The next Löffelverbieger
Germany’s Pro7 started it’s “The next Uri Geller” series today – basically “Deutschland sucht den Super-Mentalisten” hosted by Uri Geller.
The performances were ranging from the infamous knife-in-paperbag trick (performed by a German with an American accent posing as a Samurai), over a Swiss guy with “Siegfried”-hairstyle talking to a raven and answering questions about the dead, to a blindfolded medium “seeing” items her partner chose from the audience. Oh, and the guy stopping his pulse and “crossing the border to death”. Blah.
The problem I have with this show is that they seemed to make a point by interviewing “experts” (even a scientist) that it’s all “real”, these things are possible, nobody seemed to have doubts (or was allowed to voice them).
Derren Brown seems to be on his own crusade against fraud performers, and magician Criss Angel seems to follow this trend, as he attacked one of the contestants of the US show “Phenomenon” (also with Uri Geller – you can think what you want, but this guy is a marketing genius) who performed a dramatic (but IMHO pretty tasteless) spirit-writing session. (The good part starts at 05:20, if you can’t stand the fake epileptic movements)
