Has anybody seen....

[Diesel]

This guy name Criss Angel??

Magician?

IS this stuff real or is it all fake??

If any of it is real, it's impressive. But he's no David Blaine Yet.

[Admin]

He is no David Blaine, but he doesnt want to be either. There was an interview with him in this months FHM and they asked him about David Blaine.

FHM: Are you trying to make David Blaine jealous?

Angel: "No. I don't look over my shoulder at him. Let him stand in boxes and starve himself. It's kind of pointless."

He has a show called Mindfreak that premiered on A&E this past wednesday but I missed it, did anyone catch it? Did they show his deal where he hung from the helicopter by 4 hooks in his back? In the interview they say in an upcoming episode he catches a bullet with his teeth by having a friend create some metal teeth for him and Jonathan Davis (the lead singer of Korn) actually shoots the bullet into his mont.

[Diesel]

I watched the show mindfreak.

His persona is nothing but an imitation of David Blaine with more Goth...

His magic is interesting but it seems fake.... Maybe that's an oxymoron. I watch these guys from time to time and David Blaine is the only guy who has ever literally done tricks that scared me because they were so real. Like a time where there was this girl in the bar and he had here write here name on a card, he threw the card and somehow, the card with here name on it ended up in a beer bottle.

Now Angel does this thing with levitation of a girl. That was a good trick. But I guess it's his manner... It made me feel that it was so staged as if he had done the trick outside with one group then did the trick for the cameras using a green screen or something.

He did another trick with a garbage can that was pretty impressive too!

[Blunt91]

I caught that show yesterday. It was funny seeing the blackguys "tripout" over the levitation trick. BTW none of these stunts are real, especially the ones that make the Magician seem like he has supernatural powers. I think David Blaine has a "High threshold for pain", and has a very high self-esteem but still he doesn't possess any "magical powers." It's all entertainment.

[Admin]

I agree that the stuff they pawn off as magic isnt for real, but when a guy has 4 hooks inserted into his flesh and then gets hung from a helicopter by them, that is certainly real and quite freakish. They have a club here in Houston where people hang themselves by hooks and its just disgusting to me.

I think the best thing about David Blaine that I have seen is when he was on South Park. That was one of the funniest episodes ever.

[chillzatl]

I haven't seen this new guys stuff. But all of Blains levitation stunts are simply good positioning. He puts himself at an angle or distance that makes easier to sell the illusion. if you were standing behind him, you'd see what was going on.

they're just illusionists like all those that came before them. They just use modern media and marketing to its fullest.

I have a client that is a magician and he's shown me some tricks that blew my mind. Some were store bought tricks, albeit expensive ones, and some were simple illusions. I say simple, they were simple for him. But not simple for me to figure out or do myself.

[Diesel]

Yeah... I have seen the Blaine levitation... It's like you said good positioning.

This guy Criss Angel does a levitation trick that is certainly unique. He does one that just looks so fake that it is fake... Really. He's doing this Matrix like Levitation that I just don't buy.

However, he does another one with a girl in the park where he takes her and stretches her all the way out with seemingly nothing suspending her and there are onlookers.

Watching it, I was thinking that he took two different illusions and spliced them using a green screen. He used one illusion from the park with onlookers and then he used on illusion infront of a green screen and put them together. Otherwise I don't know what he did?

But I think Blaine is at his best with a deck of cards. His up close magic is plain scary... It's scary to think that somebody has hands that damn fast. Or it's scary to think that he can go into a restaurant have someboby pick a card, put their name on it, lay all the cards out and stab that person's card... He does some seriously strange things when you really pay attention to them...

I will watch more of Angel, but I don't think he's anything more than Burton with a goth persona...

[chillzatl]

haha yah, blains card tricks are pretty sick. he's got a lot like that. The one where he found some women on the street, asked her to think of the last person close to her who died and then he set some tissue paper on fire and started rubbing it on his stomach white it burned out and the whelts formed up in the persons initials. pretty creepy indeed.

I found a website that went into detail explaining a lot of his illusions and such. I'm sure you can find it if you google it. It was pretty cool. They weren't busting on him or anything. Just responding to a lot of the religious crowd freaking out that he was the devil or something.