Since it's Houdini week and just plainly halloween there will be ALOT of magic on today in television.

I took the liberty of finding most of it for you guys.

Start the day with Penn and Teller on the show "The View." 11:00 AM pacific time. Other people check local listings.

Then at 3:00 PM Criss Angel will be on the UPN network on the show "Tyra." With Tyra Banks. Again pacific time.

At 8:00 PM on the History Channel you can see "Houdini:Unlocking the mystery(or something like that.)" Hosted by Lance Burton with various magician apperances.

Finally you can catch the Criss Angel Mindfreak on regular place at regular time. This time tho it will be an hour long show. One of the effects is "Criss literally jumping into a person literally."Again WHAT!!?Guess we will have to wait and see..... 10:00 PM pacific time.

Again, IF YOU ARE IN THE EAST COAST OR MOUNTAIN AREAS CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS.

Enjoy!

ps. If anyone has anything else feel free to add it!:)

Most of this (Angel) special was shot with a live audience and a good bit of it at the magic castle, like the jumping into a person. Some of it shot with an enormous crowd at his brothers music shop. A cameo by one of the Brady's and another with Jonathon Davis of Korn.

As usual this culminates with a large stunt, being locked in a box and put through a wood chipper with a surprise ending. The entire show has a surprise ending actually.

I liked some of the stuff on this special.

But I don't understand what you mean about the ending of the wood chipper illusion being a "surprise." The magician-escapes-danger-and-appears-somewhere-else plot is old even by televised magic special standards. Hasn't Angel used it a few times himself on the Mindfreak series? It would only have been a surprise if he had failed, but then that would have been in the news the day of the taping.

The Johnny Thompson ending WAS a surprise - and a funny, pleasant one. Probably funnier to magicians who love and revere him than to Angel's audience though.

I have shots (not award winning) from the Halloween special taken at the Magic Shop in Hicksville.
But they will not post.
If anyone wants them I can email them to you.
Harry

I managed to catch everything except for the houdini special for personal reasons.*gotta take the little brother trick or treating.*Plus it was a VERY nice time for my VCR to break*sarcasm*. Yep I am updating to tivo, finally. Ha...

Ok any ways just in case you missed them.

Penn and Teller did Scott Alexander's shattered on THE VIEW. Usual talk show talking then came up from topics of Penn's new book, to the underwater special, and they even talked about Penn's cute daughter Moxi Crimefighter. Overall a pretty cool 10 minutes.

Criss Angel on tyra wasn't very good. Reason being , you see him perform all this mind destroying effects on his special but when it comes down to doing a live performance he does those pretty WEAK effects. I guess its one of the drawbacks of doing tv magic tho. All he did was string thru eye and then a PICK A CARD EFFECT. Yeah I was pretty shocked and how weak that was since angel is so good and could of done so much more.He didn't talk much and all mentioned was the halloween special.

Mindfreak I am sure will get more thoughts here so why bother , he....

Hahaha, I TOO thought the Johnny Thompson thing was HILARIOUS.So did my 11 year old brother. Agreeing here that the surprise ending was too predictable and I had pretty much guessed beforehand and I even guessed the method beforehand too.....ha. I am pretty sure I am right.......might be wrong but I doubt it. Kudos to Criss tho it was a pretty cool illusion.

I liked the rest of the show a lot just because there was so much magic.

Oh well, Cool day on tv.

I agree that the woodchipper illusion was a bit predictable. That aside, I thought the show as a whole was very good -- probably because it focussed on magic, and not "guess what stupid and dangerous thing Criss is going to do today." Very well done, and the first time since the early shows of the series that I've truly enjoyed myself from start to finish.

I thought the show as a whole was very good -- probably because it focussed on magic, and not "guess what stupid and dangerous thing Criss is going to do today."
(Not picking on you specifically Santa Clause-- just using your statement as an example)

While the above statement seems to be the norm that I have seen posted I have to wonder what was said about Houdini by other magicians of his time for doing "stupid stunts" like escaping from a straight jacket or a jail cell while being naked except for a loin cloth.

Now I am not saying that Chris is Houdini...no not by far (at least in my book)

But if you think about it isn't he doing the same thing as Houdini? Using stunts to get his name out there and I am sure Chris's shows might just have more of a crowd. Besides if Chris Angel is as bad as peopel on this board make him then why did they name him Magician of the Year?

Ok now I'll get off my soap box.

The special itself was very good. It seemed to me that this one was a bit more of a get to know me better show. The effects at the castle were well and I actually enjoyed the escape at the end.

And yes nucinud I would like to see the pics from the magic shop

Actually I'm not saying there is something wrong with the stunts -- I personally don't like them. They're not what I tune in for, and I rarely find the stunts compelling. Their purpose seems to be not to mystify, not to enlighten ... but just to say, "this is really dangerous and I'm going to do it". I don't enjoy that. I find the stunts dull. With that in mind, it makes the shows tough to watch when they're about the stunts, with very little magic thrown in.

Again ... personal preference. I'm a magician, and magicians are not the primary target audience. The target audience probably loves the stunts.

I prefer to watch the magic. Criss IS a good magician ... I like to watch the magic. That's why I enjoyed last night's show.

I understand that Wednesday is a "best of" episode, and if it's the "best of" the magic rather than the stunts, I'll enjoy that too. If it's a "best of" the stunts, I'll find it dull. Personal tastes, nothing more.

Again please don't take it as a personal attack. Stunts are boring. Just after reading the posts here on this forum attacking Chris and how bad he is (not that you said that --because you didn't)just got a little frustrated. Again sorry if you took it as a personal attack.

I too hope he does the best of as magic.

Not to worry -- I didn't take it as a personal attack at all. I just thought I should clarify.

There are two best-of episodes for this season. Both are a mix of highlights from the season with about 50% new material in each one. And to placate the "it's done with editing" camp, we revisit two effects and show them totally uncut -- "trashed" is in one episode, "ring in ice" in the other episode. At the very least, I hope they give some insight as to WHY we edit the effects down for time, because they are both too long for TV shows, yet we wanted to show the unedited versions and felt this was the perfect opportunity to do so.

We've been saying that best of #1 is the ideal show for someone who has never seen Mindfreak, with a good overview, and #2 is for someone who has seen all the episodes. Lots of behind-the-scenes stuff and outtakes in that one. Both have a good amount of new magic, as well. Hope you like 'em!

I personally thought that the Mindfreak Halloween Special was pretty good compared to most of Criss's recent weekly specials. I am sure this will make some people mad, but Criss is a much better illusionist/ stage performer, than he is a street performer. His unique style is what magic has needed for a while to spark the imaginations of a new generation of magicians. Look at his Dakolta Chair, Interlude (Scarecrow), and Metemorphisis... he is very talented...I am sick of seeing Criss say the classic street magic gibberish chant "watch, watch, look, watch, are you watching, look.... yada yada...." He needs to get back to the stage! Point made...please ponder!

Back to his special, it was great to see him at the Castle. This is the first time, I have seen the Castle in a TV special in a long time. It puts intrest back into the arts and one of the most distinguished "magic institutions" (per se).

The box/ coffin escape was alright... horrible angles and too much of a hurry; otherwise, it was a cool trick. Don't get me wrong, I like Criss a lot...

It was neat to see Criss go back to "The Magic Shoppe"... I like how he showed the simple effect of passing a pencil through the plexi-glass and then showed how that inspired his larger illusion of passing through a plate-glass window... A little Alice Through the Looking Glass never hurt no one!

Good show though...

Bryan

Just so people know:
"The best of" is really a misnomer.
Correct me if I am wrong Michael as I saw early versions only and we know how much these shows change over time prior to hitting the air, but there is quite a bit of magic not seen before on these shows. Some of them taken from the two episodes that A&E were a little afraid to air due to various reasons and some that did just not fit the format of any of the shows that did air. So there is something new, something old and lots of insider information on these two shows.

I'm curious as to what you mean about the "horrible angles" in the wood chipper illusion.

My take? I believe this one was really designed to be performed for a live audience of "civilians". That being the case, they should have been able to shoot it revealing everything that the on-site spectators could see. So why does the critical (read gimmicked) area drop out of frame at the crucial moment? This leaves the home viewer with an explaination of where he went. Allowing that area to be visible at that moment would fool lay audiences. Too bad.

The other critical portion of the setup (barring a tunnel) would be between the chipper and the truck. This area is never clearly visible on the show but would have to have been gimmicked the same way in order for the live specs to be fooled.

There is another example of what I find grating about this series. At the top of the show, Angel, in voice-over, says something about it being ironic if he were to die in his escape attempt on the anniversary of Houdini's death. This dialogue assumes that the audience is so unsophisticated that they don't know that the show was taped weeks or months ago. However, I recall going to the Criss Angel website, at the advice of someone in another thread, to read what posters there thought about his levitation abilities. If these people are his audience, Angel is working WAY too hard to fool them.

I'm looking foward to the unedited presentations of the two tricks mentioned above which I believe used television techniques to achieve. I thought it was funny that in the magic store segment, when he did the plastic toy frame penetration, there are about a dozen edits while he is doing this simple child's trick. Also, I think some will take exception to his taking credit for "inventing" the illusion where he passes through the glass window.

Speaking of funny, does anybody else think it's funny that he takes his shirt off to do just about every trick he performs except for the Needles From Stomach?

And what's with the Britney Spears "Are you ready?" thing. A Korn fan doing a tribute to Britney Spears?

All right. All right.

Well, those who were using the "EDITS!" theory about the garbage can trick have some explaining to do this morning, after watching an uninterrupted, one-camera shot of the illusion.

By the way, someone said there are supposed to be two "best of" episodes. The one that was aired last night certainly seemed like a season finale, and I didn't catch any mention of a second "best of" show. Did I miss one along the way? Or is "best of #2" going to be a season opener for next season?

Hopefully people start to give Chris the respect he DOES deserve after seeing this special. It was very well done, rivaling some of my favourite specials of all time.

This man IS GOOD. Or else he would not be where he is today.