(Hank) Moorehouse 1934 – 2011 - The Society of American Magicians

At this point in the DVD, we have not yet reached the half way
mark! The marathon continues with Gun Slinger. Jim draws a
cowboy on the back of a spectator’s card. The card is bent vertically
and placed on the card box so that it is standing up. Jim
makes a gun shape with his hand and pretends to fire the weapon
at the outlaw. The card falls over as a loud bang sound is heard
and a hole is now found through the card. This routine has a nice
Wild West theme. The appearing hole in the card is a nice touch
to round out this routine.
Breaking away from card magic, Jim borrows a bill, folds it
into a small packet, waves a hole-puncher around the bill, and
when the bill is unfolded, many punched out pieces fall to the
table; the bill is now seen to have the words “Happy B-day”
punched in it. The bill is handed back as a souvenir. This is definitely
something different from your standard effects with money
and is my favorite item on the DVD.
We are next treated to a classic Ring and String routine using
a borrowed ring and a leather lace. There is nothing new here, but
it is a nice routine. Continuing with the classics, Jim performs a
Coins Across routine using five coins and a glass. Jim concludes
the routine with the production of two large coins and one jumbo
coin. Again, there is nothing new here, but it is a well-routined
version of a classic of magic.
As I was watching Jim perform the next routine, Fire Ball, I
could not help thinking I had seen this before. A piece of tissue
paper is torn into four pieces and rolled into a ball. The ball is
pierced with a large needle and held over the flame from a lighter.
The paper busts into a flash of fire. As the fire subsides, the ball of
paper remains in a ball. The paper ball is removed from the large
needle and opened up. The paper is found to be restored to one
single piece. I remember this effect, in a smaller scale, as John
Bannon’s trick Shriek of the Mutilated. During the explanation
of the effect, Jim credits John Bannon. Jim has a slight variation
of the handling that is designed for the larger tissue paper. This is
very visual magic. I loved the effect when I first read about it from
Bannon and I really like how Jim has made this effect play bigger.
Jim presents another quick effect called New Age Spellbound.
This routine uses a small black stone that is turned into a diamond
(clear stone) and back to a black stone several times. This one is
really quick and is great for walk-around magic. In Mathamagic a
spectator selects a small block of cards and is asked to count them
in a special manner. Before the spectator finishes counting the
cards, Jim has the spectator guess how many cards he has. In this
case, the spectator guesses eighteen and Jim guesses twenty-one.
The spectator continues counting and finds that he has eleven.
The cards are handed to a second spectator to count the cards;
he counts fifteen. The cards are handed to a third spectator for
counting and he gets twenty-one cards. The first count is a little
fishy but the second and third counting sequence is very straightforward.
Jim’s inspiration for the routine comes from a Paul
Harris effect. This is a very different effect with a pack of cards.
There are twenty-three effects, routines, and bits of business
covered on this DVD. For the most part, the sleights needed to
perform the material are not very difficult and the material can
be performed by the beginning-to-intermediate performer. Jim is
obviously a veteran and everything is well thought out and honed
through many hours of performance in front of live audiences.
He is a very good teacher of the routines presented. For the
most part, there is nothing new here, but there is a lot of
very solid magic and a couple of gems that are great for the
working professional or the casual performer. Boost your
close-up magic repertoire with a dose of twenty-three
effects for only $34.95.
The minoTaur Final issue 2-dVd seT
by dan harlan and marV leVenThal
Available from: www.danharlanmagic.com
Distributed by Murphy’s Magic Supplies
Price $60.00
revieW by miChael Close
Sadly, one of my small pleasures in life has been taken
away from me. For many years, whenever I happened to be at
the same magic convention as Marv Leventhal, I took great
delight in shouting at him (preferably at a distance), “Where’s
my Minotaur?!” Marv and his partner (in the publishing sense
of the word) Dan Harlan put out a very nice magazine in the
1990s, called Minotaur (half magic, half bull). The magazine was
published quarterly and ran for eight volumes. The frustrating
thing for subscribers was that the final issue, Volume 8, Number
4, never appeared. At the various conventions, after I had stopped
shouting, Marv always offered
apologies to me, but the world
(as it is want to do) moved
on, and the final issue never
showed up.
Until now. The boys
have released The
Minotaur Final Issue, a
two-DVD set that fulfills
their commitment to subscribers
(and if you were
a subscriber you should
contact Dan through his Web
site) and allows those who never subscribed
to get a feel for the kind of magic that
made the Minotaur such a great magazine.
There are twenty-five effects on the first disc, which is labeled
the Feature Presentation. These effects are a mix of close-up and
stand-up effects, magic and mentalism, with a variety of props.
Not everything appealed to me (nor should it), but there were
several items I liked very much, including Harlan’s Cupside Down
(a full cup of coffee is placed in a small bag and inverted – no
coffee is spilled) and Royal Plushy (a full-deck stack that delivers
a winning poker hand to the dealer regardless of the number of
hands requested). I’m sure you’ll find several things that will
appeal to you. Interwoven between the tricks is a storyline
concerning a Dan Harlan look-alike robot. To be honest, I fastforwarded
through all of those.
The second disc contains eight bonus effects, one from each
of the eight volumes of Minotaur. Again, you’ll find a variety of
effects, and one or two are sure to appeal to you. The second disc
also contains several files of interest and usefulness: three indexes
covering all eight volumes (by issue, by the name of the trick, and
by the creator), some photographs taken during the video shoot,
and files that are needed for a few of the tricks.
I have only one gripe about this product, and it is not really
a legitimate criticism; I can’t complain about what a product
isn’t, anymore than someone could complain that pigs don’t have
wings. Things are what they are. But, for those of us who would
have liked to have put our file of Minotaur to rest, it would have
been nice to at least have prepared a PDF file of the final issue
of the magazine. This would have allowed collectors to print out
the final issue and bind it up with the rest of the volumes. But,
unfortunately, that wasn’t done, so there you are.
If you are familiar with the kind of material the Minotaur
AUGUST 2011 63