Ben Earl Trick Artist

[chrislafferty]

Anyone catch this last night on channel 4?

I love Ben Earl's stuff, the initial advertising campaign had me a bit worried that it was gonna be really standard, compromised-the-material-to-appeal-to-mass-audience type stuff, but thankfully Ben really pulled it off, even the few things that were fairly standard had been reworked into something really original (See his completely OTT presentation for cards across), and I was pretty pleased overall by it. Some really cool stuff.

Any thoughts anyone?

 

[Josh Burch]

I like Benjamin Earl. His thoughts on card magic are great. I'll have to check it out. Are there supposed to be more episodes?

 

[chrislafferty]

Yep, it's a series.

 

[Jay Adra]

I've always liked Ben's stuff and his thoughts on magic so was excited for this new show. I enjoyed it.

I'm probably in a minority here, especially in the public of laymen, but I would've been happy (perhaps happier) to see 50 minutes of card routines Of course you can't do that for a TV show and I enjoy watching great card workers perform a lot more than most people.

But I'm excited for the next episodes in the series.

 

[formula]

I was a little disappointed. It had more story to it than David Blaine or Dynamo but that also made it a little bit boring. It didn't really offer anything new and some of it was set-up, poorly. Not that the average person would know.

 

[Keitha]

Anyone catch this last night on channel 4?

I love Ben Earl's stuff, the initial advertising campaign had me a bit worried that it was gonna be really standard, compromised-the-material-to-appeal-to-mass-audience type stuff, but thankfully Ben really pulled it off, even the few things that were fairly standard had been reworked into something really original (See his completely OTT presentation for cards across), and I was pretty pleased overall by it. Some really cool stuff.

Any thoughts anyone?

How can you say that his effects are original? Dynamo turned inanimate objects into butterflies in his show. It's annoying to see what appear to be weighted reviews about the show. They are not furthering magic, they are furthering repetition and unoriginality in magic. So what if the settings are different...does that mean if he does cards across while jumping between 2 camels next week it will be 'original'??. I totally disagree that the material was not compromised to appeal to a mass audience...what on earth has jumping from one car to another got to do with cards across??? It is totally irrelevant and totally compromising the effect. It distracts from the beauty of cards across and therefore weakens it. All the focus is on a Tom cruise style stunt. Also in cards across the effect is so much stronger if the spectators have a feeling that you have (within reason) not been travelling back and forth between the two packets, thus unable to manipulate the outcome...this key point is totally missed as the focus of this piece is the travelling between the 2 spectators. This is taking magic back to pre Vernon.