Yeah, that one to me looks like it actually is a needle going through the arm, and I see no reason to suspect trickery, necessarily.
See, the thing about David Blaine is he really does do some crazy stuff.
That swallowing water and kerosene, and spitting it back up, was real, I believe (and I’ve seen film of other people doing it before). So have some of his endurance stunts been real (I call bullshit on the block of ice, but whatever).
So when he does something like a needle through his bicep, it’s harder to reject the notion out of hand than it would be with, say, David Copperfield.
Still, that *had *to be a trick. I just don’t buy that you can put a (fat) needle through muscle without lots of blood and serious damage to the muscle. And the fat needle, too - it’s so clearly a magician’s tool. That’s not like anything you would ever have that’s intended to pierce skin.
I haven’t gone back and looked closely. Is it that much bigger than the one used in the video I posted above? Because I would agree that this would tip the balance marginally away from the “he just did it” hypothesis.
ETA: Just looked again. They look pretty close to me, though the 240p video makes it a little difficult. But if the Blaine skewer is bigger, it’s not by much.
Oh, hell, I don’t know. They’re both hard for me to watch.
I still think it’s a trick. You do realize that hundreds of magicians do this and it’s a standard part of the magic repertoire, don’t you? Do you really think that all of them have trained with a master to learn how to relax their muscles in a special way or do you concede that magicians are good at fooling the public? Why is it even part of the magicians bag of tricks if it’s a real thing? Do you also think that women are really being sawed in two?
Not the way it’s apparently done there. I’ve seen the “rubber cement” or whatever version of the trick.
Blaine seems to me to be a mix of magician with some hard-core endurance stunts. The obvious answer would be mixing in reality with the magic makes it harder to discern which is reality and which is magic.
Now, I don’t know one way or another–it could very well be a trick–but it’s hardly implausible. I’ve seen “real” versions of this in real life using normal sized needles. This, admittedly, is a bit bigger than a normal size needle, but that NatGeo special convinces me it’s quite possible.
So what about the hundreds of less famous magicians who do it? Don’t you also have to account for them? Or are you actually making the argument that they’re all fakes but Blaine and Blaine only does it for real?
Show me the version of the trick they do. This is the one I’m familiar with. This seems quite different from the Blaine version.
I agree. Show us another magician doing it through the bicep close up.
Having watched and investigated a lot of magic tricks, I can assure you that Blaine would not have handled and cut the orange if the 9 of hearts was in there the whole time. There’s 100x more wow factor if Ford cuts it open/pulls the card out with Blaine standing at 5 yards the whole time.
Also, what “trouble” is there in handing someone a reverse color deck? I couldn’t think of anything less troubling for a magician to do.
The “trouble” is someone noticing the difference. I don’t think it’s necessary. He’s good enough of a magician that, no matter how the trick was performed, I don’t think he would have to resort to that kind of risky trickery. There’s plenty of ways to do it that would not require a reverse deck, so I rather doubt the reverse deck was involved.
That’s a great point.
And while I’m neither here nor there about whether the card was in there the whole time (I think it’s plausible it wasn’t, and he could have slipped it in there somehow, even though I’m not sold on that myself), it’s not unusual for a magician to offer up “red herrings” as to where the trick was performed by handling certain things themselves, without there being trickery involved. Leave the audience guessing as to where the trick was performed, and all that.
Sure, and if that’s how the trick were performed, that leaves only very limited possibilities as to where the trick was done. The only conclusion can therefore be the card was in the orange the whole time.
I hadn’t considered the benefits of leaving the method ambiguous. But doesn’t he do a lot of tricks where there’s pretty much only one solution? I’m thinking the shop window stuff and the levitation.
I actually don’t know. I’m not that familiar with David Blaine. But what I’ve seen from magicians myself is that the goods ones tend to keep us guessing, leaving several avenues for trickery, but us not being sure which one was taken.
Anyone care to explain the trick where the woman randomly dealt cards into two piles, and each pile ended up either all red or all black?
The deck was top half red, bottom half black. As she deals cards, the bottom part of each pile was all red, and the top part all black. Blaine’s keeping track of where card 26 is in his mind, so he knows how many reds ended up at the bottom of each pile. It’s clever reassembling of the two piles where it looks like he’s just pulling up one pile and then the other that makes the piles come out all red and all black.
Was the trick just described in the previous post linked to somewhere in this thread? I missed it…
I think that’s one of the easier ones to explain. First he deals with the black pile. Notice how long he collects them and neatens them up and brings them over to the edge of the table…? And then they go outta sight behind his hand for a tiny fraction of a second. He then flips over some of the black cards he just snuck in, but doesn’t go through the whole pile. Then he puts them together with the “red” pile and fans them out on the table.
I just watched the whole show for a second time and I will say, tbh I was blown away after the first viewing. The second is a LOT less impressive. It becomes very obvious how much is edited out. Some thoughts:
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After seeing the NatGeo video I have no problem believing that’s exactly how he did it. In fact, what’s interesting is that the final words of the show are Ricky Gervaise saying exactly that, in a show called “Real or Magic?” I think it’s a nice touch.
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I don’t believe for one second that any of the celebs were confederates in any way. I do however think there were confederates, particularly the woman who got the ripped piece of a card (or dollar bill? can’t recall) out of her purse (or some case or something).
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I suppose the doctor could be a confederate, but I doubt it. Assuming he’s not, it seems the ice pick through the hand is a lot more difficult to pull off than through the arm. I’d like a doctor here to weigh in on if it’s even plausible through the hand without any blood.
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The mentalism is definitely what I feel most clueless about. Ford looks through the deck and has enough time to go through the whole thing. (not sure if there were other cards missing as well, but it looks like a pretty full deck from what we see). I don’t understand how a force could work. ::snipping my thoughts here because I must sleep::