The Immaculate Card Magic of Walt Lees

I’ve had a fortunate week for finding and buying second hand books. Among them was The Immaculate Card Magic of Walt Lees edited and photographed by Lewis Ganson. The modest appearance of this thin book doesn’t prepare the reader for the amazing quality of the card magic it contains. There are four card routines explained step by step, in great detail, and illustrated with photographs of each step. At the moment my favourite is the one called Four Blank Cards. The phrase ‘jawdropper’ gets used a lot these days to describe the effect some magic tricks have on an audience. Well the four routines in this book truly are jawdroppers. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a DVD out there somewhere based on the routines in this book.

Another book that is a treat is John Fisher’s Magic Book. This book was written for the general public and not for magicians, for this is a magic book with a difference. Rather than teaching the readers magic tricks to perform to their friends, this book is the magician. The reader simply chooses a trick, gathers together the list of props (household items) and then follows the instructions. A mini-miracle or puzzling swindle will then take place before their very eyes. Some of the tricks have now become familiar to us, many have not and some are variations on tricks we thought we knew all about. They are all very simple and intended merely for the entertainment of the reader. It’s the sort of thing that Lewis Carroll would have loved to have written.

John Fisher's book is, sadly, long out of print. Walt Lees' book is still in print and available from Magic Books By Post.

Chance Photography

Sometimes with photography we don't realise just what we have really taken a picture of until we look at the print or until a friend points out what we have overlooked. There are plenty of examples on the internet and here are just some and one trick photograph.

Here we see how the photograph was actually shot.







[Unfortunately, no information was given about who the photographers were or about copyright. If you recognise your work feel free to contact me and I'll add a copyright notice]

The LaBaL: January Issue & Facebook Page

Just a quick word about The LaBaL. The January issue is now available. It features reviews of Joshua Jay's Magic: The Complete Course, Magicseen Magazine, David Gemmell's Pasteboard Adventures, Lewis Jones' The Magic Gourmet and Paul Gordon's The Real Secrets of Card Magic. There are articles with opinions on Magic-Con, the public's perception of magic, The Duckworth Lewis Method, Noah Kelly and Stateside News from Paul Hallas. The issue includes a number of card tricks including by Paul Gordon (here are links to Paul’s website and blog) and Chris Wardle (website).

There is now a Facebook page for The LaBaL. It has only just been created and the number of members are therefore low; it would be appreciated if you could join the page, building up the numbers and also provide LaBaL’s publisher with feedback on each issue. It is important to note that The LaBaL is not a glossy magazine; it is a combination of a magazine and a fanzine (Al Smith, the publisher, combines the words and calls it a Magzine) of professional magic in the UK and is for magicians with a serious interest in magic. Details on how to buy a single issue or a full subscription can be obtained by visiting the Facebook page or by viewing the advertisement on the links page of my website.

[The above image is copyright by Al Smith and The LaBaL (c) 2010]

Mystery Magazine for January

The third issue of the new British magic periodical, Mystery Magazine, was delivered this week. Editor Walt Lees and publisher Paul Cooke are certainly pulling out all the stops to provide us with an all colour extravaganza on a monthly basis.

This month the president of The Magic Circle, Jack Delvin, discusses his career and the present status of modern magic in a six page interview. There is also a lengthy review of the International Magic Convention which took place last November. If you have never attended a magic convention, then this article will provide you with a taste of what one is like.

The magazine is, for me, a welcome return of what was best about Abra (Abracadabra magazine) which closed down last year. Paul Cooke, owner of Magic Books By Post, has updated the Abra style of the magazine with an all colour format. The magazine even has its own website with an easy online method of purchasing single issues or a full subscription. While not Abra, it is apparent even after only three issues that it is becoming something more than that and I look forward to seeing what it is like by the end of the year.

January Updates.

The book The Art of Iugling by Sa Rid, 1612, has been delayed. This has been because I found copies of Sa Rid’s other book Martin Mark-All and I’m including the text in the book to be published. The delay is not a long one. The publication date is now in February. The publication of Hocus Pocus Junior will be not be that long thereafter.

Publication of the first book, and any other book, of the Ancient Greek Drama Series has been suspended for an indefinite period. One of the plays was converted into a film script and I await an answer regarding the option being taken up by someone. I personally do not see it happening but with agents being what they are I am patiently doing as I am bid (for a while) before inevitably forging ahead with my own plans.

I’ve neglected uploading more videos to You Tube. This has simply been down to lack of time. The winter months kept me busier than I expected. The promised videos will begin to be uploaded soon but not at the rate I hoped. I have some academic research which begins in February and which continues through to the summer and this will mean focusing my time on what is absolutely essential. So editing and uploading videos has to take second place for a while.

Entertainment Defying Acts

This week the BBC broadcast the film Death Defying Acts starring Guy Pearce and Catherine Zeta Jones. The basic gist of the film is that a fake psychic tries to swindle Harry Houdini out of a $10,000 prize for evidence of contacting his late mother. There were two main areas of disappointment regarding this film.

The first was that the writers did not appear to know very much about Houdini. It was almost as if the story was about another magician entirely. As it turns out, the original writers had a story that did not involve Houdini at all but, as usually happens with the many handed interference - sorry, contribution - of a production team, one of the main characters became Houdini. After which there was very little obvious consultation of any authoritative biography, of which there are many. They instead used the popular urban myths about Houdini that have been bandied about since his death.

Would the film have been more palatable if a fictitious magician was used? Not really and that was the second area of disappointment. My wife Jill, who knows nothing about Houdini and therefore could not be put off by any form of representation of him in a film, was quickly made so bored by the film that even the dreaded washing of the dishes had a greater allure for her. Followed by any other activity she could think of to do. The pace and plot did not particularly grip our attention and the actors had little room in either to have the opportunity to make us feel any empathy for the characters they portrayed.

[The above image is copyright by the film-makers]

Carmina Burana and The X-Factor

The X-Factor occasionally uses a piece of classical music named Carmina Burana composed by Carl Orff. The lyrics are from a medieval poem Oh, Fortuna. However, some talented Smart Alec's on the Internet have created a game called misheard lyrics. Below I've embedded a video of some one's misheard lyrics of Carmina Burana. [This was brought to my attention by Tweets regarding Richard Wiseman playing the video at a comedy venue.]

Drag Me to Hell and the Lamia

This week, one of my birthday presents from my wife was the DVD of Sam Raimi’s Drag Me To Hell. I have always liked Raimi’s films and so I enjoyed watching it. There were two good aspects to this film. One was that is was a modern reinterpretation of the basis of the plot of the classic 1950s film Night of the Demon (in itself based on a ghost story by M. R. James). The other was how the story was told and the dénouement. Of those things, I should not write of them here because it is unfair to anyone who has not seen the film yet.

My only criticism of the film is Raimi’s holding onto little visual touches that go back to his early films and may even be an injoke reference to them. There are only a few but their timing produces a comical rather than chilling effect. If they had not been included I would regard the film as a modern horror classic; as it is, those brief moments ruined the chilling, on edge, hairs tingling on the back of your neck type atmosphere that the plot works so carefully to create.

The evil in the film is a fictional one made up by Sam and Ivan Raimi; in giving it a name they chose the word Lamia, which is from ancient Greek mythology and bears no resemblance to what appears in the film.

The precise nature of the ancient Greek Lamia is somewhat fuzzy. Its incorporation into the literature of later civilizations involves them moulding its qualities to the ideas of their own time. A near modern example is John Keats’ poem Lamia, where the creature is hinted at being somewhat vampire like. Unfortunately, during the nineteenth century the vampire was becoming a popular image in literature and just about every mythological being that had very little information to suggest its nature was being pigeon-holed under the label of vampire.

In the myth, there was only one Lamia (rather than a generic species of vampire) – a beautiful mortal woman who was one of Zeus’ lovers. The story goes that Zeus’ wife, Hera, was prone to dishing out harsh punishments on her husband’s lovers and their children; in this case Hera would murder each child that Lamia bore. It eventually drove Lamia mad. She became insanely jealous of women who enjoyed motherhood and she began murdering and devouring their small children. Somehow, and mythology seldom goes into details, this activity changed Lamia into an immortal monster who preyed upon children. Later use of that story was to present Lamia as a bogey-woman, a means to scare naughty children with the threat of her coming to devour them if they did not behave.

[The above image is copyright by the film-makers]

Telephone Land Line Now Fixed!

Just to let all concerned know that my telephone land line has now been repaired. My apologies to anyone who was inconvenienced over the weekend.

Landline Problems

Our telephone land line is not working properly and our service provider states it could be next week before an engineer will be available to repair it. The delay is understandable, considering the amount of engineers that must be busy reparing the damage that the storms caused in the UK recently.

So if anyone has been trying to reach Jill or myself by our land line telephone number and not getting through, then please phone my mobile number instead.