 Hey everybody, welcome back to Magic Orthodoxy, my name is David and this is a Magic Review. Hey, today we're going to look at Eclectica from John Kerry and RSVP Magic. What is Eclectica? Basically, it's John Kerry's new collection of 15 card tricks. There's a Sponge Ball trick in there too. It's all done in John Kerry's classic, very simple, streamlined, easy to do style. You want to see what the trailer looks like? This is it. Hi everybody, I'm John Kerry. On this DVD we have 16 items, mostly with cards, simple, solid, practical and powerful, durable pieces of material. Hey, we even have a Sponge Ball routine and also my take on a classic piece of coin and card magic combined. There's nothing on this DVD that anybody with a basic grounding and foundation and close up magic can't do with a little bit of attention to detail, a little bit of practice. So get those cards, coins and Sponge Balls ready and let's have some fun. Now for something I've always wanted to say, take it away, Ruth. I think there might be too many cards here actually, Amy, so would you take some cards and cut them off the top? Just a bunch, yeah, and put them down there. That's lovely. We'll give these a little mix naturally. Would you just pull some cards out of the middle? Just pull a little bunch, three, four, five, six cards? It doesn't matter. Well, you're ambitious. That's about nine, but that's cool. Put them just there for me. That's lovely. And Amy, would you take some from the bottom as well? Three cards, four cards, five? I don't mind. Do you want to take one or two more? Do you want to put one or two back? You happy? No, yeah, I'm happy. Put them on there then. That's lovely. And would you take that packet for me? And just in case you think I've done something sneaky, would you take the top card and lose it in the middle of the packet? They call that burning a card. Just push it in the middle in case you thought I got a little peek. Take the bottom card as well, the card at the very bottom and lose that or burn that as they call it in the gambling world. Take a little peek at the top card of that packet. I'll look away. You can show that to Natalie as well. You can show it to the camera as well. Tell me when you're ready. Can I turn back? That's lovely. I'm back. And cut that packet and complete the cut. Now, is there anything I can know about the card you're thinking of right now? No. Yes. I know you've got about 14 cards there, probably. Give or take. And the card you're thinking of is in that packet. So shuffle that packet. Shuffle that packet. Beautifully done. Put that packet on top of the deck. Now, Amy, is there anything I can know about your card right now? That it's in there. Apart from it's in there, that's it, yeah? That's it. Well, it could be 12 down. It could be 11 down. I could have been tracking your shuffle. Cut the pack and complete the cut. Cut off a chunk and put the other cards on top. Beautifully done. Now, I couldn't know anything about your card, could I? No. Yes. I know there was about 12 or 14 cards. You shuffled those cards. You put them on top. You cut the pack. It could be about 35, 38, 39 or maybe 42, 43 from the bottom or from the top even. So shuffle the pack. How fair is that? It doesn't get much fairer Natalie, does it? No. So you're just thinking of a card. You've shuffled the cards. You've done everything, yeah? Yeah. Okay. Because you didn't take a card out of the pack, did you? You didn't deal down to one. Remember earlier, you eliminated cards from the top, the middle and the bottom. I'm now going to make the card you're merely thinking of, vanish and appear in my pocket. Right. Actually, there's an easy way of doing that. It's called cheating. You put the pack in your pocket like that. Thank you very much. Would you set off for that? It's a little gag. Actually, think about your card, the colour, the suit and the value. Just in your mind. Don't tell me. Think about the colour of your card. So for example, if it was red, think red. Do you get the idea, yeah? Yeah. Now think about the suit of your card. For example, if it was a heart, think heart, yeah? Yeah. Now just think about the value of your card. For example, if it was the two of hearts, say yes, John, that was my card. Yes, John, that was my card. Hey, it's mind reading. Now, most magicians would stop right there, but this trick goes further than that. Remember, you shuffled that pack, yeah? Is that hand empty? Sleeve rolled up, watch. I go down into my pocket, I'm going to extract one card. I'm slowing up a bit. I normally do it in about half the time. Remember, I read your mind and told you I had the two of hearts. I'm not going to do that. That's how I'm going to survive this world. All right, so that was John Kerry. You might remember that he also did classic Kerry, which we reviewed as well, and I'll stick that link below in the description. This was published by the people down at RSVP. All right, so a couple of questions we always ask about all of our magic reviews and the first of which is what is in the box? What's in the box? You get a DVD. You just get a DVD. It's an hour and 55 minutes long, almost two hours of magic, which is awesome, but you really don't need anything else. There's nothing in this to build or make. It's just straightforward card magic, straightforward real-world working magic. All right, so what are some of the tricks that John Kerry teaches on this DVD? He teaches an all-backs routine. It's inspired by Dye Vernon's all-backs trick that was released in expert card technique. He does a really cool spectator cut to the aces routine. He does an oil and water routine that uses jokers and aces instead of the traditional red and black. He does a really cool, probably my favorite trick on this whole DVD. He does a variation on Dye Vernon's emotional reaction trick. That's the one where the spectator cuts the deck in half and then holds the half of that deck close to their chest. He has a really cool beginning part to that, but he adds a little piece of mentalism to it, which is really cool. He has a triumph effect. He also has a really cool telekinetic trick where several times throughout the trick, he actually makes the card in the deck reverse itself. I think it's like three times where he has the deck closed up and then through telekinesis he makes chosen cards flip in the deck, which is pretty cool. He has a sandwich effect based off of something John Bannon did. He has a whispering joker's routine. Like I said, there's a sponge ball routine in there. There's even a cool trick with a coin. Really, the presentation of the tricks, the actual showing you the live performances, those are almost longer than his explanations. He really shows you what these tricks look like in real-world scenarios. Then he bookends that with the explanations. Some of those explanations they go by really fast. I think a lot of the times John's expecting you to know a lot of these slights. He's not really holding your hand through this and taking his time and saying, okay, this is how you force a card or this is how you do a double lift. He doesn't do any of that. He's showing you how to do it and then you just move on. I would say this DVD is probably reserved for people that are already well-versed in card magic. We're going to say intermediate to advanced level magic. That's just my personal recommendation. Let's do overall quality and production value of the DVD. It's great. It's really cool. It's got really nice sets. Everything's well-miked. He has two beautiful assistants. Positives. What are the positives to this? These are all real-world card workers. There's no jungle, gym, athletics. You have to be in a really dark room. Make sure your cards don't talk. Hold this very close to your chest. None of that. These are all real-world workers. There's nothing extra to buy. There's nothing extra to make. Just pick up a deck of cards and you're good to go. Another classic treatise from John Kerry. Negatives. What are some of the negatives to this? Like we say right here, there's negatives to everything. These are just the negatives that I see. They don't have to be the negatives that you see. Maybe it was just me or maybe it was the way I was reading the menus, but I couldn't find the performances for three different tricks. Three tricks were just explanations and I didn't see a performance for it. Maybe it was just me. Maybe it was just my ineptitude, but I think they're not on here. One of them was the Sponge Ball routine. I would have liked to have seen the Sponge Ball routine performance, but like I said, maybe I goofed up, but I couldn't find them. I don't know. Maybe they're there. Maybe they're not. That's just me. Maybe help somebody. John Kerry. Do you know what happened to them? Anyway, yeah, so that's it. Other than that, no negatives. This is a great, great DVD. Pick this up. Is it worth your money? Yes. It's only 30 bucks. $30, and like I said, two hours of card magic. 15 tricks. That's pretty much any good book would give you this many tricks. Then you get John Kerry's tips and advice and just his really easy-going, laid-back mannerisms. It's just a great, fun DVD to watch. This is certainly going to improve. It's certainly going to add to your already awesome card tricks. All right, so who would like this? Anybody who's a fan of John Kerry? Anybody who's a fan of card tricks? Anybody who's a fan of real world working card tricks? I think would love Eclectica from John Kerry. All right, so that is my review. John Kerry's Eclectica from RSVP Magic. I'd like to thank the people down at Murphy's Magic for providing this for us so that I could review it for you. And if you'd like to purchase your own, you can find it at your favorite Murphy's Magic retailer. Thanks. Bye.