As reported by Magic Magazine, here is the latest magic news, on and off the air.
Home and Family
Thursday, October 31st, 10am E/P, 9 CT, Hallmark
Ivan Amodei, dressed as Harry Houdini, performs a head-on-fire effect on the daily talk show, airing on the anniversary of the legendary magician's death.
Criss Angel BeLIEve
Spike
BeLIEve, Criss Angel's eleven-part series, is airing and re-airing on the Spike network. Click here for the latest scheduling information.
Robin Leach reported today that Criss will be undergoing surgery on his shoulder, which will result in his live Las Vegas show going dark for the first three months of 2014. To read the complete story, click here.
Mike Caveney Wonders and The Conference Illusions
Electric Touch Plus by Yigal Mesika
Hug by Nefesch
Ultimate CD Prediction Kit by Will Tsai
Talk About Tricks: Outro
Talk About Tricks: Say What? Joshua Jay This month of Talk About Tricks kicks off with an unusual coin effect in which you cause a picture of a coin to become a real coin. Bank on 64th Street is a novel effect in which a spectator "chooses" an array of money for you. Timothy Paul, Alfredo Alvarez, and Daniel Chard round out the issue with three excellent card contributions. Les Amis: The Tennis Court Gaëtan Bloom & Kevin James In this effect, you see two people playing tennis on a court, like you would on a big televised match. The magician is near the camera, in frame and commenting on the game. You can see a wide-open court. At some point the two players stop playing and look up at the camera and at the magician. He comments that the player on the far side of the court could really use some backup. The magician shows a playing card that is taped to a chopstick. He slowly brings it edgewise towards the camera, making sure you can always see the space on the court around the card. He then tilts it vertically so it obscures the net. A few seconds later, he tips the card edgewise again to reveal fifteen tennis players, all on the far end of the court ready to help the one player having trouble! Loving Mentalism: Over The Brainbow Ian Rowland This months "Loving Mentalism" item is a simple yet ingenious mystery about colors. The theme is that of impossible coincidence. You give a spectator eight simple cards each bearing a different color. With the cards in his own hands, the spectator first mixes them up and then chooses one at random. Despite the obvious fairness of this procedure, it turns out that you predicted exactly the color he would choose — including a physical prediction he can take away! The ingenious principle behind the mystery is one that can be adapted to many different themes and routines. Bent on Deception: Comedy, We Have a Problem Mike Bent "Heckler" is a comedy term that oversimplifies a complex problem. It's no surprise that the cliché of the heckler that everyone has seen in movies or on television shows doesn't mirror comedy in real life. In fact, Hollywood never seems to get the realities of being a comedian right. They usually show the one loudmouth boor in the back of the audience, yelling barbs at a flustered comic. Or they depict the birthday magician doing a show for a group of smart-ass kids wearing party hats who know how all the tricks are done. Those situations are rare in real life; the real situations are way more complex. However, if you handle them correctly, they're not nearly as painful. 50 Years at the Castle: No Room for Expansion? Place Your Bets — Double or Nothing! Milt Larsen Eleven years after we opened the Castle, 1974 was the start of something big. In 1972, we had literally run out of space at the Magic Castle. Every inch of the old mansion had been utilized. We even made rooms where there were no rooms. By digging out the dirt floor of the original basement, the Hat N' Hare Pub was created. Our tiny "Palace of Mystery" had been the old furnace room. The old baggage storage area in the third floor attic had been turned into the library. Porches were enclosed, but there was simply no more additional space for expansion. The Mrs. Winchester in me was frustrated, I couldn't find anything at the Castle to build or destroy… Viewpoint: A Brief Dissertation Plucked out of Thin Air Larry Thornton When we say that a magician made a rabbit — or doves, or his assistant — "disappear into thin air," what exactly are we talking about?For What It's Worth: Kids Don't Learn Nothing Mark Kornhauser Oh, they will be there. They will be at MAGIC Live. They will hang out in the hallways, show each other endless half-practiced flourishes, watch the shows with a mixture of admiration and envy, and maybe go home with the Next Great Idea. "They" are the young twenty-something, stubborn, chattering, inattentive, inexperienced, over-confident, aimless magicians who are the future of magic. I worry about these aspiring magi. Paynefully Obvious: Fanning the Fire Payne When I start putting together an act, I rarely seek out the advice of other magicians. Not necessarily because they are fans, but because the way magicians see magic is completely different from the way non-magicians see it. Magicians are more concerned with moves, feints, and sleights than motivation and character. They will accept blindly the use of certain props or routine structures that non-magicians would automatically question. We know why we can't show the tube and the box of a Square Circle empty at the same time. That's just the way it works, so we never question it. And because we never question it, we never think there might be a better way for it to work. We just keep doing it the same old way, never considering that it might look very odd and suspect to our audiences.