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Vlad_77 Inner circle The Netherlands 5829 Posts |
So Café members...
Why haven't you bought this yet? Go ahead, I will wait. That's right, push that little "pay now" button at Lybrary.com. Mhmmm. NICE clicking technique and excellent wrist action. Your wrist turn pass would have made the late Master Bruce Cervon weep. (Okay, maybe not ) Anyhow ... Let's talk about this feller Liam Montier and this here book called Cardio. Liam Montier is one o' them there members of the Cameron Francis-Dave Forrest crime families. I aint fooled no how by them there Celtic names. (Well, David is a Hebrew name, but, he IS Scottish) And I AINT fooled no how by their wanting us to spend our beer money for this here strong magic they sell at us. (How fun if this is first post ANYONE has ever read from me!!!) I work 23 hours a day at Mortenson's Manure and Millinery Manufactuing, Ltd. I have 15 chil'ren and 4 nanny goats ta sustain. So, I gets a bit weary of havin' ta click that pay now thingy. Hmmm... enough of that Cardio is the new release from Liam Montier. Liam Montier has contributed effects to the works of the above mentioned ne'er do wells and has collaborated on an excellent e-book with Cameron Francis called Released. Cardio is Mr. Montier's first all out cards book, and it is a winner. Now, if you are looking for Marlovian 18 out faros followed by 10 Jason England Greek Deals and a Vlad spring flower production from a Lota Bowl, look elsewhere. However... If you are Jonesing for some really commercial magic, you really owe it to yourself to snag this puppy at 15.00 USD. There are seven effects and all are strong, and very well structured. Montier comes from the Bannon school of magic: economy of method with MAXIMUM impact. His crediting is sound, and, I LOVE the fact that he is a fan of Stephen Tucker! So, here is what you get my lovelies: Purchasers of Francis' Moment's Notice 4 have REALLY love "Ace Thang", which is based on Richard Sanders' "King Thing." Liam has as his opener in this book "The Other Thing" Here is the effect (all descriptions verbatim): THE OTHER THING “Is this a regular pack? I see you have the Jokers in here; I’ll just pop them in the case for now. Ok, so what I wanted to show you was this sort of ‘challenge’ thing that I have been working on, where I try to find all four Kings in a random time frame. First of all, let’s check that they are evenly spaced out, to make my job more challenging…” The deck is spread through, but at least three of the Kings are together in a block, so they are removed and the deck is cut into four. Each King is placed on a different pile, and then each packet is cut, before they are all shuffled together into a big heap. “With the Kings lost, here is where the random time frame comes in. Whatever the top card happens to be, will be my time limit in seconds. Picture cards count as ten!” The top card is turned over to reveal, say, a Seven, which is placed aside. “Seven seconds isn’t too bad. To make it a little harder for myself, I’ll put the deck in my pocket, and find the Kings from there. Do you want to do the timing and give me a countdown?” The spectator sounds counting down, but it is obvious that you are having problems, and by the time she reaches zero, you have only found one King from your pocket. Or so it appears… “Wow, that was close. I didn’t think seven seconds would be enough to grab and hide all four, and I was right… I only had time to hide three of them!” The King in your hand is tabled, and then you reach over and lift the card case, revealing a second King! The tabled Seven is snapped face up to reveal that it is now the third King! “You will never believe where I hid the last one…” Very slowly and cleanly, you pick up the card case and remove the two Jokers that you placed aside at the beginning. Spreading them reveals a single face down card between them, which is the final King. The method is diabolical and I see myself using this as an alternative to Ace Thang in a strolling gig. The effects are similar, but the methodologies are quite different. The kings are produced with the deck out of play. No duplicates and NO palming. POP HOFF “So now I am going to try to find your card with a process of elimination. Did you choose one of these? Crap. Forty eight to go…” A card is selected and returned to the pack, and the four Aces are removed and displayed. “Ok so we have four Aces, and there are four suits in the deck, so one of these Aces will match the suit of your card, and that will help me narrow down my options.” The four Aces are counted and then held in your right hand, in ‘palm’ position. “Let’s leave it up to fate. You didn’t choose a Club, Heart, or Diamond, so you must have picked a Spade! Is that right?” You remove three of the Aces from your palm, just leaving the one that matches the suit of the selection. Then you open your hand to show that the Ace of Spades has totally vanished! You are just left with the other three Aces. However, just a touch on the tabled pack causes the Ace to visibly reappear on top of the tabled pack, face up. “Excellent, so now I know the suit of your card that makes it much easier to find. In fact, I will try to find it with just one hand!” You pick up the deck and flip the Ace of Spades face down, and then perform a fancy one handed cut. “However, I never said WHICH hand…” All attention is called back on to your other hand, which was holding the Aces. It is now just holding a single card – the selection! This is a joy to work through, and Jennings fans and/or those who love the opening sequence of the movie Shade will especially love a specific sequence in this effect. BACKHAND SLAP “Cheating in cards is all well and good, but it is pretty easy, especially changing the cards in your own hand. It is manipulating other people’s cards that is the difficult part! I’ll show you what I mean.” The pack of cards is spread out and the spectator removes a card and remembers it. You tell them to imagine that it represents the ‘hole card’ that they need in their hand. The card is then returned back into the pack. “Alright, so now I’ll take out a random hand that you might get dealt. Keep an eye out – is your hole card in here? No? Ok perfect. Hold onto these for a moment.” The five card packet is shown to consist of just five random cards, and none of them are the selection. The spectator holds onto them. “Ok, so what was your hole card? I will see if I can get it into your hand!” The spectator names, say, the Four of Clubs. You remove one card from the pack, and take it into classic palm, openly. Then, with one sharp slap, you knock all of the cards out of their hand except for one, which is their chosen card, face up in their own hands! “The Four of Clubs isn’t a great hole card in a game of poker, to be honest. But then, sometimes it doesn’t matter if the other four cards are good enough…” The other four cards from the spectators hand had fallen face down onto the table. You snap them face up one at a time, to reveal that they have changed into the four Aces! Here, Liam uses a wonderful old reveal that many of us have forgotten and dressed it up into a miracle. The handling is well structured and everything is perfectly motivated. THE SWING OF THINGS “Ok, now to try something a bit more groovy and a bit ‘New Age’ but first, grab a card and show it around to everyone.” A spectator removes a card (and signs it if you like) and shows it around before it is replaced into the pack and shuffled. “Now, here is where the ‘New Age’ part comes in. Do you know what this is?” You remove a pendulum from your pocket, and show it around. “It’s a pendulum. They can be pretty dangerous! I know a hypnotist who hypnotized an entire room full of people with one of these. Then he dropped it! He said ‘SH*T’… and it took 3 days to clean the hall! That’s totally not true. They are actually used to divine things, from the location of valuable items to the sex of a baby. So I got to thinking if it could reveal a card…” You shuffle the deck and show the top card, all the while making it clear that you can’t see the face of it. For example, say it is the Seven of Spades. “Here is how I think it works. Basically, I say something about the card, and it will swing in circles if I am correct or in a straight line if I am wrong. Let’s try it.” You start by asking the pendulum the colour, and then the suit, and finally the value of the card, and it reveals all the information correctly, leading you to the Seven of Spades! “It’s not bad! I think it could tell us your card much faster though…” The pendulum is then just touched to the back of the tabled Seven of Spades, and when it is flipped face up, it has changed into the spectators selection! I REALLY like this one. A LOT. Even if the effect description will have led you to a method, the handling in this is something very special. Read it and you will see what I mean. Suffice to say that I would NEVER have used this approach until I read this effect. Do NOT pass this by. TWISTED “Of course, most magicians do tricks where a card is picked and then they find it. I’m going to try something twice as difficult as that though, so I need two cards chosen!” Two cards are removed, noted and returned back into the deck. “Now, as this is twice as difficult as most tricks, I’m going to need a warm up. I usually do a work out with the Aces, so I’ll do that first.” The four Aces are removed from the deck and cleanly twist face up, one at a time. “Ok, I think we are good to go. Hold onto this Ace of Spades for me. Put your other hand on top, make sure it can’t get anywhere, because I’m going to use it to find both the chosen cards”. The spectator holds the Ace of Spades as directed, but you immediately remove a single face down card from your pocket, and turn it over to show that it is the Ace of Spades. Checking back to their card, the spectator finds it has changed to the first selection! “One down, one to go…” The Ace of Spades is then touched to the remaining three Aces, which fuse together and change into the second selection, leaving you totally clean! Thank HEAVEN!!! Twisting The Aces with a REAL ending that is not contrived!! Again, direct methodology for a STRONG impact. What more could you ask for? (Well I would ask for a date with Shakira) SCAM ROYALE “Oh, before we start, I will need the Aces for this next trick, so let me take them out now to make sure you don’t choose one.” The four Aces are removed from the deck, and the spectator chooses a card (say the Ten of Spades) and it is placed back into the centre of the deck. “Now the idea of this one is to cut the Aces into different parts of the pack to search for clues and hopefully each one will land next to a card that will tell me something about yours!” Following actions to words, the four Aces are cut into the pack, one at a time. When you spread the pack, the Aces have caught three cards between them! “Excellent! They have three cards. One will tell me the colour, one the suit, and the last one the value of your card! The first card is black, so you must have picked a black card right? The second one is a Spade, so now we just need the number, which is a Ten! So you picked the Ten of Spades!” The bemused spectators agree, as all three ‘clue’ cards turned out to be duplicate Ten of Spades! “Ok, I’m happy to admit, there is a little bit of cheating going on here. I don’t have three Ten of Spades, so I will play it straight with you from now on…” Using the Ace of Spades, you flip the tabled packet of duplicate selections face up and spread them out to reveal they have changed to give you a royal flush! Delicious approach to an effect in Stephen Tucker's all dancing all singing Chicanery magazine (The sequel to the all knowing all seeing Spellbinder magazine.) REALITY BURP (note: I cocked an eyebrow at the title. Gastronomic emissions are best kept in the pub or ... ) “Have any of you guys been hypnotised? I’ve been playing around with it, it is a great way of getting away with not doing stuff! I’ll show you what I mean. First of all though, I’m going to take out a couple of cards and leave them under this case.” Two spectators each select a card, and then they are genuinely returned to the centre of the deck. “Now, it is going to be tough to find your cards in the pack, as I have no idea where they are. So, instead of having to find them, I’m just going to make you think I did. If it works, it will look crazy!” You spread through the pack and remove four cards. You then ‘hypnotise’ the first spectator, and show him all four cards, one at a time. He admits that all the cards look like his chosen card! “Well that is pretty crazy. What card did you select?” The packet then changes into four duplicates of the second spectators selection! “Of course, I can’t leave you in this hypnotic state as every card you see in the future will look the same! Let me snap you out of it, and you will see what these cards really are.” Having removed the ‘hypnotic state’ you deal through the packet showing that it actually consists of the four Kings, which are placed aside. “As further proof that you were hypnotised, do you remember the two cards that I set aside from the beginning? Any guesses?” The spectators usually guess that they must be the selected cards, but there is one more kicker coming. Turning over the tabled cards, it is seen that they are the four Kings again! The packet that was the Kings is now shown to be the selections, set off to one side. “Ah, sorry about that – sometimes you do get a kind of ‘reality burp’ side-effect!” Inspired by a Dave Forrest routine. See the connection? The EVIL? The coolness of this effect? So .... The e-book itself is very well written. Liam explains pretty much everything you need so the necessity for running off and finding 34 sources to explain the sleights is not necessary. The typeset is clean and quite easy on the eyes. The photographs are clear and thank goodness are on the same page as the description of the move. For me that is a MAJOR "YES!!!". Did you ever get that situation where you have your hands in a contortion which not only makes turning the page or scrolling the mouse wheel virtually impossible but also could get you beheaded for said contortion in certain countries? Well, you won't get that here. This is not a "beginner's" book. While the methods are "easy", they are not Mark Wilson Course in Magic easy. You will have to do a little work, but, there is something here for everyone. As to you knucklebusters out there, give your poor hands a break and check out this wonderful book. Now, I have read your minds. No, I have NOT performed these effects for anyone - YET. But, I have read the methods and I have 20+ years as a professional performer that informs me that this is a great investment and that any of the effects are worth consideration for one's working repertoire. Now excuse me while I go look for that pendulum Highly recommended!!!!!!!!! Ahimsa, Vlad |
Vlad_77 Inner circle The Netherlands 5829 Posts |
So, I have seen no response. I HOPE that means people are buying the Montier e-book.
I had a chance today to perform the simplest effect in the book, "The Swing of Things." It hit them harder than a Ken Griffey, Jr. Grand Slam. Now to work on "Pop Hoff" Ahimsa, Vlad PS: Sorry I couldn't think of a cricketeer batsman Liam! |
KyleMacNeill Inner circle 2757 Posts |
I've bought the book, and it is very good!
However, I have Very small hands, and this means some tricks are hards for me - (Some involve P******). However, the book is well written, the tricks are very good, and the overall Ebook is fanatstic. The crediting is also very good. Well done Liam on some more great work! Kyle |
KyleMacNeill Inner circle 2757 Posts |
May I also quickly say, I absoloutely LOVE Backhand Slap! An Awesome trick!
Kyle |
Your Thinking Cap Elite user 408 Posts |
So, I'm considerably late to the party. Regardless, I wanted to take the time to share my thoughts. There's not really much I can say without echoing the thoughts of those above me. However, I will say that the routines are wonderfully constructed and are chock-full of magic moments. My favorite routine is "the other thing". Liam takes precaution in constructing this routine to justify what would other be frivolous actions. Very Bannon-esque if I do say so myself! Recommended.
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