Derren Brown - Evening Of Wonders

[pengaleng]

just watched this, brilliant

 

[danny la rouge]

I enjoyed it. Very good.

 

[paolo]

Love the thread tag: "omg wtf"

 

[pengaleng]

I loved his version of the circle game, but the real one you have to make someone look at the circle below your waist and if they look at it you gotta punch em in the arm.

 

[bluestreak]

He never was you miserable git

i'm not a miserable git, i lov being confuddled by smoke, mirrors, and a superb intellect, i just could never stand the guy. oozed smug superiority over us mere mortals who could never learn his clever tricks. but this time round he was a great and entertaining showman, and the only thing that annoyed me is that i couldn't work out how 90% could be done, let alone how it was done. the cold reading, memory tricks, illusionism etc was fine, but some of it was completely WOAH! and he was actually fucking hilarious throughout.

 

[belboid]

Bit disappointed that his finale was describing the girl he picked himself from the audience

getting it jst a little bit wrong (she didn't have short hair) was a nice tough. Getting it spot on would have been too much of a giveaway.

A few things were obvious enough for me to spot, but overall, what a fucking guy.

I can't decide whether, if I got on stage with him I'd rather he could read me like a book, or found me completely undoable. Judging from my poker experience, he'd read me like a book.

 

[elevendayempire]

i'm not a miserable git, i lov being confuddled by smoke, mirrors, and a superb intellect, i just could never stand the guy. oozed smug superiority over us mere mortals who could never learn his clever tricks.

But that's bollocks, he did a book explaining the fundamentals of his method for the layman...

 

[danny la rouge]

Does he have Parkinsons?

 

[JohnnyOrange]

But that's bollocks, he did a book explaining the fundamentals of his method for the layman...

One of the things I like about him is that he makes no pretence that it's all just a big trick.

He's just very entertaining with it. And a bit clever.

The smug git.

 

[belboid]

when did he stop being a loathsome smug bastard with a face you want to stave in and start being an entertaining showman?

about his third 'trick' for me

 

[weltweit]

I can remember a trick where he played chess against something like 9 grand masters at the same time. He won most (or perhaps all) the games which he said was impressive because he was no grandmaster.

It was impressive, as was the solution to how he did it!

 

[N_igma]

as was the solution to how he did it!

It's something that theoretically anyone could do but most wouldn't be able.

 

[JohnnyOrange]

I can remember a trick where he played chess against something like 9 grand masters at the same time. He won most (or perhaps all) the games which he said was impressive because he was no grandmaster.

It was impressive, as was the solution to how he did it!

It's something that theoretically anyone could do but most wouldn't be able.

Umm... it was in a book by (oh fuck...) Giles Brandreth when I was a kid (i.e., pre-1980 in his cardigan-wearing not-yet-an-MP phase).

Brown's good at the memory trick mentioned in at least one of his books, and you just play one person against the other, then beat half of them.

What gets me is that I'm sure a lot of his tricks are equally simple but I've got no idea how he does them.

 

[foo]

Yeah, I like all that, too. I'd love to go to one of his shows.

The bit at the end has just killed my brain forever.

i really want to go too.

i wouldn't catch a frisbee though

bloody marvellous telly that was.

 

[Santino]

Does he have Parkinsons?

No, but he has a twitch that developed because of his constant nodding, which is part of his cold reading/gaining people's confidence methods.

 

[foo]

yeh, i noticed the nodding. small jerky nods.

 

[belboid]

he has said (iirr) that is because of his constant nodding, tho an awful lot of people (including other stage magicians) think thats nonsense, and tht he won't admit to having either parkinsons or a kind of tourettes. There's an interview with him in an old warwick uni student mag where he discusses it at length, but the mag site isn't working at the moment, so I can't double check that thats right.

 

[DexterTCN]

How did he do that trick with his hair?