talkmagic.co.uk

The Effect

36 various rubber band effects taught by Mr Reindfleisch in true L+L style.


Cost

27 quid 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)

Overall 2.

Review

This DVD is good for two reasons. Firstly it teaches an absolute wealth of rubber band tricks and secondly it teaches the exact wrong way to present magic. I'm not sure if the latter was intentional but it sure makes for some entertaingly cringe worthy watching. I decided to get this as I've got enough good card effects for now and I thought it was time to broaden my repertoire a bit. I chose bands because the effects are visual, impromtu and often very impossible looking plus you can carry them anywhere on your wrist.

I can't be bothered to go through each one of the 36 effects individually so I'll just give an overview. The tricks comprise all the content you'd expect including penetrations, links, broken and restored stuff, vanishes etc. As a rule they can all be done with normal bands and the gimmicks for the ones that can't are easy to make yourself so no worries there. I got the DVD just over a week ago and had a quick look through it, picking out the tricks that I liked and learning them quickly then performing them in the pub that night, in most cases it took about 5 minutes to get the idea of what was going on. I found that the main challenge with this sort of magic is getting yourself set up for the trick, once you're in position generally all that's required is to release a finger or something and the trick is done, which is nice because you can concentrate on the presentation. For a start it can be tricky twisting the bands into place but with a little practise you can do it while you're talking without looking at your hands and effectively set yourself up right under people's noses.

Some of the material is utterly baffling and impossible even to other magicians as I found when I showed it off at magic club. My favourites are:

Ultimate Jump: The band jumps from one set of fingers to another, despite the fact that a speccie is holding the tips of both sets. This always gets a good reaction.

Jo-Dan Link: Two different coloured bands are touched together and one strand of each visibly links.

Interweave: Different coloured bands are stretched from hand to hand then shown to penetrate straight through each other.

There's quite a few more that I use a lot but they're generally different slants on the same principles. If you want to see what they look like take a look at the preview of Dan Harlan's Band Shark over on Penguin as a lot of the material is very similar. When you perform this stuff right it really amazes people and it has the benefit of repeatable at least once if you're good. Yeah I know you shouldn't repeat your tricks ever but in my experience with these you can pull them off a couple of times and it just reinforces the confusion.

Now then, bad points. The first minor niggle I have is that Crazy Man's Handcuffs isn't on here, which I would expect to be seeing as it's a staple of rubber band magic, and IMO one of the best tricks ever. Secondly and more importantly Joe Reinfleisch stinks, ok so he's very good at the technical side but his presentation is just rubbish. Even the hired guns in the studio audience were sitting there stony faced at points, often during tricks that were in fact good. Most of the time he just goes something along the lines of "Look at these bands. Now one of them has done something odd. Wow." Either that or he launches into dreadful stories with jokes that are so bad they're not even good for being bad, and manages to switch off the brains of the spectators to the point where they just don't care what happens. Having said that his teaching's ok on the whole and as I mention above you can get the idea of what to do pretty quickly with a bit of concentration but again it's irritatingly inconsistent at times. One example is the Jo-Dan Link, this trick fries people's minds and when I saw it I was sure it had to be done with gimmicked bands. When he explains it you discover that no gimmicks are required, "Hurrah!" you think, then he proceeds to go off on a tangent about abother trick which isn't on the DVD. You wait patiently until he says "So you arrange your hands like this" and just sets it up. Which you see done at full speed from the front, just as when he performs it. Thanks Joe. Luckily you then get a two second glimpse of what it looks like from behind, which I paused and studied til I got the gist of it.

Overall

Apart from the bone dry approach this DVD is definitely worth having if you want to do rubber band magic, for value for money alone. Even if you only use 10 tricks you're still getting your money's worth and the thinking behind it all is rather inspired. It's easy to get the hang of, amazing, always leaves you clean (even with the gimmicked stuff), and most spectators won't have seen anything like it before so it's fresh to them. So 9/10 from me.

interesting review. im just getting my teeth into this dvd, and like it so far

Glad to hear it, what are your faves so far? If you need any help pm me, I've got a slightly different and possibly better ending for the Jo-Dan link if you're interested.