Director's Cut

This is my favorite mentalism effect out there right now. It uses something familiar to just about everyone (popular classic and modern films), literally packs small and plays big. To top it all off, it's dead easy to master which leaves you free to concentrate on performance more than anything else.

You get 26 laminated cards, each with a movie poster printed on it along with the movie's main stars and year of release. These should all be familiar to your spectators--I had seen 24 of the 26 movies already--and even if it's not you can choose to describe the movie poster or even name the stars and year of release if you have to.

The DVD teaches you five different methods for revealing the chosen movie. The beauty of it is that you can use them all on the same group of spectators and they'll never catch on to the secret. This is one of those effects that grows even more powerful as you repeat it. And they can examine the cards all they want to because they aren't marked, stripped, transparent, or even color-coded! One of the revelations even has the spectator choosing the card under the table, turning it over in the deck, and then bringing the deck to the table and covering it. This means that neither the spectator nor the magician should have a clue as to which movie was chosen...but you'll get it right every time.

If you happen to be unfamiliar with some of the movies, the DVD includes a PDF file that gives you a brief synopsis of each film and things you can mention as you reveal it. There is a small amount of memory work involved here as you'll have to memorize the 26 movie cards you have there so you can remember which films you're working with, but this shouldn't take long. Once you learn the secret of the effect, you should be able to perform this confidentally in about 20 minutes.

My only complaint is the lack of any form of case for the cards. You're basically holding half of a bridge-sized deck of playing cards, and it doesn't seem too much to ask for at least some small plastic packet case for this since it'll be pretty hard to find something that will hold them. You don't want these cards just sitting in your pocket.

This one is highly recommended. It uses familiar objects, can be examined, plays to a crowd or to just one person, and is easy to learn.