talkmagic.co.uk

I saw some vitriolic posts directed at a commenter who "debunked" a Chris Angel stunt where he apparently disappeared a couple in a hotel hallway standing in a hallway, while blocking the camera with his body while they just ducked into a room off the same hallway and apparently all of the 'bystanders' were really just dupes. A lot of subsequent commentators wrote that all magic is a dupe and that illusion kind of gives itself away and many performers use 'dupes' and 'plants'. The point I wish to make is that illusion is an art form and a truly well worked out and rehearsed illusion takes hours to conceive and may take months to perfect. Chris Angel just pulled that one out of his butt. A truly well conceived illusion is so smooth and seemingly effortless that even if the originator were to show me step-by-step exactly how it is done, I would still be impressed to see it done again. Hoaxes, on the other hand, once debunked never have any of the appeal of the original trick. True illusionists, who are dedicated to the craft spend years working out their act and sometimes take a year off from performing (if they are sufficiently successful to afford such a thing) to work our a host of new illusions. You simply cannot churn out the huge string of new illusions that Chris Angel does without resorting to hoaxes. I definitely think he is a talented and gifted magician but he has over-commercialized himself to the point of having to compromise the art he claims to practice to keep releasing TV special after TV special. Is that the only way that you can achieve his level of success as a magician? I think Penn and Teller do a pretty fair job by being honest and keeping it fairly tongue-in-cheek. Chris Angel acts like he's really Harry Potter!

I saw Chris Angel doing that hotel corridor vanish. It was the first programme of his I had seen, and it coloured my subsequent opinion of him. I am not a fan.
David Blaine's fake levitation using camera tricks was another low point in magic.

Yesterday I looked out of my back window to see a cat sitting on my garden fence. I looked away for a few seconds and amazingly when I looked back the cat had gone!!

V.E. Day wrote:Yesterday I looked out of my back window to see a cat sitting on my garden fence. I looked away for a few seconds and amazingly when I looked back the cat had gone!!

I know how they do that, but I'm not going to tip the method on here. PM me if you want more details.

Does it involve an air rifle?