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50 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Magic At A Bargain, May 29, 2003
You may have caught some of "street magician" David Blaine's act on his TV specials that had limited runs. Not too worry; "David Blaine: Fearless" gathers them all up, and throws them all onto one DVD, and then some. You can generally find this DVD priced the same as "discount" DVDs, so you won't be paying the normal $20 plus that DVDs command.Blaine's amazing tricks are super-cool but wouldn't have held their own displayed merely in a Vegas showroom; it's the who and where that makes this DVD special. Blaine often performs his tricks up close and with plenty of audience participation, to an extremely diverse set of people. He bites a quarter in half and spits it back to make it whole in front of some LA street thugs. He performs his famous levitation at the Dallas Cowboys training camp, sending Deion Sanders running, his wits barely intact. He pulls various "pick a card" tricks on a pair of grandmothers sitting on a bench, despite their initial declaration that they're not into magic tricks. A bunch of soccer girls at a rest stop scream with glee when makes a name appear out of ash. Blaine even ventures into a remote South American jungle, where an tribe that has been mostly isolated from civilization serves as the challenge; the only way he can communicate with them is magic, but will "pick a card" mean anything to them or impress a culture with no concept of quarters, Aces or Spades? Blaine adapts and amazes them by squeezing drinkable amounts of water from random places or making a ball multiply within a closed fist. He does this again with other journeys to foreign areas. Many of Blaine's tricks are true head-scratchers that will leave even the most cynical viewer amused. I've already described a significant amount of his simpler tricks, so I'll leave the rest for the DVD to show, including an act that is more endurance than magic: fighting hypothermia and mental breakdowns as he remains encased in an ice prison on a busy sidewalk for a couple of days. He has a different sort of charisma; he's so laid back but you still get the sense that he truly treats magic as an art, not as an attempt to hoodwink you; but at the same time he isn't so overly serious that you can associate with him. This is a great DVD to have; magic is an all-genre, all-gender thing. You can pop "Fearless" in anytime at any setting, be it a small gathering, a big party, or in your portable DVD player while waiting for your flight at the airport. There's very little filler material, which is a good thing; they've packed in as much material as they can. A must-buy for anyone.
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