Issue 20 - May 08
Protons
Master Coin Routine
Master Card Routines
3-DVD collection by
Chris Priest
Available from www.worldmagicshop.co.uk
Price: £15 each
As Karl Marx once
famously said, “…Workers of the world unite;” true, his angle was probably
that of someone more concerned with the political and sociological struggles of
the nineteenth Century, but it’s a call to action that Chris Priest could be
making with this new trilogy of DVD releases. For contained within the
running-time are commercial and participatory multi-phase routines that are not
for the drones, but truly are workers’ material.
Protons is a sponge ball routine which, with no apology to particle-physicists,
ends with a visually surprising interpretation of a sponge ball’s constituent
elementary particles, utilising a gimmick you probably already own. (I should
probably point out here and now, by the way, that if you wish to perform
Chris’s routines in full and to the letter, there are quite a number of
additional and oftentimes not inexpensive props that you’re going to need,
including a Card to Sealed Envelope Wallet, and a Kennedy Mystery Box). The Protons
routine also makes use of a Sanada gimmick, and its use, as well as the other
myriad elements of the routine – loads, steals, transfers, vanishes,
pocket-management, patter – are all well covered. There is even a bonus watch
steal taught at the end of this disc.
The
Master Coin Routine is a densely-packed cavalcade of coin magic which, like Protons,
has a visually arresting finale – where does that jumbo coin come from? In
addition to the coins and the final production jumbo coin, an expanded shell is
also used. Again, many techniques and procedures are taught: sleeving; the
The Master
Card Routines disc contains two routines – Ace
Reception and JFK - and Ace Reception is unique on the discs, in that no other props, aside
from a deck of cards of course, are required. JFK more than makes up for this, requiring, as it does, the Kennedy
Mystery Box, plus a Card-to…Wallet; (Chris uses the superb O’Connell
wallet). Ace Reception constructs a
routine around the four aces, melding variations on Dr
Daley’s Last Trick, Twisting the
Aces, and Hofzinser’s Everywhere
& Nowhere plot. JFK doesn’t
feature a great deal of assassinated presidents or grassy knolls, but culminates
with the spectator’s signed card ending up folded inside a little wooden box
that has been on display since before the signed selection vanished. (This
extraordinary card has already become paper-clipped to a business card inside a
sealed envelope, inside the performer’s wallet).
The DVDs themselves
are well-produced and navigable, and my only slight gripe is that the
explanation portions are filmed in front of large windows with bright sunlight
pouring in. I’m no David Bailey, but I thought that it was better to avoid
taking pictures where the subject is backlit to such a degree. Chris, and the
work, remain generally clear but sometimes the reflective objects in his hands,
(the cards and coins), are lost in a glare of bright whiteout.
Although the three
discs contain a seemingly lowly four routines, they run to around three hours in
total and oodles of magic is shared and taught. You may not want to perform all
of the phases all of the time, so the routines’ flexibility allows you to play
with the format presented, and intermediate difficulty means you needn’t get
weighed down under a frustrating build-up of “knuckle-busting rage.” Chris
Priest has shared a lot of work here, and the opportunity to see both the
routines in real-world action, and then diligently explained, is a pleasure. DL
What’s Hot: A stack
of moves, subtleties, structure and thinking from a working pro
What’s Not: To perform the routines in full requires a lot of extra hardware
Star Rating****
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