Musical icons captured on video

Do you relish the process of making music, watching how it all comes together? A triple feature of new home video releases built around musical icons royally fills that bill today.

THIS IS IT: To my mind, the rough-around-the-edges rehearsal documentary "Michael Jackson's 'This Is It' " (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, A-) is just as enthralling as the high-gloss, finished stage show would have been, had the entertainer lived to take the extravaganza to London last July for 50 sold-out arena performances, then a globe-hopping comeback tour.

I love the sense of intimacy this documentary provides. And especially how, like an archaeologist, concert and film director Kenny Ortega assembles nearly complete performances from bits and pieces of different rehearsals - easily detected by Jackson's multiple changes of garb, the shifts between standard and high-definition footage, and the occasional computer-generated view of what a finished production bit would have looked like.

Most poignant is the revelation that Jackson was in excellent vocal and dancing form before his June 5, 2009, death. And while the 50-year-old was clearly in control of rehearsals, MJ was still capable of childlike glee, singing "I'll Be There" and "Man in the Mirror" full blast and feeling the thrills as stage stunts were revealed. Among them were a massive pyrotechnics display, spring-loaded stage elevators (designed by Tait Towers of Lititz, Pa.) that would send his dancers flying and a giant crane to carry the star over the audience.

Even on his first test run of the latter, a fearless MJ has to be urged by Ortega to "hold on."

I gotta tell you, though, the surround-sound music mixes are of such high quality that I have difficulty believing these recordings were just being made for, ahem, Jackson's "personal library" and possible "film content for the show," as is stated at the outset.

"This Is It" already is the most successful music concert/documentary film of all time, having scored an international box office gross in excess of $259 million. Fans will clamor for the home video, too. Among its 90-plus minutes of "extras" are documentaries on the dancers, MJ's costumes (especially impressive in HD), and the making of a new 3-D music video for "Thriller," though the version here is standard 2-D.

An "Avatar"-like "Earth Song" music video also is shared in truncated 2-D but will get full stereoscopic treatment on the Grammys Sunday. (Target is distributing the necessary glasses.)

BERNSTEIN DELIVERS THE WORD: So you think it was easy being Beethoven? Or that all it takes to be a conductor is to wave your arms in time to the music?

The four-DVD "Leonard Bernstein: Omnibus" (E1 Entertainment, B+) sets the record straight on these and other musical topics, including the evolving histories of jazz and the American musical, and things to like and dislike about modern serious music.

Ever congenial and charismatic, composer/conductor Bernstein created his lectures for a highfalutin' cultural series of the 1950s, "Omnibus," that ran first on CBS TV, later on ABC and NBC. Astonishingly, Bernstein treated viewers like they knew and cared about the subject matter.

He was smart enough to show as well as tell - sharing Beethoven's rejected riffs to suggest what made them less valued to the composer, or repeatedly stop/starting his orchestra in rehearsal to coax out a better performance.

HELLO, LOUIS: Good thing Newport Jazz Festival impresario George Wein decided to throw a 70th birthday celebration for Louis Armstrong in the summer of 1970 and had a production team film it.

Finally earning wide exposure on DVD, "Louis Armstrong: Good Evening Ev'rybody" (Image Entertainment, A-) proves a wonderful party for the "Pops" of American jazz just a year before his sad demise.

While newly transferred for video, all the elements in this musical documentary are original, including the narration Wein tricked Armstrong into recording. Among those on hand are the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Dizzy Gillespie and Mahalia Jackson.

The day opens with a surprisingly thin Satchmo arriving and rehearsing vocals (he wasn't well enough to blow his horn) with band leader/trumpeter Bobby Hackett and friends.

Then we segue into the evening show, where the Preservation Hall Jazz Band evokes the music of Armstrong's youth.

What a treat.