talkmagic.co.uk

The Effect



Cost 28 pounds (sorry my stupid keyboard pound sign doesn't work) from Alakazam



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)

About 3 overall I'd say

Review

Ok, so my first review. This was the first DVD I got after working through the first four of the Ammar ETMCM series. I'd fancied getting Paperclipped and Leaving Home so I bought this as they were both on there. The effects are as follows (straight off the blurb):

Collect Me Not - A "collector's routine" with an unbelievable ending!
Fiery Reunion - An extremely clean torn and restored match!
Ouch! A band-aid visually appears on a signed card!
Parallel Worlds - Truly, a card trick for the X-Files.
Fly By Night - Three staples travel from one card to the other.
Slipstream - Cards pass through each other like water.
Leaving Home - Jay's very popular key and string routine.
Ship in a Bottle - Bring a drawing on a playing card to life.
Magnet Card - There is no escape from the magnet card!
Slick Splits - One of the easiest and most visual coin productions ever!
Mr Clean Cards Across - The killer "new age" handling that started it all!
Card to Pocket - Jay's been wowing real people with this for over 20 years.
Paperclipped - Jay's folded card in paperclip is considered to be a modern classic.

I sat down with my girlfriend to watch the performance section to gauge a layperson's reaction to the trick. As usual she was generally impressed by the stuff that I wasn't, and vice-versa. Oh well, only 6 months of magic under my belt and already I'm getting magician's blinkers! Anyway,

Collect Me Not - I liked this but I haven't performed it yet as it uses a count of Jay's that I can't get smooth enough to perform. The effect involves 3 spectators freely choosing a card each then returning them to the deck. You then take four of a kind (say four tens) and flick them at the pack before counting through their cards to reveal the spectators' cards face up amongst the others. Then you flick again and the tens fly back to the deck, leaving you with only the original choices. Good start.

Fiery Reunion - Jay points out in the explanations that this maybe isn't a great trick to show to a crowd, rather a close-up miracle for a couple of people. I agree. In fact I haven't even bothered to learn this as I was left unimpressed. You take a match from a book (of matches!) light it, then quicly tear it and restore it before it burns down to your fingers. Yes it's clean, but looks a little clunky in performance.

Ouch! - Not bad, you make a tear in a signed card then cause a plaster to visually appear over the tear, then remove the plaster to show the tear has healed. I liked it at first, gf didn't and pretty much guessed the secret from one performance. Makes a nice little story trick.

Parallel Worlds - To me, this was just an extrapolation of 'force a card, reveal it in an interesting way.' Gf loved it. Damn. In essence they select a card, which you place back into an empty card box. Then you open a mini box of cards which has been in view the whole time, fan through a show that one (the same as their choice) is face up. In fact it is a full size card that has been folded. After which you open the normal card box to find it now only contains a mini card (their's obviously). I don't know why, but this trick just didn't motivate me to perfom it, although from a layperson's point of view it's impressive.

Fly By Night - The effect is as the blurb says. Again, gf liked it, I didn't as it relies too much on performing quickly and is too reliant on the right angles/lighting conditions.

Slipstream - The worst effect, in my opinion. You take a couple of cards, show them to be normal, then push one through the middle of the other. Good handling to demonstrate that the cards are normal but it's fairly obvious that there must be some switching and gimmicks involved.

At this point of the DVD I must admit I was disappointed. Apart from Collect Me Not the effects all seemed the sort of thing you might learn from a kid's magic book. In fact when it came to the explanations it turns out that they're all more involved than you might think and they've obviously been well thought out to look as clean as possible. However, on the second half of the DVD it suddenly picked up...

Leaving Home - Lovely stuff, maybe the best trick on the DVD. You show a normal key on a normal piece of string, give the key a tug and off it comes, definitely separated. Nice so far, but the next phase is beautifully visual. You hit the key with the string and it's clearly back on and dangling for all to see. All examinable before and after the trick. Annoyingly, I just can't get the second phase down to the point where I can perform it confidently. Even more annoyingly, Jay describes it as "not much of a move" and says that if you can't master it you might as well give up magic! I respectfully disagree, it's the sort of move that involves several things happening at once but has to be done quickly, so you can't really break it down and practice it slowly. I've pulled it off in front of the mirror a few times and when it's perfect I'll be doing this all the time.

Ship in a Bottle - I liked this, gf just shrugged, I don't care it's quirky and fun. You draw a picture of a ship on a card, then a picture of a bottle, then (one well known colour change later) hey presto! The ship is in the bottle. Oh, and they sign the back of the card after you've drawn the ship and bottle, then gasp as the pictures merge on their signed card.

Magnet Card - A bit of a twist on the ambitious card theme, you draw a magnet on the back of the top card of the pack, then someone chooses another card. You perform some sort of magical move and the chosen card is now beneath the magnet card. Back into the pack it goes, and after another magic wave or whatever it's back second from the top. Back into the pack once more, another wave, but now the selected card actually is the magnet card! This is a clever trick which relies on a couple of subtleties and is utterly impromtu, another favourite.

Slick Splits - As the blurb says it's easy and visual, you take a coin from your palm and it splits in two at your fingertips. Repeat it for as many coins as you can handle. Not a trick in itself but a good start to a coin routine. Such as...

Mr Clean Coins Across - 3 coins in one hand magically jump to the other with no obvious funny moves. As soon as I'm confident handling coins I'll be performing this, you only need 3 coins and it's impromtu (my favourite word in magic). The moves are probably no problem to coin workers but as I've only really learnt card stuff so far I haven't quite mastered this yet. Also one of the moves is on an earlier DVD in the series which I haven't seen so I'm not entirely sure how to do it properly. Top marks for this effect though.

Card to Pocket - A good demonstration of misdirection, and one sleight which is a bit tricky but I haven't been called on at all yet despite being far from good at. Spectator chooses card, you put it back in deck then after soem patter produce it from your pocket. Then you tell them you're going show them how it's done. More comedy patter, then you pull it out of your pocket again and they've got no idea how it got there. This seems to get good reactions and it's impromtu (hurrah!) and light hearted. I use it a lot.

Paperclipped - Most of you will be aware of this, for those that aren't you get a spectator to freely choose a card, sign it and return it to the pack. After some patter you pick up a folded card in a paperclip which has been sitting on the table the whole time and unfold it to reveal their signed card. It's not really suitable for use on it's own but is a good closer to an ambitious card routine. Unfortunately I can't seem to get the final move to look relaxed enough when I do it so for now I don't perform it, but in the right hands the effect is awesome, and not as hard as you might think.

Overall The second half really makes this DVD worth the money, even though I don't perform most of it at all, for various reasons; firstly it is a step up from what I've learnt before in terms of relying more heavily on subtleties and good misdirection. It has inspired me to be braver and now I'm frequently amazed by what I get past people. I use some of the new moves I've learnt in other tricks to make them better. Secondly a couple of the tricks are good but require you to carry the gimmicks around with you (Ship in Bottle being one example) so they usually only get performed at home where I've got the stuff to hand, and thirdly I'm just not confident with some of it to actually perform it (ie. Leaving Home) but I certainly will be when I happy with the moves.

So, overall I would say this DVD is a good buy for an advanced beginner to take your magic up a notch, and there's stuff on there that I'm sure even working professionals would appreciate.

I purchased "Leaving Home" on its own some time ago, its a FANTASTIC trick, and incredibly visual, everyone I show it to is floored.

Keep at it, eventually the move just clicks and is easy to perform

great reveiw, thanks for this

...and yeah, paperclipped i found to be a little bit 'uncomfortable' at first i guess, but it comes eventually


again very nice review...not bad for your first

An excellent review. I've only ever bought one Sankey product - Mercuring - because I have always found it a little weird that only Penguin sold his products. I know you can now buy them at a multitude of places, and I think your review has convinced me it's about time I bought one of his creations.

Excellent review. It's nice when someone takes some time over a review and is candidly honest.

Hooray for quality!

Thanks for the feedback guys, it's hard writing for people who are so much more knowledgeable than me so I just call it as I see it really. I do magic for myself more than anything so I only perform tricks that I enjoy performing, and I've already found that sometimes this doesn't correlate with what spectators are wowed by. In fact I don't think I know any tricks yet that I can get equal results with from both magicians and lay people. For example, I saw another Sankey trick, Lottery, on a preview video and worked out how it's done. It's my current favourite trick and amazes everyone I show it to, but really annoyed a (much more magically advanced) mate of mine when I did it in the pub and completely upstaged a complicated ace production routine he'd just been doing. Oh well, c'est la vie I guess.