David Blaine's "Street Magician" show is now on TLC

[ConsAreLiars]

I don't get the recent stunts, but this part of his work is stunning to watch. Recommended to all who know only the silly stunts, and to those who know and appreciate his earlier work.

[SmileyBoy]

1. His street magic is really good.

Although those inhuman stunts are just a ploy for attention, IMO.

[ConsAreLiars]

2. The reactions of the people to seeing "miracles" happen before their

very eyes is what makes this work of his so powerful. The show opened with him fanning through the deck and asking the TV viewer to pick a card - worked on me.

[begin_within]

3. You took the words right out of my mouth. That was a great magic trick.

I love his street magic, but his stunts are ruining his career.

[Whoa_Nelly]

4. My son showed me how to do the levitation trick

Piece of cake..so easy...and brings David Blaine down yet another notch in my already not so admiring opinion of him.

I think he's boring...

[pokerfan]

5. There's nothing wrong the Balducci Levitation effect

That is a solid illusion. All magic tricks seem pretty trivial once you learn the secret. You didn't really think he was levitating, did you?

My beef with him is that he uses camera tricks. Towards the end of the show he is shown clearly levitating with both feet off the ground (probably using wires) and then the audience reaction is edited in. That is clearly cheating in my book. He is talented enough to not stoop to that level.

Street magic is a great concept in that it purports to use genuine audience reactions. But there is also the temptation to use the editing room to make things more than they seem.

Walking up to someone and asking them to pick a number between 1 and 1000. OK, he finally found someone who picked 333. 333 is probably a pretty common choice. (I was thinking 999.) But I wonder how many failures he taped before success.

The 4h trick for the camera at the start of the show. It worked on me too, because the 4h was the only card really visible when he riffled the deck, most likely because that card was slightly longer than the rest and the camera dwelled on that card longer than the others. It was also the last card visible. I watched it again trying to pick any card but the 4h. They simply were not visible.

Pick a number between 50 and 100. But they must be even digits and the digits must be different. Well, right off that leaves out the fifties, the seventies and the nineties. Is zero an even digit? Doesn't matter, most people won't pick it anyway cause it doesn't feel random enough. So we are left with really just six options: 62, 64, 68, 82, 84, and 86. So you have a one out of six chance of getting it right and you can leave all your mistakes on the cutting room floor, a luxury a stage magician does not have. And 68 is the only number where the digits are arranged in ascending value. That was the number I picked when I saw the show the first time. Maybe there is something psychologically satisfying that makes it more commonly chosen. But it doesn't really matter since you can leave all your failures on the cutting room floor.

I think he's clearly talented enough to not have to rely on camera tricks. I love the reactions he gets when he's simply performing illusions straight up, like when he was with the Cowboys football team.