My impression was the audience member was “forced” to pick Scuba Diver (hinted at in Penn’s commentary) - I assume he was wearing the wetsuit under his clothes, and the tank was doing double duty to inflate the balloon?
I assume the balloon trick deck was just a deck full of scuba diver. I’ll let smarter people figure it out.
I don’t think Penn was suggesting the scuba tank had other costumes. I think he was saying it served a purpose - hiding his clothes. Remember when he walked out he had regular clothes on and when it popped his clothes were gone.
Ah, that makes more sense than my idea
Oh and about the switcheroo…the hand is fake. Penn makes that pretty clear when he says they are doing “more than four handed magic.”
It’s definitely 100% a forced card for the scuba guy. Here he is performing the exact same trick from a show in the UK last year. Again, scuba diver is the punchline. I do wonder what happens if you don’t get the scuba force because the host reads too far down or the audience member picks from the bottom.
Just saw the latest episode of Masters of Illusion and Leon Etienne performed the cranking your body in half gag. Exact same deal. I still feel like there’s not enough room for someone to be crossing their legs in the top half (even though he’s a svelte guy), but the bottom legs are definitely fake and don’t seem to match up in side view. Also, they do the same infuriating edit before he exits the contraption, but I’m guessing they probably cover him up with a sheet first while the fake legs are replaced (which is how the act started).
Shin Lim is truly amazing. :eek:
Not only is his act classy (no speaking, synchonised music, appropriate use of smoke), but he fooled Penn and Teller again.
Hard to say. The little silver doodad is a noticeably odd feature on a knife. Coincidence?
At the end of the trick, she holds the final knife up and shows it’s retractable without apparently holding anything special. Could it be a toggle lock/unlock thing rather than a button you have to hold to retract? Penn’s comments with the final drop was vague but potentially suggested to me the dropped knife was a distraction from the stab (either visually, or even perhaps audibly). She isn’t holding the stabbing knife in a way I’d expect for a stabbing.
All that said, if all of the knives were potentially retractable, I would think it would be incredibly difficult for the blades to be perfectly stable and sturdy in the hilts and have no wiggle at all such that P&T couldn’t tell. I could be wrong but they’d have to be very well-built props if I am.
The P&T talk seemed more aimed at the cards themselves being manipulable. She does initially display them in an odd way. I believe we’ve seen other acts use this way “1…2…3…4…” all with one hand, and then card 5 with the original hand… but I forget the implications/magic move that we determined this led to. I suspect it’s more likely a case of marked or forced cards.
On Shin Lim, the most interesting thing to me is what he was practicing when he severed tendons. Sounds interesting.
Also interesting is the claim that he didn’t expect to Fool P&T the first time.
Lovely stuff. I could be completely wrong, but for his initial stuff with the Jack to Ace sets, I feel a possibility of custom cards/props like spring-loaded cards or nesting cards. Towards the end when the cards are disappearing, he makes some deliberate raking motions on the table and I wonder if some of the cards were camouflaged with black velvet backs and he literally rakes them off the table.
In any event, beautiful presentation. Amazingly smooth and haunting music choice.
One day, as an exercise, I will have to watch the thing in super-slomo, but something this great isn’t worth deconstructing
On the scuba trick, the deck almost certainly is all ‘scuba diver’ cards other than the first ten, which once turned upside down are at the bottom of Allison’s spread and difficult and almost certain not to be picked.
The functional tank might be a suggestion that the guy packs his original clothes within the fake tank.
It’s one of those tricks I don’t like because the actual magic part that should wow (how does he know the job?) is not overly impressive or entertaining, and the actual difficulty is in the reveal that could be impressive if it were done so fast that no one should be able to change clothes… but he’s in that balloon for so damn long, I’m not overly impressed that he managed to change clothes while fully concealed by a giant balloon.
On the quickchange couple, when he drops the front of the gold tarp, her hand is clearly swapped out with a substitute (seemingly male) hand while she gets out of the box. The finger tapping seems like a real hand (the fifth hand - “The Thing” that Penn is discussing), though once it grabs the black tarp, it feels like it’s a fake hand on a pivot (it could just be happenstance that it’s so still)… but we see that hand grab the tarp, so not 100% sure, but it’s a minor detail.
I am impressed that the elevated box that appears to be on unlocked wheels and a single pedestal doesn’t seem to shake or move at all during what must be them hurriedly climbing in and out.
I think the knife trick can be explained by Penn’s comments (if I remember them correctly!)
She used the knives as a mirror (and there may be other surfaces onstage to help) so she could see which number was chosen. Once she knows that, it’s trivial to select the right knife.
He can interrupt the host before they read too far down. Also most of the professions on the bottom are professions that wear a generic suit or clothing like artist, doctor, dentist, and teacher. He could have a simple prop like a paintbrush or doctor’s mask prepared in the tank for each in the rare case that one of the bottom cards is selected. The trick wouldn’t look as impressive of course, but most of the time scuba diver will be selected anyway.
Hmm. And if someone did pick dentist, maybe it would become a tank of nitrous oxide!
Misty Lee: So many ways to rig the whole effect. All of the knives could have been retractable, perhaps a magnetic latch or even gravity activated latch to avoid any obvious manipulation. The selection could have been forced as well.
Shin Lim: Incredible once again. So many effects happening nearly flawlessly as someone already mentioned he just needed one that P&T couldn’t pick up on. At one point the camera pulls back and you can see him holding a card in his right hand, sort of wobbling it around, and in slo-mo you can pick up that it has a black back. Possibly there are holes or slits in the material of his work surface where he can pull cards out of or drop them into, but he’s so good he may not need that. He’s clearing dropping cards off the back of the table, maybe grabbing some there, in and out of his clothes too I suppose, but he’s just to good to be detected in every move he makes.
Gladwin: Somewhat entertaining trick. Not sure if the tank was solid or not but obviously scuba diver was the only choice he could follow up on.
Hatfield: Non-impressive version of Metamorphosis. Just different enough from the typical trunk version to be mildly interesting.
I’ve seen Johnny Thompson perform the short version of his routine on TV for decades, with he and his wife aging over the years. Great entertaining act, more magic than seen in many comedic performances, his bird work is fantastic. Johnny is one of the FU producers that determines whether P&T have been fooled. Great tribute to a great pair of performers by another great pair. It has to be mostly Teller since it’s a silent act. I suppose Penn could have been the assistant but the highlight of the act is ripping the assistants dress off, I suppose Penn could have been stripped for comedic effect but it wouldn’t be a real tribute then.
I haven’t listened to it yet due to work, but apparently all our guesses are incorrect about the chicken. The magician who did it has been listening to the show and reading forums (maybe this one?!, hi if you are) and says no one has gotten it yet. Nothing to do with UV or special paper. Apparently it also fooled Johnny Thompson. So I am completely clueless.
Interesting. I’ll have to watch the episode again.
Was the chicken watching what she wrote?
Since it’s a successful show that appears to be well-liked by the magic community, it’s a great way to get exposure. I suspect that doing a really cool trick that gets you a number of good bookings is better than coming up with something that fools them but doesn’t really look that good. There have been a couple of foolers that got the trophy but didn’t get accolades from P&T, and I suspect they didn’t have as happy of a follow-up as the people that did a fairly standard trick really well.
Matt Johnson: Houdini escape act. Simple and classic. Sounds like Matt wasn’t familiar with Seven Keys to Baldpate but did get it when they asked about the keys.
Siegfried Tieber: Fooled me at first. I thought it was a waterfall force as well but it wasn’t. The cards aren’t shuffled at all so he could have memorised the order and then simply peaked at the bottom card while look at Allison. The rest is just then straight showmanship.
Jason Fields: I’d love to see the rig for this. Sounds really neat.
Jessica Jane Peterson: carnie trash! Penn sure loves to say that. Article is upside down and thus you always have the same last word.
Week behind again…
Misty Lee (knives): My first thought was that she simply looked at the cards she threw back in the box and thus could know easily which remained in Louie’s hand. As for the knives, I just figured the retractable one had a small difference she could see. Penn’s comment made it sound like the card has an indicator on the back she can see, as well. I was wondering about the knives also being retractable (maybe something like, rotate the small bit at the bottom, like a pen, and it can suddenly retract as well?) but I’m hoping that P&T would’ve checked the knives closely enough to tell.
Shin Lim (cards): Pretty damn impressive, especially for someone who had two of his thumb tendons severed.
Andi Gladwin (scuba bubble): I assumed force from the get-go, a bit disappointing if that’s all it is. I think the comment about the scuba tank (it looks a lot like a backpack to me) is just saying that’s where he hid his clothes.
Hatfields (switch box): While the actual trick isn’t super impressive, I think the physical ability needed to quickly switch is still good. Is it a fake hand or a real (third person’s) hand? I was wondering if you could do something with magnets or something, but probably easier to just do a third person (looking at videos on Youtube shows a version of the trick where they do reveal a third person eventually, kinda giving the trick away…)
In 1986 P&T used plants, so it required no skill at all. Today there is video and computer technology that could actually do the processing in real time, but I assume they are still using plants. If so, color me unimpressed.
Penn has said that one reason they are doing old tricks is to ensure that they have them in glorious HD. They did this pit in the 80s on SNL so the quality is crap. I think Penn talked about it more on the episode I linked to.