Bullets: Fisher’s ‘Engine’ session, Blaine’s stunt, Mindfreak’s next season, Letterman features magic

May 12, 2010

Justin Robert Young over at iTricks is the man. He gives this blog and others credits and links for breaking the occasional story, but we don’t see anyone else giving him props for the stories he breaks three times as often. Dude put two and two together for a couple of biggies this week:

We don’t know about you, but we know where we’ll be on Saturday: Glued to our monitors. Aaron Fisher will be joined by Wayne Houchin and Steve Johnson for a special session about the book “The Paper Engine.” According to an e-mail, the free session should have plenty of time for questions and comments. The session starts at 12 p.m. Pacific on Saturday at aaronfishermagic.com (we’ll post a more accurate link closer to the session).
David Blaine was featured in this great interview with Interview Magazine. A bunch of people have forwarded this to me, but iTricks spotted the golden quote — namely, what Blaine’s final stunt will likely be. Although he isn’t forgetting about sleep deprivation, he plans to cross an ocean in a glass bottle. We suspect that the interviewer didn’t know the value of that quote.
Criss Angel’s Mindfreak will return to the A&E Network for a sixth season. iTricks made the connection that it would keep the hourlong format, although there was speculation otherwise.
We love Dodd Vickers over at the Magic Newswire, as well. That’s where we read that David Letterman is hosting a close-up magic week. We’re talking appearances from Steve Cohen, John Carney, Johnny “Ace” Palmer, Jason Randal and Michael Ammar. Consider us geeked. Guess Ellen DeGeneres is starting to get more influential than Oprah.

Posted by Joe Hadsall | Filed Under Criss Angel, David Blaine, General, Magic on TV | 3 Comments

Bullets: Amazing science edition!

April 11, 2010

Maybe it’s because we spent the weekend watching “The Prestige” while practicing some new-to-us Jerry Sadowitz hotness. Or maybe it’s all the episodes of Penn & Teller’s “Bulls***!” we watched last week. Whatever it is, magic’s connection to science is on the brain. Maybe that’s why all these links jumped from the screen while searching for blogworthy bits:

The (Scotland) Herald has a great feature on Professor John Brown, the royal astronomer who has a penchant for magic and no fear of mixing the two. Magic plays a large role in the astronomy classes he teaches.
Intel showed off some new “mind-reading” technology, which predicted with 90 percent accuracy a choice between two words. Magician Eric DeCamps, in this iTricks interview, said (and we’re paraphrasing here), “Meh.”
We think we’re offended. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in response to a high rate of deaths, is working to install red-light cameras at intersections. The cameras, like their U.S. Constutionally-questionable counterparts, take pictures of red light runners and send tickets through the mail. Here’s the offensive part: The name of this system is “Saher,” Arabic for “magician.”
We started with astronomy, and we’ll end with a video of the first card trick in space. Physicist Ed Lu and legend James Randi filmed the trick in 2003. This video has inspired us: Ellusionist is now raising money to send Bone Ho into space to flourish cards in zero gravity.

Posted by Joe Hadsall | Filed Under General, Magic on TV |

Bullets: Copperfield’s court date, Berg’s collapse, duo’s Internet tricks, Ludacris’ Mindfreak rap

March 23, 2010

Been a while since we loaded the ol’ news revolver and fired some bullets:

A court date has been set for a model’s lawsuit, where a woman alleges David Copperfield raped her in 2007. Lacey Carroll (named because a criminal investigation was closed without charges being filed against Copperfield) has been granted a May, 2011 trial date for her civil lawsuit. The Seattle Times’ account has plenty of juicy details about the charges, which Copperfield and his lawyers vigorously deny.
Record-breaking card stacker Bryan Berg knocked down his beautiful rendition of The Venetian Macao. The sculpture, comprised of more than 218,000 cards, took about 44 days to build, but only seconds to knock down. Why do it? To prove there was no tape or glue involved. We appreciate doing the destruction himself, but STILL. That’s gotta hurt.
For our Brit mates: Barry and Stuart with BBC3 have developed a site for Internet tricks. Spotted by iTricks, the site features that creepy psychic test and another new “test.” Bad news for us Yanks: We can’t watch the explanation vids anymore. Boo.
We’re a little late on this, but if you haven’t heard the Ludacris song “Mind Freak,” featuring Criss Angel, it’s right here. Yeah, there’s some cussin’.

Posted by Joe Hadsall | Filed Under General, Magic on TV | 4 Comments

Forum moderator featured on Uri Gellar show

February 22, 2010

Arvind Jayashankar, one of our outstanding forum Moderators and a long-time forum member, was recently featured on an episode of “The Next Uri Gellar.” Click here, then fast forward to 21:10.

Unfortunately, he didn’t make it past that round, but he said he is thrilled he got that far. Well done, AJ!

Posted by Joe Hadsall | Filed Under Magic on TV | 4 Comments

Exclusive clip: Berenger brings magic to movie in ‘Smokin’ Aces 2′

January 15, 2010

Who knew that Tom Berenger could make some magic?

Berenger plays Walter Weed, an unassuming desk jockey at the FBI with a bit of a penchant for magic tricks. When a plot to assassinate him is uncovered, all hell breaks loose in “Smokin’ Aces 2: Assassin’s Ball.” The guys at Universal and Special Ops Media sent us this exclusive clip from the movie.

The first change the character performs is pretty slick. But even though the card-to-pocket trick goes from clip to clip, we love the no-fluff delivery of Berenger’s character, Walter Weed. That presentation got Brad Christian’s attention: He and the rest of us were impressed with the straightforward, calm confidence that his character exudes. It’s something we can all infuse into our performances.

We also like the looks of that deck of playing cards he’s using.

“Smokin’ Aces 2: Assassin’s Ball” and all of its card-flinging, gun-firing action, hits stores on Jan. 19. It’s available as a DVD and Blu-ray. The guys who sent us the clip are also sending us a few copies that we’re going to give to you. Keep an eye on our Twitter and Facebook pages for deets.