“Penn & Teller Ring Someone’s Neck,” and Magicians and Card Sharps…
Here’s episode 12 of Penn and Tellers ‘Fool Us’.. in its entirety.. featuring Victor & Diamond, Francis Menotti, Nash Fung and Chad Juros. ..
How do magicians work their way up the Las Vegas ladder?
By Mike Weatherford – Las Vegas Review-Journal
Magicians like to turn things inside out, and two of them are doing just that to the conventional rules of working one’s way up the Las Vegas ladder.
Mike Hammer demonstrates that you don’t have to move to move up. And Dirk Arthur proves he belongs on a big stage — even if belonging there isn’t the same as earning the right to be there.
Both of them remind us that if you think magicians are interchangeable, you haven’t been in Las Vegas very long.
Arthur and his exotic tigers and leopards ended up, almost by default, on the stage where Elvis Presley once sang. In recent years only two small venues were available to his traditional and increasingly old-fashioned illusions show — O’Sheas and then the old “La Cage” showroom at the Riviera — and both of them cut his tenure short by closing their doors.
But he found the Westgate also in need, after an ambitious plan for Elvis-themed shows went south. New management was suddenly in the mood to lease the showroom operation to the producers of Arthur’s show at the Riviera.
When he reopened in late August, a lot of people were right to ask how Arthur can fill a big theater when he couldn’t fill a small one. It’s still not a terrible question, but two things at least explain the logic. Read more..
Penn and Teller Are Revealing How Their Magic Tricks Are Done — And It’s O.K.
As one of the few humans on Earth who un-ironically calls himself a “TV magic obsessive,” let me tell you, there’s never been a magic show on television like Penn & Teller: Fool Us.
I approach the show from several perspectives. As a layperson, it’s entertaining as hell with a clear-cut premise. Fool Us is a magic competition on the CW Television Network in which performers try to fool Penn Jillette and Teller as to how their trick was done. If they succeed, the aspiring magicians win an opening-act slot in the duo’s longtime Las Vegas show. The show has been a surprise ratings hit in its Monday primetime slot, averaging 2 million viewers (it’s been renewed for a third season).
I also watch the show as a guy interested in magic since age six. I’m comfortable saying Fool Us has advanced the art form within popular culture better than any televised magic show in recent memory. The variety of magic subgenres given the spotlight is encouraging for those of us who don’t perform with live tigers: there’ve been acts of coin and card magic, mind-reading, escapology, quick change (where costumes transform in a flash)—even a man who solves Rubik’s cubes, magically. Read the interview..
No hard feelings after split with wife, Vegas magician says..
By Norm Clarke – Las Vegas Review-Journal
The magic went missing in a flash from the marriage of magician Murray Sawchuck and his British wife and stage assistant Chloe Crawford.
“For me, it came out of the blue,” Sawchuck said Tuesday. “It happened overnight. It was like an avalanche.”
The split, after a three-year-plus marriage, came last week when they jointly filed for divorce in Las Vegas. Crawford is 27, Sawchuck 42.
Crawford, who has appeared in his Tropicana show and as a topless dancer in “Fantasy” at the Luxor, flew to New Jersey this week, he said.
“I know she definitely wanted to push her career forward,” he added.
She got a huge career break in June when she became the first female magician to reach the semifinals of “Britain’s Got Talent.”
“I hope this is the start of me being a magician in my own right,” she told the London Mirror. “I love the dancing, but there’s only so long I can carry that on for.”
Her disappearing motorcycle act was a hit, and her appearance generated a lot of headlines in her homeland.
“The taste of fame can be a bit like a drug,” Sawchuck said. read more…