Reviews of products by José Prager
1 ★★★★★ reviews
2 ★★★★★ reviews
Duplo: drawing duplication
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Leslie Warren (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Wednesday 06 September, 2023)
The video is easy to follow but a little difficult to hear. There is music playing while the explanation is being given. I tried this and it does work. A simple drawing or one number or letter is easy to see.
Ahead
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Christian Fisanick (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Sunday 10 December, 2017)
Three masters of mentalism each give you a routine using a classic mentalism technique. For me J. Prager's routine of divining the first number of a spectator's credit card and the first number of its PIN is the best, most useful one in the book. I was familiar with the thinking behind this (It's in one of Thompson's Naked Mentalism books), but had never thought to routine it this way. Once you read how it's down, you'll be able to do it immediately with two pieces of paper, a pen, and a spectator with a credit card. It's excellent.
Peter Turner uses the same technique in a prediction effect, where you give someone an envelope a week ahead of time and tell them to bring it along with them later for the demonstration. This one shows Turner's clever thinking, but even he admits, it's really for promotional value or auditioning for a job since it is a one-on-one routine.
Lastly, Luke Jermay gives you his oldest close-up routine, again using the same ancient technique. Little wonder, he's been using it so long: It's just a variation on Cassidy's Name and Place routine, spiffed up a bit. You might find Jermay's subtleties to your liking--or you may not. In any event, there's nothing new here.
In summary, this will probably be worth your while if you use Prager's routine and at least one other. I'm going to add Prager's routine immediately to my wallet repertoire. I already do Name and Place and would like to do Turner's prediction routine if I ever find a situation for it. So for me, it was a good, but not earthshaking, purchase.
Evil Twin
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Christian Fisanick (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Saturday 28 October, 2017)
There are many business card peek wallets and cases on the market. The are generally nice and cost money. There are also a number of gimmicked business card stacks like Paul Carnazzo's PacStac, Looch's Hollow, and Luca Vulpe's Emotional Drawing. They are great, cost next to nothing, but take time to make. And then there's J. Prager's Evil Twin, a stack that costs pennies and will take you five minutes to construct. Like one other reviewer said, I laughed out loud when I saw where the construction was going. The method is genius, pure and simple. And better yet, unlike the other DIY stacks, if Evil Twin wears out and gets raggedy, get some new business cards, glue stick, and tape, and you'll have another one in under five minutes. Watch the video once, and you'll never have to watch it again. It's that easy.
This is my new business stack peak. Highest recommendation.
The Man Who Knows How to Amuse and Mystify
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Christian Fisanick (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Tuesday 11 July, 2017)
A quick look of the contents will reveal a plethora (as Dee Christopher says) of routines, forces, subtleties, peeks, imp pads, anagrams, theoretical concepts... I started reading, and just about every time I went to the next page I thought, "Wow! That's terrific. I'm adding it to my repertoire." When I got to the end, I discovered that I had a whole lot of things to add to my repertoire--and I wanted to go through the book again. This collection is clearly a labor of love from years of doing practical mentalism. And unlike a lot of propless "maybe it'll work; maybe it won't" stuff, this material is straightforward and direct. For example, Jose takes a classic psychological force and makes it virtually miss-proof using a principle that you will probably be familiar with but hadn't thought of using in this context. Later in the book he details how to reveal things effectively. Now I am a big fan of the way Luke Jermay thinks about this topic from his DVD Making Mind Reading Look Real so I wasn't expecting much new. I was wrong. The revelation stuff is great. And you get bonus effects from Dee Christopher (one of my close-up favorites of his, Falling Coins) and Peter Turner. You will spend a lot of time studying this ebook. Guaranteed.
Don't be put off by the price tag. Prager's Magnum Opus is worth every penny. Highest recommendation here for the best mentalism book of the year so far.
Liebrary
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Christian Fisanick (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Saturday 16 April, 2016)
Over the past few years, I've looked at a few dozen smartphone effects. None of them really work for me because they all just scream, "The app does the effect." With ebooks now being commonplace, an ebook test seems entirely appropriate. And this one is terrific. It looks suspicion-free. There is no special app involved. Have somebody pick one of seven PDF books (no shenanigans here, it's a free choice) and then punch in random page number (also a free choice). You immediately can predict the first word on any page in any of the seven books. (Well, almost every page...) The method is ancient, but the styling is new. For a modern close-up book test, with just a little bit of audience management, this is fantastic. Heck, you can even keep the ebooks in cloud storage and download the chosen ebook to the spectator's smartphone or tablet and use his PDF reader app. Did I mention that the entire method takes about three sentences to explain? At 15 clams, this is a bargain for the minds you can blow.
Watch-ing
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Pablo Amira
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Monday 08 December, 2014)
José bought my routine "2 Thoughts" one day. The other day he releases "his routine".
He took away the power of my routine and offer a weaker version, without adding any value.
Support the original routine.
Watch-ing
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Alfonso Bartolacci (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Monday 17 September, 2012)
I am really disappointed...big giants of mentalism ( ? ) that write in the review.."mixture of subtleties", "manipulating people's mind", "mind control"...where happened all tihis stuff in this routine ? Two steps of recycled thought, old material about old force about old plot, nothing about presentation, nothing about what to say or how to justify the movements....only a trick...try just to have a spectator that FEEL the difference of the stem pressume the first and the second time.....where is "manipulating people's memory"? Which row of which page contains such incredible psycological subtleties? But please.........!!!!!
Duplo: drawing duplication
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Phil Reda (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Saturday 21 July, 2012)
All I can say is WOW! An old classic reworked - Bravo!
Another winner for Lybrary.com and Mr Prager - I also have his Cliff download - check it out also. I will definately be purchasing more of Mr Prager's material
Swipeit
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Bradley (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Wednesday 06 June, 2012)
I purchased the original short manuscript for SwipeIt when it was first released and I have now had the chance to read this new, updated edition.
First of all I found the new technique for the secret move to be great and I love how it looks much cleaner than the original version.
As well many of the contributions are great. I particularly enjoyed Mauricio Jaramillo's contribution "Words" and have been playing around with his principle for a while now. Also "iShiner" and "iThumper" are great ways of using the iPhone as a utility device for different effects.
All in all this is a great ebook and well worth the price.
I will be using SwipeIt for Remote Viewing and Ebook tests the next time I get the chance.