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Like when he says ‘I won’t use camera tricks’ and then uses a camera trick. Dude is a waste of time. Shame, his super early stuff was fun.
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Aug 18, 2020 12:21
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I still enjoy it, plus it's fun to see the real diehard fans insist he does things like flipping a coin for eight hours to get ten heads in a row. Spoiler, he didn't.
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Aug 18, 2020 13:07
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Old show time: I've been watching The Avengers on DVD, and season 4 - the first Emma Peel/last black-and-white year - is an absolutely brilliant, witty, charming, piece of vintage television... Until you get to the season's final episode, 'Honey For The Prince'. Hoo boy. It takes a rollercoaster ride of "wow, this is pretty racist", to "oh, they're doing a reversal like they did earlier in the year where the person who seems like a racist caricature is actually playing it up to fool the villains", and then goes off the rails with "no, holy poo poo, they're doubling down on the racism." And for fun you get bonus sexism and Steed describing Mrs Peel as "retarded". 
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Aug 18, 2020 15:20
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I've watched all of Diane Morgan's new show Mandy on iPlayer and god it's really bad. It's got stupid tropes (fired from a job and immediately get a new one) and the characters in it are almost like...dreams. Their stories make no sense and the way they interact with the episodes makes no sense. Episode 4 she meets Sean Lock when she's being a naked woman sushi table. He comes into this restaurant with 4 other people - but he chats to her and even gives her a cigarette at the table with his companions saying nothing. He's an expert on fish but doesn't recognise that he's putting his feet into a tank of piranhas. Just...dumb. Not funny, predictable and badly done. It's a shame because I really like Diane Morgan otherwise.
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Aug 19, 2020 21:40
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I don’t think I’ve ever gone from excitement to sadness so quickly as I did reading the first sentence of your post. I’ll probably try it anyway, at least I’m prepared for disappointment now. Maybe it’ll be enough to actually enjoy it!
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Aug 20, 2020 02:42
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EL BROMANCE posted:I don’t think I’ve ever gone from excitement to sadness so quickly as I did reading the first sentence of your post. I’ll probably try it anyway, at least I’m prepared for disappointment now. Maybe it’ll be enough to actually enjoy it! I mean if nothing else they're only 15 minutes long mostly. I'll spoiler this one. In episode 5 she takes David bradley's dog for a walk. She has a big bag of expired meat and she's been taking some weird dietry drug so she passes out. The dog drags her for ages, then she wakes up covered in meat (we see the dog eating it as she's unconcious). She goes back to David Bradley, tells him that she ate the dog. Then she does a dance because she's been hypnotised earlier in the episode. Then it ends on a shot of David Bradley looking really sad. It's just bizarre.
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Aug 20, 2020 08:11
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Sounds like a bad version of that Chris Morris dog-walking short.
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Aug 20, 2020 09:01
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EL BROMANCE posted:Like when he says ‘I won’t use camera tricks’ and then uses a camera trick. Dude is a waste of time. Shame, his super early stuff was fun. He's an absolute fucker and I hate him for this.
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Aug 20, 2020 09:55
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I too get very angry that a TV magician uses trickery.
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Aug 20, 2020 11:21
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Bogmonster posted:I too get very angry that a TV magician uses trickery. I suppose it's the difference between not saying anything, and explicitly stating "I will definitely not be using THIS SORT of trickery to accomplish this trick." When you get caught, then it effectively destroys any of the "magic" that surrounds any of his other tricks at all. There's a specific one I remember where he has a woman in a room overlooking a busy street, and he convinces her that she can somehow make people stop in their tracks just by thinking about them. The whole time he is reassuring her and us, the audience, that there are no microphones or stooges etc. etc. Now that we know how he operates, we know that he is using microphones and stooges, so there is no mystery whatsoever as to how he accomplished it.
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Aug 20, 2020 11:39
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Bogmonster posted:I too get very angry that a TV magician uses trickery. The thing is if the WHOLE POINT is "I'm not doing this thing to make this trick work" and you are using that thing then why bother? It's sort of like knowing for sure a ghost story is fake, or an AITA story is. Sure maybe it's fake but when I'd see it was by Hakan I'd skip it, because the potential realness is what makes it fun and interesting.
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Aug 20, 2020 11:39
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He had a limited time of effectiveness for his 'misdirection with sciency sounding words' gimmick. It was innovative when he first started but its time has passed.
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Aug 20, 2020 11:57
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Bogmonster posted:I too get very angry that a TV magician uses trickery. You ever have one of those moments where you worry that explaining yourself is gonna make you sound more crazy? I'm having that feeling now. But my beef with Brown is that he lies about what he does. If I'm going to see a magician, I'm expecting stagecraft and trickery and theatrics. I know there are lies and trickery, but they're contained entirely in the theatre, and I'm going to the theatre to see them.I might know that the magician isn't actually escaping from a real flaming guillotine, but it sure takes a lot of skill to make that prop flaming guillotine look real. It's almost a game - I know its a trick, and part of the fun is trying to figure it out and failing, because the magician is better at this than I am. But Brown doesn't present himself as a magician, he's a scientific-mentallist. He's whole deal is that he's not psychic or magic, he's using cold-reading and psychology to get inside your head, man. He's like an anti-magician - what he does is real. But then it always turns out that no, it's just stagecraft and trickery and theatrics. His purely psychological shows end up being virtually meaningless - is he actually convincing some random guy the world has ended, or is it all fake? The lies and trickery have leaked out of the theatre, they're now in everything he does and says. You can't trust anything he says, and there's no angle to try and figure out whats real,so there's no reason to engage with it. And then he'll get wheeled out in these almost documentary type shows, explainig the intricacies of cold-reading and stuff, but I can't even trust that, because it's probably part of his act too. The worst one was his lottery prediction show - he claimed to successfully predict the lottery numbers, and then promised to show us how he did it. And then his explanation was complete and utter bullshit. That wasn't the deal! The deal was that we'd marvel at his showmanship, then he'd pull back the curtain, show us how it worked, and we'd all marvel at how incredibly clever the trick was. But instead he gave us a load of nonsense and expected us to be happy with it.
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Aug 20, 2020 12:20
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What is everyones best guess for how he actually does stuff? Its impressive at the least in a twenty year career that not one participant has ever come forward and said it was outright set-up. I think in the zombie one, the one where they push the guy off the roof etc. Its set up in the way that the participant obviously knows they are on a TV show, but still get swept up in everything going on anyway.
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Aug 20, 2020 12:50
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I think he's secretly a wizard.
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Aug 20, 2020 15:08
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There’s a bit at the end of one of his stage shows where he does real memory tricks. It was more interesting to watch and he seemed way more excited about doing them. So I don’t know why he keeps doing ye olde “audience member eats fake glass” trick and tv shows with obvious actors over and over again instead, even he looks bored by it
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Aug 20, 2020 15:36
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Annabel Pee posted:What is everyones best guess for how he actually does stuff? Its impressive at the least in a twenty year career that not one participant has ever come forward and said it was outright set-up. They did the pushing the guy off the roof thing half a dozen times with different people and televised the most interesting one iirc. Having already selected for particularly biddable people to do the whole set-up on, I think five out of the six went ahead with the push.
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Aug 20, 2020 15:40
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All correct opinions about Brown in reply to a post that was incredibly dumb with no attempt to understand the context. Also: I liked Iain Lee’s bit at the end of Mandy but I didn’t really like the series
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Aug 20, 2020 19:07
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I really hope the one about paring down thousands of horse racing bets until they found the one punter that won x in row, was true, because that was kinda breathtaking in its scope.
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Aug 20, 2020 19:24
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Yeah, sorry about that, I was being a bit of a bellend with that reply. But, I like Derren Brown and I suppose I take all of it to be in the spirit of not believing anything. Like, the "no actors or stooges were used" is part of the show and is implicitly part of the trickery employed. I do definitely agree that he's at his best doing stage shows and I've found his TV stuff a little bit tiresome lately. I dunno, it's no different to Paul McKenna's old shows if you remember them. I just can't bring myself to be angry about a stage magician, even one with a specific schtick about psychology, doing magic tricks. Maybe it's me. Edit: on a completely different note, does anyone know where I could watch A Touch Of Cloth again legally? I would have assumed it was on iPlayer or Netflix or something but can't find it Bogmonster fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Aug 20, 2020 |
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Aug 20, 2020 19:24
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Touch of Cloth was Sky One, do they have a back catalogue player? I ended up having to do  for it all, admittedly. Some bits of the first one haven’t dated well, considering it’s fairly recent.
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Aug 20, 2020 19:55
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Derren Brown is at least a good showman so I still like him more than some other famous magicians. Real or fake that bit in the cluedo murder episode where he goes "this isn't even a real police station" and pushes his hand through the wall is just incredible. Whereas last time I watched a David Blaine special he put a skewer through his hand and then was all like "is this a trick or is the real trick that I found out how to put a spike through my hand?" There was also a throughline where he had found an african kid who could store water in their stomach and then vomit it up like a hose and he tracked him down yo learn how to do it too so he could recreate a trick from like the 1800s that used the same technique. Only david was really poo poo at it and when he incorporated it into his act he basically just vomitted water on the ground for like 30 seconds and everyone was too disturbed/concerned to pay attention to his "is this your card" *points at card floating vomit puddle" finisher.
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Aug 20, 2020 23:50
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I went to university with someone that got very offended if you implied that Derren Brown wasn't true to his word because he'd read his books you see and in those books he explained how trustworthy he actually is. Anyone here read his book(s)? I always wondered how truthful they really were, or if they just continued the "no stooges, scouts honour!" line of bullshit
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Aug 21, 2020 00:14
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The only thing I remember about the books is the whole thing about him 'not selling them to you if you're not smart enough' angle, which definitely wasn't a way to generate sales in the same way people share dumb Facebook stuff because it promises them they're in the top 3% because they know a cow goes moo.
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Aug 21, 2020 00:23
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Many years ago the Sun or some other tabloid tried to do an expose on Derran Brown. There was some trick he did with a woman being hypnotised and then waking up in a different country. They had a journalist follow the woman for the entire trip (photos at the airport etc) and it turned out she wasn't a stooge she was actually in a hypnotic but functional state for the whole journey. I've got no problem with him using magic tricks and props but stooges and camera trickery crosses a line somehow. Even moreso than with other magicians for some reason.
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Aug 21, 2020 01:03
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One thing we can all agree on is that Dynamo is utter poo poo.
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Aug 21, 2020 06:20
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James Hoffman did a retrospective on his appearance on Derren Brown which was pretty interesting. It's on his YouTube channel.
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Aug 21, 2020 06:57
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Purple Gromit posted:Many years ago the Sun or some other tabloid tried to do an expose on Derran Brown. There was some trick he did with a woman being hypnotised and then waking up in a different country. In the new special he talked about the Sun or someone doing a story on a guy claiming to be stuck in a chair all weekend after watching that one where he stuck you to your chair, but the end cut off before he saw it lol.
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Aug 21, 2020 07:41
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Bogmonster posted:Edit: on a completely different note, does anyone know where I could watch A Touch Of Cloth again legally? I would have assumed it was on iPlayer or Netflix or something but can't find it It's on Sky/Now TV. Think there's a trial of Now TV you can use.
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Aug 21, 2020 09:37
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If you know someone with Sky you can watch it on their Sky Go with no issue. As long as they subscribe to box sets.thehustler posted:Also: I liked Iain Lee’s bit at the end of Mandy but I didn’t really like the series I genuinely didn't understand the very end of that though. His bit was fine, but the end was bizarre. Like all the ends of every episode almost!
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Aug 21, 2020 11:26
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Annabel Pee posted:What is everyones best guess for how he actually does stuff? Its impressive at the least in a twenty year career that not one participant has ever come forward and said it was outright set-up. It's just well executed bog standard magic tricks, but dressed up with 'I'm not doing magic tricks, it's all clever science/psychology'. The trick is tricking people who think they're too clever to be fooled by magic tricks by saying it's neurolinguistic programming or advanced memory techniques, when it's actually sleight of hand, misdirection, cold reading, etc.
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Aug 21, 2020 16:35
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So I gave up on Mandy a few minutes in, but for a different reason. Yay for just insane arachnophobia. I'm guessing having her job being a spider smasher means they're going to turn up a fair bit, so I noped right out.
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Aug 21, 2020 18:12
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Akuma posted:Anyone here read his book(s)? I always wondered how truthful they really were, or if they just continued the "no stooges, scouts honour!" line of bullshit I've read some of his books, they're quite interesting as long as he doesn't try too hard (one of them was written from the perspective of someone doing a trick on an evening out, interspersed with old tales... it wasn't very good). I think he has used stooges very sparingly, the seance I think definitely needed one at times. I don't hold him to a higher standard of not using stooges or camera tricks - many basic tricks on TV are camera tricks simply due to needing to be filmed at a specific angle. The real problem with the lottery is that it was uninteresting and reliant on hype that couldn't live up to expectations. Maybe the original idea would have been better, but what we got wasn't. As he stated in the recent show, it's about the showmanship and the fun of what happens - so he would definitely cheat for a better trick. But not as the first option.
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Aug 21, 2020 21:22
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EL BROMANCE posted:So I gave up on Mandy a few minutes in, but for a different reason. Yay for just insane arachnophobia. I'm guessing having her job being a spider smasher means they're going to turn up a fair bit, so I noped right out. It's for literally 3 minutes in one episode, promise. You see one tarantula.
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Aug 21, 2020 22:00
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Ah thanks, that's probably the point where I jumped out, when she's explaining the job to the nail lady. Like, I can definitely see why people weren't loving it so maybe I'll only make it through the first episode anyway. She really doesn't need to be pulling 'the face' constantly.
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Aug 21, 2020 22:37
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I'm a knuckle-dragging Yankee and while almost all of the jokes fell flat for me, there were a handful of scenes that got far beyond a sensible chuckle out of me. I'm sad that Cunk on Britain seems to have fallen off iPlayer.
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Aug 21, 2020 23:04
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Ah that's a shame, I quite like the Cunk series and would've loved a series that did a whole different set of stuff rather than historical events. Maybe one day, and I'll be glad I archived them for Plex before they went walkabout.
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Aug 21, 2020 23:15
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Yea the face really winds me up and she legit does it the entire show
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Aug 21, 2020 23:52
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EL BROMANCE posted:Ah that's a shame, I quite like the Cunk series and would've loved a series that did a whole different set of stuff rather than historical events. Maybe one day, and I'll be glad I archived them for Plex before they went walkabout. In case you haven't seen it, there was a special on Shakespeare a few years back. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YeCpHoy9EQ
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Aug 22, 2020 02:11
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Yup I saw that and there was another one too from memory. Will have to give em all a repeat viewing I think.
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Aug 22, 2020 03:44
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