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Penn & Teller: Technology has morphed the magic act

Penn & Teller: Technology has morphed the magic act

From USA Today  –  SAN FRANCISCO — Leave it to Penn and Teller. Ask the fabled magicians about the impact of technology on their craft, and you’ll get answers as wonderfully disparate as the tall and garrulous Penn Jillette and the short and mute-on-camera Teller.

“There’s no doubt the Internet has made magicians better technically,” booms Jillette, 59, in town Tuesday with his partner to be honored at Sketchfest, the annual comedy festival.

He explains that in magic’s early days, secrets were passed down through mentors. “Now, the entry-level price is an Internet connection and a deck of cards,” he says. “You can teach yourself this stuff (through online tutorials), so what we’re seeing in terms of close-up and sleight of hand is breathtaking.”

Teller, 66, focuses his lens on the topic differently…

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Warden at jail where David Blaine performed magic act is fired

Warden at jail where David Blaine performed magic act is fired

By Jamie Schram for the New York Post..

The warden wasn’t laughing at David Letterman’s “Top Ten List.”

The boss in charge of The Tombs was fired over the David Blaine magic show for inmates — because the city Department of Correction commissioner was furious it became the butt of jokes by the late-night funnyman, sources told The Post.

Commissioner Joseph Ponte gave the ax to Warden Antonio Cuin on Tuesday forallowing Blaine to give a free Houdini-like performance to some of the city’s most dangerous inmates. Tickets for Blaine’s shows usually go for $100 a pop.

“Ponte was pissed about the magic show publicity and that it was on David Letterman,” a correction source said of the performance, which was exclusively reported by The Post.

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David Blaine Uses Magic To Rescue Artist JR from NYPD..

David Blaine Uses Magic To Rescue Artist JR from NYPD..

By Benjamin Sutton for ArtNet News..

Street artist and photomuralist JR owes magician David Blaine, big time. Were it not for the magician stepping in and performing a trick on an NYPD officer, JR might have ended up with a fine, or worse. As the artist related in an Instagram post, he and Blaine were out for a joyride this morning—the magician on his motorcycle, the French artist on his mobylette—when they were pulled over by the police…

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PENN JILLETTE AND “WIZARD WARS” MAGICIANS EXPLAIN HOW MAGIC WORKS AND WHY IT’S STILL RELEVANT

PENN JILLETTE AND “WIZARD WARS” MAGICIANS EXPLAIN HOW MAGIC WORKS AND WHY IT’S STILL RELEVANT

By Dan Solomon for Fast Company..

If you think about it for more than a few minutes, the fact that magic is still a popular form of entertainment in 2014 is kind of surprising. When the first magic theater opened in Paris in 1845, people had few opportunities to see the impossible. Right now, without leaving your chair, you can watch a lifelike giant lizard stomp the hell out of San Francisco; you can control your favorite football players on a photorealistic gridiron; you can send a message around the world in seconds flat. With all of these things in mind, the idea that magic is still relevant to people seems hard to imagine.

But magic is relevant. Top magicians still sell out theaters, Hollywood scores regular blockbusters with films about magicians, and–as evinced by shows like SyFy’s Wizard Wars and the CW’s Penn & Teller: Fool Us–the reality of an illusion crafted by sleight of hand and misdirection can catch our eyes even when that same screen could also be used to show big-time special effects.

No one knows magic–and how it stays relevant–like Penn Jillette, and he can trace the evolution of the form in recent years from David Copperfield (“he had a debonair quality that magicians jumped on”) to Doug Henning (“he created the kind of casual hippie magician”) to current stars like David Blaine and Criss Angel…

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