If one of the top magicians in the world gives a class on magic, you better believe Genii Online is going to sign up! In an unprecedented move, David Blaine is doing an online course in (mostly) card magic that the trailer shows will teach good substantial sleights and tricks—the kind that will turn you into what your friends will believe to be an expert at sleight of hand and magic.
If you use this link to the Studio Classroom site you can save $20! 🙂
https://studio.com/david-blaine-magic?friend=richard-kaufman-1
David Blaine has challenged his body over the past decade in ways no other human has attempted before. He has almost died multiple times in these attempts. These challenges are real, not tricks. Do not try at home.
Posted on Facebook by the police in the city of Seguin, Texas, it appears that someone with sleight of hand skills is short changing cashiers at Walmarts around the United States. The poster takes a wry approach, though I don’t know if David Blaine would appreciate the call out. Here’s their post:
By Vanessa Armstrong
David Blaine has an adventure documentary series in the works that will ultimately air on the streaming platform, Disney+.
The show is called Beyond Belief With David Blaine and comes from Nat Geo and Imagine Documentaries. Through the series, Blaine, according to Deadline, will “hunt for extraordinary people—including shamans, fakirs, and magicians who perform magic that defies what doctors and scientists think is possible—and convince them to share their secrets.”
This series isn’t the first time we’ve seen Blaine on television, of course. The magician has had nine television specials, the last of which was 2016’s David Blaine: Beyond Magic where he performed for very famous people including Patrick Stewart, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and David Beckham.
This series is different, not only because it’s a series and not a standalone special, but also because its premise. Instead of undergoing death-defying stunts or performing magic for very famous people, Blaine will travel around the world to seek out magic from other people and cultures. Given Nat Geo is producing it, it will likely have some unbelievable arial shots of different landscapes that Blaine visits.
Disney+ hasn’t set a release date yet for Beyond Belief With David Blaine, though we can likely expect it within the year.
Over on MSN, there’s a neat little piece about David Blaine.
American illusionist David Blaine has spent more than two decades stunning audiences and amassing a notable fortune with his extreme — and even unearthly — endurance feats.
But when it comes to managing his career, he follows one very down-to-earth technique.
“Whenever I make a decision, I always try to decide: Would I do this for $1?” Blaine said Tuesday during a session at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
A good policy if you can afford to work that way!
About 650 magicians gathered in Columbus Ohio this past weekend, amid sub-zero temperatures, to watch magic and learn from one another. Even David Blaine showed up!
Random moments from around the convention.
Read all about it in The Columbus Dispatch and watch the video.
“Make failure your friend, your best friend.” -David Blaine #DavidBlaine
FULL VIDEO HERE: https://t.co/9IQELtfURB pic.twitter.com/N35wbn4eNB
— Chris Ramsay (@chrisramsay52) July 3, 2018
Whatever you may think of YouTube magician, Chris Ramsay, he and his crew know their way around a camera. That skill is in full display in the clip above, in which Ramsay takes some footage of the always amazing David Blaine and gives it a bit of the old YouTube pzazz.
The clip was part of a larger video, or a “vlog” as I’m told by several people who should know better, detailing Ramsay’s trip to see Blaine perform in Montreal. The first few minutes of footage are the usual YouTube-filler: Lots of quick cuts, rampant consumerism, and undersatured holiday footage accompanied by that weird elevator-music-for-cool-kids you hear all over the internet now DMCA take-downs are a thing. The big man himself pops up at 4:30, and that’s where things get interesting. Watching Blaine perform is a pleasure as usual, but it’s really cool to see his work shot with the same rough intensity as modern street magicians, rather than in the tepid style of a early morning talk show.
Blane even drops a little nugget of wisdom for aspiring magicians near the end of the video: “make failure your friend, your best friend.”
The video is above is one of the first tales of magic history featured on Mahdi the Magician’s new website, Before Magic. The site isn’t just a promotional vehicle for the supremely hard-working magician, it’s an ongoing project looking to curate and display examples of top-tier magic both modern and antediluvian.
This first video in the Golden Age section of the website, featuring the impressive emotional range of David Blaine, is a retelling and reenactment of one of the many stunts pulled by Jewish illusionist and magician, Max Katz Breit, better known as Max Malini.
Malini wasn’t so much known for his cup and balls as he was his giant brass ones. He had a habit of approaching celebrities on the streets to perform tricks, and would often take people’s hats or bite buttons from their cuffs without asking. As Blaine explains above, Malini actually blagged his way into performing at the White House using that latter trick.
The site is still technically under construction, so you might run into a few hiccups here and there, but it seems like a really cool project. As well as the screening room, it also includes tutorials, Mahdi’s journal, and a shop where you’ll eventually be able to buy merch, including the amazing Hidden Leaves deck.
Put David Blaine in a room with some needles, a touch of glass, and a live audience, and it’s pretty clear where things are headed. Not to Late Late Show host, James Corden, apparently, who blithely admits he’d love to take part in a new trick. At least before Blaine pulls out the needle and thread.
There’s little left to say about Blaine’s performance – we’ve seen what he can do with a needle before, and he performed a similar trick at the Genii Convention last year – other than the fact I really love how he’s leaning into his his magical weirdo persona on this latest tour. I always found his earlier performances a bit too full of SERIOUS MENTALISM for my taste, but now that he’s willing to joke around with his own mystique, Blaine is quickly becoming one of my favorite performers. His comedic timing is superb as well, like the just-a-bit-too-long pause between “I heard that,” and, “you like glass,” right before he starts eating a large wine glass.
Blaine was promoting his spring and summer tour, David Blaine Live, which you can see dates for here.
I know what you’re thinking: David Blaine’s totally going to pull a card out from under his skin, or swallow a beer bottle, or regurgitate an ant farm by the end of the video, but no. This brief six-minute video from KTLA is just a couple solid card tricks and an honest chat with Blaine about his childhood to promote his show at the Dolby Theatre in LA. While Blaine never loses the deadpan, stone-faced exterior, it’s still nice to see him just do a card trick without any expectation of bodily harm, even though I waited for that final stinger every time he took a sip of water.