Oh goody looks like I am the only knuckle head pausing live TV to start this thread before any one else.

so honest question. from the preview it looks like a lot of stuff we have all seen before
franz burned illusion
lance back stage (although I do love this one)
finney card on forehead
and then correct me if I am wrong but the Twins said that NO ONE has ever performed the sawing in half before with clear boxes but did not the pendragons do this first.

any who I love that the award show is back and going to un pause live tv to watch the rest of it.

I know I am coming off as a complainer before the show has even goteen 15 minutes out but really OH wait I get it. we magicians have seen this stuff before but lay people most likely have not. oddly enough more magicians are probably watching then lay people.

ok going to shut up now and open it up to the floor

what are your thoughts on the show.

good points?
bad points?
how can we improve it for next year?
how many of us are stealing a routine from the show tonight:) LOL
sam

I love how joeseph gabriel uses his assitants rathere th en tables. so clean and so polished although it looked liek there were a snag or two but the audience never saw it.
sweet performance!

When did it aired and where ?

Oliver.

One of the assistant (Katalin Czekman) is his wife.
You saw her act abot 20 minutes later.

Best,

Las

On My TV Nov 19, 2009 at 8 PM. It was 2 hours long.

The "no one ever used clear boxes before" for sawing a women in half is just showmanship. I don't think you want to start giving credits out during your show.

Anyway...that is the best version (I also saw the Pendragons do it) I ever saw. I have no clue how it works.

Rich B.

Kat is SEXY.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE Barry and Stuart, and I've seen all their stuff about 20x, but still I loved seeing them again. Same with Finney's routine. Great.

Was the Teen Magician of the Year using a knock off Losander table, or was that a Losander? I say this because it looked really cheap AND he picked it up with one arm at the end. I don't know how it works but isn't it supposed to give the illusion that it's heavy?

Michael

The Awards show was posted in the TV section and under Tied Up section congratuating Ms Mogan on her excellent job.

I love levitations and none was shown.

I like some of the other older Awards shows much better!

I felt they hurried Morgan. I did nt like the rush feeling there was no build up. but I am glad to see her onthe show. I saw her and bundy over the weekend at a magic convention we were both attending.

I agree Dennis the older shows had a much better quality to them and a fun feel.

I am still glad they are producing them.

It didn't appear to be a knock off. I believe it is a model that he no longer sells. I couldn't find it on his site, but I know he used to sell one like that.

Sure, it's most of the same acts we've seen over and over again. The important thing to remember is that there is magic on television. This time around they are professional acts, no exposure and its fun for the whole family.

More good magic on television brings us all more work. Bad magic and exposure brings us all down.

I've only seen part of the show and I enjoyed what I saw so far.

Steve

Does anyone know if there will be any clips of this online? Or where I could find them? I would have loved to have see it, but due to my unfortunate locale I was unable.

Scott

I missed it too. Hope they re-air sometime.

Be careful before being too harsh with people over props used in this show. I know that at least one of the performers (Morgan) had to work with a prop the production company had found and hired in for her. I guess others might have been in similar situations where they specified a prop but it was the producers that sorted out the particular item which was used.

I won't say too much because I think Morgan might be going to explain the story in her blog, but from what she's already posted in the Café it sounds like she really was dicing with death on the Table of Death. Serious respect to her for going through with the performance.

Tommy Wind, new teenage magician of the year, presentation is horrible. I saw him live at the trickzone theater in AC and he knows nothing about showmanship and tries to be "a big illusionest" with a floating table. Kyle is much better.

The first clips of this years (2009) Magic Awards have appeared on youtube!

Ed Alonzo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HlfvI3ozNw

Katalin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lwh9BIDjt0

Joseph Gabriel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvSz5FAiAU4

Enjoy...

I DVR'ed the WMAs last night and in some cases, it made me long for the days of World's Greatest Magic and the Copperfield specials on CBS (And Lance's specials on NBC as well). Here's my two cents:

Right off the bat, my issue with the WMAs was always the premise. The awards show premise has given us a bunch of longer-than-necessary painful segues from a lot of actors and celebrities that we could've done without. In the days of Robert Urich, Alan Thicke, John Ritter... all of them were written to be funny (if not a lil' more than slightly corny) but get out of the way of the magic. And they did that quite well. Some of the "presenters" with the WMAs made me want to bash my skull in with the nearest heavy object (which was probably my Mak Magic Genii Tube).

The problem with variety magician specials is that you almost always get the Greats mixed in with the "Meh" performers who do other peoples' magic worse than the originators. One in particular was the teen magician category (Which was pushing the term "teen" when you're 19... it reminded me of the Saved by the Bell cast trying to pull off sophomore students in their 20s... just odd). All the performer did was Losander's table with his basic handling. It just didn't seem original enough to me to merit air time. (I write this with an obvious bias that I love Losander's work and just spent 5 days with him here in CT... but there's still merit to the opinion). I'm not bashing this kid, he did the levitation fairly well, but the performance didn't show me anything about the magician. Also, starting the special with the "Twins" hurt me a little because there were a lot of things they did that make me cringe with disbelief. I'd be surprised if at least a few people went "Is THIS how the special's going to be? Maybe Flash Forward is still on."

A great example of people making it their own was Barry & Stuart doing Kevin James' bowling ball. This was the first... and I mean the FIRST, time I've seen this effect done with originality and character without copying Kevin James' routine. And I've been subjected to this one a lot. So that was particularly refreshing (but I expected nothing less from them).

Some acts we've seen before but remember, that some of the acts were seen on TV over a decade ago (Like Frewin's Shroud Metamorphosis) so its getting to a new generation of fans, hopefully.

Aside from a few mediocre acts, my other issue is the lack of quality of the special itself from a technical standpoint. They did improve from previous years (the station I watched it on managed to properly synch up the audio to the video this time) but its still on this less-than-quality network. I would love to see a magic special like this get the quality funding and network it deserves, but I greatly understand this may be a pipe dream. Gay Blackstone and all the producers are doing their best, and for a good cause, too. And that's great.

One final little nit pick is with Joseph Gabriel's act. The bird act was great, as I expected, but then he did the taxi appearance. Which seemed like a complete non-sequitor. "Bird, Bird, Bird, Birdcage, Big Bird, TAXI...what?" It just seemed disjointed.

So all in all, it was a pretty good special. It wasn't great, but there were enough greats to make the special pretty good. Cut the fat of the "Awards Show" premise and you'd have pretty close to great special.

Just my thoughts... take it for what you will. I've performed a lot of magic and have an obsession with magic specials so please understand where my point of view is coming from.

I enjoyed the show. It wasn't perfect, not by any means, but at least it allowed most of the routines to be seen from beginning to end with few edits for time.

My only real complaint is the commercial for the next Masked Magician special about half-way through the broadcast. Talk about crass!

The twins in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wcZF97f9vY

The clear sawing (clearly impossible) that they use is the Pendragons version build by Bill Smith (Daniel Summers builds them now)
The Bo staff was build by Roy Shank

I thought the show was pretty good...Did anyone else see the blatant flash in Franz's Illusion where he changed the bottom halves of the two women???

I've been looking forward to this show for weeks now so my expectations may have been set a bit high. But overall, it was entertaining and hit the mark. The one greatest improvement to made though would be to get rid of those "celbrity" presenters; they were awful!