Michael is a 2011 Indian psychological thriller film directed by Ribhu Dasgupta and produced by Anurag Kashyap.
Michael is the first posthumous (and eleventh overall) album of previously unreleased tracks and seventh under Epic Records by American singer Michael Jackson. It was released on December 10, 2010 by Epic Records and Sony Music Entertainment.Michael was the first release of all new Michael Jackson material in nine years since Invincible in 2001. Production of the album was handled by several producers such as Michael Jackson, Teddy Riley, Theron "Neff-U" Feemster, C. "Tricky" Stewart, Eddie Cascio, among others and features guest performances by Akon, 50 Cent and Lenny Kravitz. Michael is the seventh Jackson album to be released by Sony and Motown/Universal since Jackson's death in June 2009.
The album produced four singles: "Hold My Hand", released on November 15, 2010, which reached number 39 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, "Hollywood Tonight", released on February 11, 2011, and "Behind the Mask" released on February 21, 2011. The music video for "Hold My Hand" was directed by Mark Pellington, and had its worldwide debut on December 9, 2010. The music video for "Hollywood Tonight" was directed by Wayne Isham, who also directed the video for Michael Jackson's "You Are Not Alone" in 1995 at one of the very same locations where he filmed it—the Pantages Theatre near the famed corner of Hollywood and Vine. The video had its worldwide debut on March 10, 2011. "(I Like) The Way You Love Me" was released in South Korea as a digital single on January 18, 2011, and released to Italian and Chinese radio stations in July 2011.
"Michael, Row the Boat Ashore" (or "Michael Rowed the Boat Ashore" or "Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore" or "Michael Row That Gospel Boat") is a negro spiritual. It was first noted during the American Civil War at St. Helena Island, one of the Sea Islands of South Carolina. It is cataloged as Roud Folk Song Index No. 11975.
It was sung by former slaves whose owners had abandoned the island before the Union navy arrived to enforce a blockade. Charles Pickard Ware, an abolitionist and Harvard graduate who had come to supervise the plantations on St. Helena Island from 1862 to 1865, wrote the song down in music notation as he heard the freedmen sing it. Ware's cousin, William Francis Allen, reported in 1863 that while he rode in a boat across Station Creek, the former slaves sang the song as they rowed.
The song was first published in Slave Songs of the United States, by Allen, Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison, in 1867.
The oldest published version of the song runs in a series of unrhymed couplets:
Antonio (1816–1828) was a British Thoroughbred racehorse and sire best known for winning a controversial race for the classic St Leger Stakes in 1819. The classic was run twice after claims of an irregular start, but Antonio's victory in the original running was eventually allowed to stand. The rest of his racing career, which lasted from April 1819 until May 1822 was relatively undistinguished although he won five other races. After two minor successes in 1820 he missed the whole of the 1821 before returning as a six-year-old to win two races at Chester. He was then retired to stud where he had limited success as a sire of winners before his death in 1828.
Antonio was a bay horse with a white star and snip and white socks on his hind feet bred by James Ferguson, an innkeeper from Catterick Bridge. His dam was an unnamed mare sired by Evander, a stallion who was exported to Russia in 1813. Antonio was one of only two classic winners produced by Thoroughbred family number 34, the other being his distant relative Birmingham who won the St Leger in 1830. He was from the second crop of foals sired by the 1810 St Leger winner Octavian who stood as a stallion at Oran Farm near Catterick. The colt was sent into training with John Lonsdale.
Antonio is the title character in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. He is a middle-aged bachelor and merchant by trade who has his financial interests tied up in overseas shipments when the play begins. He is kind, generous, honest and confident, and is loved and revered by all the Christians who know him. His willingness to die for Bassanio is a manifestation of his character. Antonio manifests his piety by cursing and spitting at Shylock (anti-semitism was common in Europe in Shakespeare's day).
Act 1 When we first see him commiserating with his friends Salanio and Salarino he is pondering the unknown source of his depressive state:
In sooth I know not why I am so sad. It wearies me, you say it wearies you; But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, What stuff ‘tis made of, where of it is born, I am to learn And such a want-wit sadness makes of me That I have much ado to know myself. (MOV 1.1.1-7)'
His friends try to guess the origin and nature of his condition by questioning him. First they inquire as to whether or not he is worried about his investments. When he insists that is not the reason they ask if he is in love which he is also quick to dismiss. It is then speculated that perhaps he has a strange temperament as some people do. This pair quickly exits to make way for Bassanio who is accompanied by his friends Lorenzo and Gratiano. Lorenzo cannot get in a word for the boisterous Gratiano who makes sport of Antonio's melancholy telling him that he is too serious and that he himself would rather go through life acting foolish. After Lorenzo and Gratiano leave Bassanio tries to put Antonio at ease by saying Gratiano talks a lot of nonsense. It is in this conversation that we find a possible reason for Antonio’s sadness, the impending loss of his friend (or some suspect lover) to a woman’s affections.