talkmagic.co.uk

Bought this DVD on the only magic shop in Norway at Crosby Magic. Was kinda desperate for a fix of magic so I just had to buy it.

The Effect
2 DVD-set with
Fechter's Aces
and like 20 other effects.
With Obie O'Brien known for his Fechter's Finger Flicking Frolic, a prestigous close-up convention with just 100 specially invited close-up performers.

Cost
350 NOK at this store, which is about 55$, but it's at 43,75$ in penguinmagic.com

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)

Pretty basic stuff

1-3

Review

The Tricks and Performance:

After seeing this DVD I'm kinda dumbfumbled on how Obie can one of the most influental close-up performers in North America. He's performing for an adult audience, but he seems to perform in a style more suited for kids. Kinda made me think I'd just wasted my money, and got me in a bad mood, just because I really didn't like his performance style.

You get a lot of magic tricks on this DVD, but from my perspective it was probably only 4-5 tricks that was really interesting. The Fechter's Aces is a somewhat good trick, but I haven't invested the energy in translating it to work in norwegian. Has a version on Bill Malone's Sam the Bellhop, that's much more easy to perform, and almost as good if you ad some convincers to the shuffling. Actually it was the reason why I bought the DVD, and it wasn't a total waste of money. As I said there are 4-5 tricks worth seeing, and the 20 or so rest could just as easily have been dropped out in my honest opinion.

Explanations:

This part is much better. Camera is not the best, but at least it's not annoyingly bad. Uses extra angles when needed. Obie is also much more calm and not so tiresome. Everything is explained well, and I'll highly doubt you'll need many views before you can practise to perform any of the tricks.

Extra:
There's actually one extra trick that is said to be a trick that even can fool magicians. It fooled me, so I guess it's true at least in my case. It's almost worth the entire DVD just for the heck of fooling fellow magicians. But not really, it's just a small trick.

Overall:
Might be a good DVD for a newcomer, but it really didn't do it for me. Might also mostly be tricks better suited for kids, but I'm not into kid's tricks either. Some OK tricks and Almost Real Magic is a kind of 4-card wildcard-routine that's quite good actually. The Sam The Bellhop-version is probably the best feature in all.

Worth 45$? Yes, for a recently started newcomer or if you don't want to invest the hours in practice to get the knack on Sam the Bellhop. It defenately has some good tricks, although Obie's performance style kinda got me in a bad mood for this DVD.

In all: 6/10, just because it wasted a lot of time on bad tricks, but it peaks at 7-8/10 for some of the tricks.