Reviews: Read What Michel Asselin Is Saying
Metal Bending: the real work
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Michel Asselin (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Saturday 04 January, 2025)
This is not a rank beginner’s product. Yes, it is a little stark, production-wise.
If you are on the market for lessons in basic misdirection and gaze control as well as spoon bending … such a product does not exist.
Yes, it is a little stark. But it is a nuts-and-bolt approach. Anyone capable of performing a coins across routine posesses the misdirective power to perform cutlery bending. What you’ll find on this release will make eyes pop out.
I have seen the original Camirand product. At the time, metal bending methodology was quite secretive. I happened to bump into Patrik at the time. I saw him perform that material successfully for formal groups, other magicians, and even a skeptical branch of CSICOP. That Patrik - who is a friend by now - would fool them was a given. He also managed to entertain them.
So you already know about metal bending, and wonder if the material is novel to you?
Depth-wise, the material resides between Ben Harris’ Gellerism Revealed (which is unfindable) and Ben Harris’ Bend it Like Geller … but it adheres much more to the former than to the latter.
This video is about doing. Performing.
An Evening With Charlie Miller
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Michel Asselin (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Saturday 11 February, 2023)
This title is much more a Masterclass than a simple book.
Buried within this gem is a gimmick-less version of the Sympathetic Cards. From Nate Leipzig to Jörg Alexander, Orville Meyer and Derek Dingle, performers went the way of the gimmicked cards. Charlie Miller went… sleight of hand. And it works, it is sound, it is wonderful. And Robert Parrish, the author, does explain the thinking behind this approach.
The first item is a real nugget. Mr. Miller takes an early version of the coin matrix - the two covers and four objects trick, detailed in Henry Hay’s The Amateur Magician’s Handbook - essentially a 2D tabletop effect - and morphs it into a 3D extravaganza which is a deception of the same order as Bob Read’s Bottle Production. With hats and mugs. And hats are coming back in fashion…
You’ll learn an open billet peek, a Sun and Moon variation, and some card effects. Again, with integral dissection from Mr. Parrish.
Highly recommended.