificed the “live” performance footage of the Damita Jo numbers from Much Music and On-Air With Ryan Seacrest for the missing-in-action video clips for Whoops Now and the Blackstreet remix video for I Get Lonely. And to finish whining, the transfer is not enhanced for wide-screen TVs, which means there’s a huge letterbox on the wide-screen videos like Son Of A Gun and All Night (Don’t Stop).

On the positive side, we get 18 videos and a live performance of Just A Little While, and Janet Jackson is one of the most persistently creative video artists. Like Madonna, she understands the value of the video clip, and has put together good ones ever since Control.

From large-scale production numbers like If (directed by Dominic Sena) and All Night (Francis Lawrence) to more intimate mini-films like I Get Lonely (Paul Hunter) and Every Time (Matthew Rolston), Jackson’s videos tend to be so visually arresting that you can’t think of the song without thinking of the images that go with it. Light extras on this collection – the aforementioned live performances and some promo interviews for Damita Jo.

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