Price$20.00
Media TypeOne-Trick DVD
CategoryClose Up
Date AddedDec 21, 2008
Clutch
Oz Pearlman
Penguin Magic
(Based on 2 reviews)
The deck is borrowed. Fair.
The spectator shuffles, picks a card, and returns it to the deck. Fair.
The cards are put in the card box. Fair.
The box is closed. Fair.
The spectator puts the deck in his/her own pocket. Fair.
The spectator confirms there's nothing else in his/her pocket... just a deck inside a CLOSED box! Fair.
You show your hands COMPLETELY empty. You show them slowly and from all angles. Your sleeves are rolled up. Fair. Fair. Fair.
You explain exactly what you're gonna do. This is as fair as it gets!
You reach into the spectator's pocket and INSTANTLY pull out the chosen card. Your hand darts in at lightning speed and BOOM, a card appears at your finger tips. This happens in the blink of an eye... literally less than a second!
You ask the spectator to check the box of cards. The box is still closed!
Top 5 reasons we love Clutch:
- It's extremely fooling--laypeople don't have a chance!
- It's dramatic--you set up an impossible challenge for yourself.
- It's visual--you instantly pluck the card from your spectator's pocket.
- It plays huge in multiple environments--close-up, street, stand-up, and stage.
- It can be done with a borrowed deck without ANY preparation. Perform clutch anytime, anywhere... everytime, everywhere!
Reviews
(Top ▲)
"Clutch" sold as a single trick DVD, just makes no sense to me. Even at the relatively reasonable price of $20.00, it's still a bit of a mystery why people would rather by one trick for $20.00 when they could have 10 to 15 tricks for only a few dollars more.
Putting aside my own bias about the method of delivery here, let's look at the trick itself. This trick is all about over-proving how fair you are. The entire presentation by Oz Pearlman (who is a very talented magician) is basically, look how fair I am. I won't touch the deck. Look at my hands; they're empty. Look; nothing up my sleeves, etc.
He talks, in the explanation, about how over-the-top the reactions are from audiences, but in the live performances, I just didn't see those types of reactions. The effect is that the spectator picks a card, shuffles the deck, puts it in the box, puts the box in his shirt pocket. The magic reaches in a plucks out the selection out of the closed box in the pocket of the spectator.
This is nothing new in concept. Oz has taken a couple of basic card moves/techniques that we all know and turned it into a presentation piece. This is certainly the kind of thing that plays well close up or on stage, and it is a good trick, and it might even be worth $20.00 bucks if you end up adding it to your act, but even so, it's not like this trick is suddenly going to put you on the map and allow you to increase your fee. The DVD does cover the effect and various moves in depth, but it's almost as if they thought, "hey we'd better add this section and that section to make this DVD look like it has a lot of material."
It's a simple routine that can be done with a borrowed deck, and it plays bigger than it is for sure, but not worthy of a single DVD release. Were this one of many routines in a book or DVD, I would be talking about how clever this trick is and how it's one of many clever (hopefully) ideas on the DVD/Book.
As it stands, there are plenty of better ways to spend $20.00 bucks. You could go to McDonald's 4 times, for example.
The trick is good. No question there. But the product loses points for overall value.
(Top ▲)
First of all, yes this effect is done exactly as you think it is. There's nothing really new here in the handling either. This trick has been around for years. I remember reading a variation of it in "Scarne on Card Tricks", and that book's almost 60 years old (the variation here is instead of having the card stick to the wall from the closed box, Oz pulls it out of their pocket from the closed box).
If you're completely unfamiliar with this effect and its handling, then this could be a good investment. Unfortunately, anyone with any familiarity with the concept won't find much to build on here.
The video is very professionally shot, and Oz really looks like a sincere teacher. It's just a shame that this was a single-effect DVD. It would have been great on an ensemble set where you had other things you were paying for with it. As it stands, I can't say it's worth $20.
If you're completely unfamiliar with this effect and its handling, then this could be a good investment. Unfortunately, anyone with any familiarity with the concept won't find much to build on here.
The video is very professionally shot, and Oz really looks like a sincere teacher. It's just a shame that this was a single-effect DVD. It would have been great on an ensemble set where you had other things you were paying for with it. As it stands, I can't say it's worth $20.