Thursday, August 28, 2014

A Little Unintentioned Houdini Duplication

David Saltman is the writer who runs HoudiniFile.com. He is also a writer, producer and director of quite a few documentaries and he is a well established author who has a book coming out on Houdini very soon. Plus, David is a nice guy. I was fortunate enough to meet him last year at the Washington D.C. Symposium on Magic History.

I was looking at his site which always has very unique articles on Houdini and magic, and which sadly I don't look at enough. I say that because I noticed on May 22 he posted a piece on Houdini having issues with his luggage. He put the actual newspaper article in the piece as well. Fast forward to August and yours truly puts the same article, though a different headline from a different paper on this blog as part of the 30 Days of Houdini. Ugggh, I hate duplicating stuff other people have done, though sometimes it's unavoidable.

Speaking of duplication, yesterday I put up the details on where to find the HOUDINI-Miniseries DVDs. I am very aware that John Cox was the first to put this up, but as I recall he pointed people to Amazon.com whereas I pointed them right to History.com. A small detail, but this is more of a service to help you (the readers) find these great Houdini items that you can add to your collections.

I have to stop for a minute and mention, I have NOT seen the Houdini Miniseries yet. I have not even seen the first night, as some folks have. I've been so busy, I've hardly seen the trailers, lol. I have pretty mixed feelings from what I've seen and from some things I've heard. But I'm hoping for the best and trying not to past judgement too early. If memory serves, I was quite excited about the last Houdini movie, which was called Death Defying Acts with Guy Pierce and Catherine Zeta Jones. I truly did not think any movie could be bad that had Catherine Zeta Jones in it, but I was wrong. That movie was awful and had nothing to do with Houdini.

I don't expect this version created by The History Channel to be perfect, but as I mentioned I'm hoping for something good. The Tony Curtis/Houdini movie is filled with fictional stuff and that movie did more to bring new people into magic and get people interested in Houdini than anything I can think of in my lifetime. So a bit of artistic liscence I guess is ok. But there are some things I've seen in still images that are causing me great concern. I'm going to hold my tongue for the moment.....BUT, I know someone who has already put his opinion out there, David Saltman. And David, has done a very good job of backing up why he thinks the way he does. So I'm adding the link to one of David's articles on the new movie. There are three I think. You may wish to wait until you've seen the movie in case you are afraid of forming an opinion before seeing the movie. Or, you can just read what he has to say, all of which I tend to agree with, and then watch the movie and judge for yourself.
http://www.houdinifile.com/2014/08/houdini-sharks.html


1 comment:

  1. David is awesome, but he has it in for this miniseries and especially the HISTORY channel from day 1. Thing is, he may be 100% right, but I wish he would see it before drawing his conclusions and SO poisoning the well for others. We will have the rest of our lives to nit-pick and critique this movie, so why do it before its even aired? I have seen this miniseries and, trust me, I have some things to say about it. But I'm holding back until people have had a chance to experience for themselves.

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