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Price (including postage): £17.99 from RSVP


Difficulty: 2.5 / 5 … can you top change, side steal and cull? No problem then!


They say:

Join James and his camera crew as they perform six superb routines in a live bar environment.

Along the way watch as James takes people back in time, see chosen cards repeatedly appear inside and under card cases, imagine that the deck they are holding is now completely transparent and even make them forget their own memories! This is reputation making magic and you’ll see just how great it really is by the reactions they get! After the performances, stay after hours and join James and Ravi Meyer as they discuss every routine in intricate detail.

Contents Include:

BOX CLEVER
A freely chosen card, which can be signed, vanishes from the deck multiple times, appearing under the card case, inside the card case and finally the entire deck jumps into the case! ALL DONE WHILST THE SPECTATOR IS HOLDING THE CARD CASE!

ITHWICH
Two cards are cleanly shown and placed onto the spectators hands. AFTER this a card is freely chosen and almost instantly vanishes from the entire deck and appears BETWEEN the two they are holding! Superb stuff.

OMNI PRESENT
A card is chosen and SIGNED. The spectator is now given the deck to hold and told to imagine that the entire deck has suddenly become transparent and that the only card they can see, RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DECK is their card! A fantasic pseudo hypnosis routine.

CAUGHT THREE TIMES
Three selected cards appear sandwiched, one at a time, between two court cards under impossible conditions!

REVERSE ENGINEERING
Two thought of cards are devined under impossible conditions. James now takes the audience back in time showing that one card placed in his pocket at the start of the routine is one of the selections!

CEREBRAL STEAL
The spectator choses a card and is then made to lose all memory of it! This is then followed by an impossible mind read by the magician. Strong and reputation making magic!

PROFESSIONAL OPPORTUNIST
Learn just what it means to be a "Professional Opportunist". Join James and Ravi for a bonus section in which they discuss how to make the most of your environments when performing magic.

CONTROLLING A SPECTATOR
James and Ravi discuss and explain just how to attain perfect audience management from your spectators at all times. Using a mixture of magicial techniques and body movements, you'll learn just how to make these techniques work for you too.

RUNNING TIME 1 HOUR & 52 MINUTES


I say:

I've seen James at the monthly magic/hypno meets in London and been very impressed by his routines and approach. His material definitely falls in the camp of "modern magic" and his focus is on keeping things moving, entertaining people and a quick succession of killer moments. No dreary card counting or drawn out "spell your card" stuff - it's very much BANG BANG BANG. This is what REAL magic would look like! Take "Box Clever" - your card's here, now it's here, now it's over there, now it's vanished, now it's in the box...BANG BANG BANG! This is the sort of stuff that laymen love, and it's not that difficult to perform.

It's good to see Ravi on the DVD (another regular from the monthly meets) and he contributes a number of useful points throughout. The women featured in the performance sections also have a few good points which I hope you enjoy in an ironic post-modern non-sexist way. "I see you've brought misdirection with you" indeed! SLAP!

Anyway...there are no knuckle-busters here, but you do need to know your basic moves as they are not really taught on the DVD. If you're totally new to magic don't buy this as your first product, get Card College and then come back to this in a couple of months.

Some of the routines need a lot of nerve and front to pull off, although appropriate outs are given, in case things don't go to plan. James also explains the psychology behind moves and there's a lot about actually handling the spectator to best effect. This helps increase your confidence in being able to go out and perform the material - the sort of invaluable advice that is sadly often missed from other DVDs.

"Cerebral Steal" is the routine that most uses basic hypnotic technique (all taught on the DVD) and it's also the one that's been getting grief on the Cafe, despite extensive crediting being included on the DVD and on a paper insert in the DVD case. Not something that would bother most people and I'm glad that TM doesn't often get bogged down in arguments over who said what first. If you're interested see the Cafe for all of the tedious details. If you're not then just enjoy a first rate magic/hypno routine.

All of the routines are do-able and will get great reactions. There is no "filler" on here, despite the DVD running close to two hours. You'll need an Omni deck to perform "Omni Present", but you could probably guess that.

James comes across as a nice guy thoughout (which he is!) and keeps the spectators involved but slightly off-balance when necessary. He knows how to "work the moment" and there's more about this and "jazzing" stuff on Vol 2.

The best thing about this DVD is that while watching it you will get excited about the prospect of doing these routines yourself - I'm going to go out and try some of them tonight!


Overall:

A first-class DVD of fast-moving modern magic that you will want to learn and perform. The sections on using hypnotic techniques and controlling spectators make this a cut above the usual magic DVD. Do yourself a favour and buy it, you really WON'T regret it.

Rating: 9.5 / 10

Sounds good, I ordered both volumes the other day, but to my other address. They could be sitting there right now whilst I'm stuck here at work

I like James, but the routines sound similar to his other dvds.

I will stand corrected if I am wrong!

you are wrong, please stand

Some of the routines are on the lecture dvd but this set shows them WORKING in real situations PLUS the explanations are clearer and you get to look at Howard from the Halifax during the discussions.

JB

theboss wrote:you are wrong, please stand

Some of the routines are on the lecture dvd but this set shows them WORKING in real situations PLUS the explanations are clearer and you get to look at Howard from the Halifax during the discussions.

JB

lol, I am standing sir!

theboss wrote:Howard from the Halifax

Ravi's gonna love THAT! (True though )

Lol Howard from the Halifax? The singing guy with the glasses?

Man, if I hadn't ordered it already, that would have sold it to me. Does he sing?

Awaiting my delivery of both DVDs very patiently
Luv James' work.

Ok i just got done watching both DVD's and all of these tricks can be done at any event if your walking around or sitting at a table this dvd really is for everyone.

my personal favorites include -Omni Present what is great for anyone who uses the Omni Deck im gonna be adding this to my routine now as the effect is so strong

also ITHWICH & BOX Clever are great too this dvd has alot to offer and advise people to get a copy

4.5/5

well done james

I received the DVD's on saturday and i think they are great. The routines on the DVD are really practical, commercial and tricks that you will use. And for the price they are so worth there money. I would highly recommend these DVD's to anyone.

Plus there is some great footage of James doing some Hypnosis routines so if you are starting out with hypnosis or already doing it these clips are great confidence boosters to performing it.


Max Curd

Just finnished watching, thought I'd add my two cents worth in!

Price: Got both volumes together on the RSVP website, at the price mentioned above.

Difficulty
(1=easy to do, 2=No sleights, but not so easy, 3=Some sleights used,
4=Advanced sleights used, 5=Suitable for experienced magicians only)

3/4 No overly difficult sleights, but some of the moves can be quite ballsy!

Review

This is just volume one, I haven't had chance to watch the second DVD all the way through yet.
The first thing I really enjoyed about this was the live performances of each effect in a busy bar enviroment, followed by James giving the explaination (at 3 in the morning, its a wonder he was still awake!). I think this gives you a very good sense of how the effect should look and sound, the timing of things etc etc before you learn the mechanics of what is going on.
The effects on the DVD are some really great works of magic. Box Clever is a hilariously cheeky exercise in timing and misdirection. The reactions in the performance of it say everything you need to know about the trick; the specs are astonished and laughing as each reveal comes about.
James also gives a great insight into some of the psychological aspects behind the tricks and some cracking tips on the misdirection and language he is using.
Cerebral Steal is (and I'm sure I won't be alone in this) my favorite effect on the entire thing. This trick is absolute dynamite in the performance. I was a little worried that I might not understand the method behind it, but everything you need is explained right there.


Overall:
Its got some absolutely mind-boggling effects, with easy to understand explaination, genuinely fun performances and some truly worthwhile tips from a man who really knows how to perform. The production of the DVD itself is good quality too, it doesn't feel like a home-movie job, very proffessional (opportunist ). From what's on volume 1, I'm itching to get onto volume 2.

A well-deserved 9.5/10

Got my hands on this material recently and its absolutely awesome! This stuff is very highly recommended, James brown takes magic to another level. I have not yet encountered such a nice mix of some basic magic, misdirection, hypnosis and pickpocketing. Indeed takes some balls to pull some of these off as it requires good misdirection, but Mr Brown has every aspect covered in the explanation which makes it fairly easy.

If anyone have a problem with getting the deck back to the box in the "box clever" routine, then cutting the edges of the box entrance solved it for me.

I was lucky enough to meet James on a stand at Blackpool. He performed ITWICH from these DVDs for me on a spectator. I can do the trick but bottle doing it in the spectators hand. It really is just a matter of nerve.

First off, I like omni-present, and was lokoing for a unique use of the omni deck, this is just the sort of thing I would perform, and I think there is a lot more that can be done with the omni deck, than the standard, 'oh now all the cards vanished'

I really didn't like box clever, especially James' presentation - did you see it? did you miss it? To me this sets up a challenge. Personally I want to perform magic, create stories, and have people interested in what I am saying, rather than I'm doing something clever with the cards, see if you can catch me out - did you see it that time?

Likewise, in caught three times, this whole nonsense of 'is the card above or below the threes' - you could see the spectators were confused by the question, and then they were asked 'imagine the card now rising up through the deck' - what!?
much better just to say, 'I snap my fingers and the card is now trapped in between the two threes'.
By the way, if it made no difference whether the cards were three's or not, why ask for them, why not just take out two kings, two aces, two jokers?
That effect, to me, seemed far too overly cluttered.

Reverse Engineering - because you named that card, I can find the other card, but wait the card you named is now in my pocket - what, wait, slow down, go back - I'm confused.

So that was disc one only, but in summary, I don't like his performing style, but I do like Omni-Present.

Reverse Engineering is a trick that really works for me. It is just an ordinary pick a card, magician works out what the card was sort of trick which in itself goes down well enough but when you pull the other named card out od the pocket it adds a real wow factor.

I use this regularly in my table hopping set and get excellent responses.

I am biased possibly because I do like James's style and I like his teaching methods, these to me are top disks full of workable magic.