I’m not sure how my friend came across this… but I had to share it. A chimpanzee reacting to a magician on Japanese TV.

Well its time for a vacation and like last year I’m headed off to the magic center of the world – Las Vegas! I’ll try and take lots of pictures and footage while I’m there and post some of it when I get back home.

Penn & Teller’s Hilarious and ingenious version of Sawing a Woman in Half – performed live on America’s Got Talent, 8/12/09 August 12 2009

Try and kill Criss Angel or save his life in a flash game on the A&E website designed to promote the final 5 episodes of Criss Angel’s TV show.

Play the Game Here. It’s actually kind of fun…

Last night (August 4th) on America’s Got Talent 2009 Magician Drew Thomas performed another illusion hoping to take himself onto the next stage of the competition. You can see a clip of his performance from the show on youtube:

I was going to post a link to this before but the CCTV website went down. Here’s the winner of FISM 2009 Most original Act – Charming Choi (Korea). I loved every minute of this performance. The routine is so much fun and Charming Choi looks like he’s having a blast performing too!

It’s too bad that these youtube versions that are poping up aren’t as good quality as what they appeared as on the CCTV site, but at least you can still see the routine.

Well its been a few days now and the reviews of FISM 2009 are coming in. I read a few of these reviews myself and I was surprised. Surprised because it sounded like some of the authors didn’t really enjoy FISM. In fact from some of the reviews you’d think that the author didn’t even like MAGIC. It’s very easy to tear magic down by over simplifying technique or method or discrediting the performer. It’s sad to see since magic is such a wonderful art.

So let’s skip the negative talk, and instead why not watch some great magic? Below is a performance by Pop Hayden at the Magic Castle. He wasn’t at FISM this year, so really he isn’t related to the topic of this post at all. It’s just some great magic, by a great performer. Enjoy.

Full half-hour show at the Magic Castle in Hollywood. This is Pop Haydn performing his award-winning “Teaching Act” in the Parlor of Prestidigitation. Taped in February, 2008.

You may have noticed that the CCTV website that was hosting the FISM videos is now offline! I knew it would happen sooner or later though. Thankfully some people were able to download the videos before the site was swamped with visitors. If you go to this YouTube Channel page you can view the 2009 FISM videos.

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CCTV has posted a bunch of performance clips and other footage captured at FISM 2009. Head on over to the main page to see the full list. You can find Shawn Farquhar’s performance here and Soma’s performance here.