Derren Brown: Archive
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From: daz_rythmn
Date: Thu Mar 7, 2002 11:10am
Subject: Re: A review of MC3 by Ian Rowland
If you don't know, Ian is a highly respected
Mentalist who wrote a book explaining Cold
Reading:-
I find myself in two minds. Let's start with the
positives.
It's great to see this kind of mentalism
on national TV. I'm pleased for Derren, who deserves
the
success even if he was second choice for the
role!
The shows have a decent budget and the
production values are high. They are well-directed, with
strong visual presentation. The creative team behind the
shows, some of whom I know, are all very
talented,
savvy and hard-working guys.
Some minor
reservations.
There is an unhelpful element of
repetition. In the three MC shows to date, there are many
instances of the same trick (the 'reveal' of p-s harvested
data) repeated in different locations.
Then again,
there are many opinions about what constitutes 'same'
or 'different'. I'm not trying
to be
contentious. It's just that I know Derren has a wider
repertoire than these shows seem to
suggest.
I've spoken to laymen who, having seen the shows,
think of Derren as 'clever' rather than someone
they'd actually warm to. Actually, Derren is terrific
company, and one of the funniest, wittiest,
most
entertaining people you could meet. It's a shame the shows
don't showcase these aspects of
Derren's
personality.
There is a danger of Derren making a rod
for his own back, and for the back of mentalism
in
general, by including so many routines which can
literally only be done in the context of a taped
TV
show, and cannot be produced live or in real-time.
There are always work-arounds, for sure,
but I just
have some misgivings.
Derren takes the
vogue-ish line that 'This is all accomplished by using
heightened non-verbal
communication techniques and
knowledge of things like NLP, hypnosis and patterned
response'. This
plays well, but there are people signing
up for expensive NLP courses hoping they will then
be
able to do what they see Derren doing (such as
effortlessly chatting up supermodels). I know this
is true
because several such people have told me so. It's
possibly to be regretted that for the
sake of
entertainment we're sending people off on this kind of
expenseive wild goose chase. Would
it really be so
destructive to say 'these are deceptive, entertaining tricks,
and not all is what
it appears to be' ?
Fifthly, I have some misgivings about stooged effects,
especially on TV. MC1 included at least
one stooge
routine (of the Georgia Magnet variety), and another
which had at least an element of
what we call the
'instant stooge' technique. I just thought this was a
slight waste of Derren's
abundant talent.
| Replies | Author | Yahoo! ID | Date | Size |
| 673: Re: A review of MC3 by Ian Rowland | mjm710 | mjm710 | Thu 07/03/2002 | 1 KB |
| 676: Re: A review of MC3 by Ian Rowland | daz_rythmn | daz_rythmn | Thu 07/03/2002 | 1 KB |
