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TELLER GRACES NEW CLIP FROM DIRECTOR’S CUT..

TELLER GRACES NEW CLIP FROM DIRECTOR’S CUT..

“A deranged lunatic named Herbert Blount (Jillette) donates a large sum of money to to land himself on the set of a crowdfunded horror movie starring his favorite actress, Missi Pyle. When it appears the director is not doing the film justice, he steals the footage and abducts Pyle in order to create his own better version. It all unfolds via the director’s commentary over his new and improved version of the film.
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Teaching: Just Like Performing Magic..

Teaching: Just Like Performing Magic..

Education, at its most engaging, is performance art. From the moment a teacher steps into the classroom, students look to him or her to set the tone and course of study for everyone, from the most enthusiastic to the most apathetic students. Even teachers who have moved away from the traditional lecture format, toward more learner autonomy-supportive approaches such as project-based and peer-to-peer learning, still need to engage students in the process, and serve as a vital conduit between learner and subject matter.

Teachers are seldom trained in the performance aspect of teaching, however, and given that every American classroom contains at least one bored, reluctant, or frustrated student, engagement through performance may just be the most important skill in a teacher’s bag of tricks.

I asked Teller, a former Latin teacher and the silent half of the magical partnership known as Penn & Teller, about his years as an educator, and the role performance played in his teaching. Teller taught high school Latin for six years before he left to pursue a career in magic with Penn, and in the 40 years since, the duo have won Emmys, Obies, and Writer’s Guild Awards, as well as a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. As our conversation meandered through Catullus, Vergil, Shakespeare, and education theory, he explained why he believes performance is an essential, elemental aspect of effective teaching.

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The first job of a teacher is to make the student fall in love with the subject. That doesn’t have to be done by waving your arms and prancing around the classroom; there’s all sorts of ways to go at it, but no matter what, you are a symbol of the subject in the students’ minds.”  (Photo: Wikipedia )

Read more… http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/01/what-classrooms-can-learn-from-magic/425100/

“The Long-Lost Houdini Movie Escapes Extinction”..By Teller

“The Long-Lost Houdini Movie Escapes Extinction”..By Teller

I’ve read bios of Houdini all my life, and they all give the impression that Houdini — though he was an electrifying presence onstage – was a dud in the cinema, a posturing ham in whiteface. Not wanting to mar my hero’s image, I’d avoided those films.

But recently a virgin print of the long-lost film The Grim Gamewas rediscovered in the estate of Larry Weeks. I’d met Weeks at magic conventions when he was in his 80s — a wiry, goateed leprechaun with a beret and a wicked grin. He’d take my arm with a broad, tan, bone crushing grip (he’d been a juggler in his prime), and pull me aside to chat about Houdini. He’d obtained the print directly from the Houdini family and shared it only with his closest friends.

The Grim Game was Houdini’s third major movie venture. He’d botched a first attempt, then learned the ropes of the new medium by starring in a fifteen-part serial The Master Mystery shot in Brooklyn and bristling with his signature stunts. In the course of shooting, he’d suffered seven black eyes and a broken left wrist after he fell off a swinging chandelier, but during that time he’d learned to act for the camera. He wrote, “The smallest movie star can make the biggest spoken stage star look like a nickel before the camera, especially if they do not know the angle of the lens.” He was ready for Hollywood. Read more..

http://eatdrinkfilms.com/2015/11/26/the-long-lost-houdini-movie-escapes-extinction/