It’s been a rough week, readers. So how about you sit back, relax, and enjoy some curated magic videos courtesy of your old friends at Genii Online.
Tommy Wind appeared on KSNV News Las Vegas to promote the new season of Masters of Illusion which, if I’m not mistaken, begins airing tonight. For the impatient among you, he starts performing tricks at the 1:45 mark.
Jay Sankey dropped another tutorial, this one is for an awesome trick performed with a deck of cards and a firecracker, making it completely illegal in Canada.
Update: I have just been informed that Jay Sankey is in fact Canadian himself, meaning he is a firebrand magician with no regard for the law.
On September 21, discover a place where magic lives. Watch the new trailer for The House With a Clock In Its Walls. This house knows what makes you tick. #HouseWithAClock pic.twitter.com/ev5JYePCBC
— Eli Roth (@eliroth) June 28, 2018
Hostel director, Eli Roth, has never been my cup of tea, but his upcoming adaption of children’s horror novel, The House with a Clock in its Walls looks like it might just change my mind. Jack Black is perfectly cast as a goofy magician, and judging by the trailer, the film seems to lay on the classic performance magic shtick really thick. It hits theatres September 21st.
Breaking the rules is acceptable at #TalentUniversity when it comes to @MatFrancoMagic!
In partnership with @dunkindonuts. #AGTRunsOnDunkin pic.twitter.com/KQxnR0BEha
— America's Got Talent (@AGT) June 28, 2018
Fresh from his victory over gravity itself, Mat Franco has returned to our screens to teach magic and shill donuts. Elastic band tricks are a quick and easy way to fill out a close-up routine, or annoy your co-workers at the office. Learn them.
We somehow managed to miss Piff the Magic Dragon auditioning for Game of Thrones last month. Sadly, a dragon his age will get nowhere in Hollywood without a scale lift. The green screen gag is absolute genius, by the by.
Rob Lake made an appearance on America’s Got Talent. I thought the setup was a bit overwrought, but it went down well with the judges and the live audience. Best of luck in the competition, Rob!
Christian Wedoy also made a splash on AGT (it never stops, folks. It. Never. Stops). We’ve seen him perform with this set up before, albeit in a less dramatic setting, but it’s still amazing to see him and his lungs strut their stuff.
Alex Geiser uploaded a slick, no-nonsense coin routine to YouTube.
And there we have it, a cavalcade of magic to keep the blues away. Stay safe out there, readers.
Jay Sankey is a magical MacGuyver who has designed tricks for big names throughout the magic industry. For the last few months he’s been sharing some nice and simple tricks for free to promote his YouTube channel and merch.
In this video, he teaches us how to perform a trick with a coffee cup and mixing stick that needs scarcely any setup. The trick is really simple, but the real value of the vid is Sankey’s advice on working into and out of the trick, and how to keep people’s eyes where you want them to be. That being said, the only trick I can do with a coffee cup is making the contents of said cup (which is usually coffee) disappear, so I’ll likely add this one to my repertoire.
Jay Sankey is doing work with these trick tutorial videos. In this latest effort, he shows us how to make a marked elastic band disappear and reappear inside of a tuck box, and how to pull an elastic band through a pencil. The tuck box trick is quick and relatively low-key, but with the right set up it could land really well. The pencil trick is a lightning fast sleight that really pops close up, do it with a borrowed pencil for maximum impact.
Be sure to check out the rest of Sankey’s Magic tutorials.
If you were trapped on a desert island, what message would you put in a bottle?
That’s the setup for this simple but effective trick courtesy of comedian and sleight-of-hand magician, Jay Sankey. With just a couple of sleights, you can make your mark’s signed letter appear inside a water bottle. I’m cack-handed as they come, but I managed to get the trick down after about twenty minutes of juggling soggy bits of paper. Pro tip: Dry out the bottle first.
Sankey’s YouTube channel is full of clear and concise trick tutorials and he’s adding to that collection all the time. The video below was uploaded to his channel as I wrote this article. I’ll give that one a go as soon as I mop up this water.