"The Trilogy" 3 DVD Set by Dan and Dave Buck
Suggested Retail USD$85.00
Available from your favorite dealer
In a Blink: 10 Out of 10

"The Trilogy", a 3-DVD boxed set of card magic by Dan and Dave Buck, is some of the prettiest, slickest, most visual, most striking, difficult card magic you'll ever break your knuckles over and it belongs in the collection of anyone who ever handles a deck of cards.

Well, handles a deck of cards and has mastered "Royal Road" cover to cover anyway.

These is some excruciatingly difficult material here in terms of sleights. The Bucks have developed their own sleights, sometimes based on already difficult sleights, and in many cases "knuckle-buster" is a term that doesn't go far enough. This is what you call putting the warning before the review.

In other words, only experienced card workers need apply. If that ain't you -- and be honest in your self-assessment -- feel free to skip the rest of this review.

Now that that's out of the way...

"The Trilogy" sports old themes with beautiful visual components added, tons of new and unique sleights that will have you drooling, and so many flourishes you may never leave the comfort of your living room again until you've mastered them all. Throw in the fact that all the material here is designed for strolling situations, "anywhere-anytime" conditions, and uses a normal deck of cards and you've got an absolute winner on your hands.

There's no way I'm going to go through all six hours of tricks and flourishes; this would be a review rivalling Jonathan Swift if I did that. Let's just look at things from the 10,000-foot view.

The set is made up of three DVDs: "Tricks", "Flourishes", and "Everything Else". Let's look at some of the bright spots of them.

Self-explantory, "Tricks" is the collection of cards tricks by the Bucks. There's a lot of meat here just in terms of the sleights you'll pick up. But the routines here... man, are they good.

Take "Card Across". This was an early favorite of mine. In this one, a signed, selected card is protruding out half of the deck held in one hand. The other hand holds the other half of the deck. In an instant, the protruding card is gone and in the other packet, face-up and protruding from it. One of the hardest of the hard, but just so beautiful it can't be ignored.

"Fission for Aces" is "Las Vegas Split" gone insane. A face-up Eight is "ripped" into two Fours, one of the Fours "ripped" into two Twos, and one of the Twos "ripped" into two Aces. Quick, as visual as you can get, and done at the fingertips.

I love packet tricks, so "Sixty Nine" caught my eye immediately. This uses a new count, the Dracula Count, and it's a good one. In the routine, four Sixes are shown. The sixes are turned around, in a lame joke attempt to make then four Nines (get it?). Anyway, the next time they are turned around, the four Sixes have become the four Nines and you're clean.

"Hand to Mouth" I thought I'd never do, never think about doing, never think about thinking about doing... 'til now. The misdirection is beautiful here -- you'll need to watch it just for that. This is probably the best version of the effect out there and it's certainly my favorite.

"TiVo 2.0" was another startling one. A selected card is stuck protruding from the center of the deck. The top card of the deck is turned face-up and, in a flash and with no cover, the two cards change places. The big thing about this is the center-double and it's a good one.

I've left a lot here, but all the tricks, without exception, are worth seeing and, if nothing else, learning the sleights that make them magical.

The second disc, "Flourishes", I'm going to have to cop out on. I'm not an expert on them, I don't practice them, so anything I could say about false cuts with packets shooting up into the air and a deck getting cut into a multitude of one-handed packets would be along the lines of "Wow, that's pretty" and that would be that. Let's just say that, if you're into flourishes, there are a ton of them here, all with that Buck touch.

"Everything Else" is just that. Here you'll find an assortment of sleights and moves that, while not full routines or involved flourishes, are both strikingly pretty and useful. On this disc, there were four pieces that blew me away:

"The Click Change" is the highlight here. Think Marlo's "Snap Change" without the angle problem. There aren't enough positive adjectives to describe this one. I think I would have paid the money just to learn this.

"Center Double" is a very slick double lift. A bit flourishy, sure, but in a good, convincing way. Definitely worth a look and worth learning.

"Heap Snatch" is a tabled false cut that is so utterly convinving it will blow you away as you do it. It did me.

"Real Time" is a four-card production that looks absolutely moveless. If you're looking for a slick, pretty, and magical way to get into a four-card routine, say your favorite Ace trick, then this is one you need to see.

Also on the "Everything Else" disc is something I found completely welcome: "Finger Exercizes". These are four simple exercises to strengthen your fingers and add some much-needed agility to your digits. This is an excellent addition to the collection and a wonderful way to close it.

Okay, so those are the discs and the material on them. If that's not enough to get your mouth watering, then consider for a second all the sleights you learn as you go through the material here, and there are a ton of 'em. Some may be familiar to you -- things like the "Paintbrush Change", the "Elmsley Count", "Top Shot", and "Shapeshifter" -- while others may be a bit lesser known -- Ben Harris' "Superflip", Hiro Sakai's "Duck Change", or Lee Asher's "Grave Turnover". In all, there are over a hundred different sleights taught on these discs and that, right there, makes this collection worth way more than the asking price.

Yes, I'm high on "The Trilogy". I love good card magic and see way too little of it. In "The Trilogy", Dan and Dave Buck have collected some of the best card magic out there, whether it's the routines, the sleights, or, yes, even the flourishes. Hard? Yes. Impossible? Nope. And beautifully magical.

What more do you want?

I'll just quote the ad copy on this one, because it's true:

"Anyone looking to elevate their card magic should check this out."

Amen.

"The Trilogy" 3 DVD Set by Dan and Dave Buck
In a Blink: 10 Out of 10

Material: 10
Cards, cards, and nothing but cards doing things that cards just don't normally do. This is all eye-catching, visual, and at times flat-out stunning card work. Be warned: this ain't for even those performers we like to call "advanced". This is some knuckle-breaking, finger bending stuff that will require lots of experience and practice to do at all, let alone do well.

Practicality: 10
Break out a deck and go to work... that fairly sums up the practicality side of things. Set-ups, when they do exist, are very minor and the only requirement you'll be facing at times is a table to place cards on, if that.

Quality of Production: 10
Amazing, simply amazing. The production values here are incredibly high. I kinda miss not being able to play all the segments through from start to finish, but with six hours of video here, I'm not going to complain about the organization of the discs.

Quality of Instruction: 10
Everything here is very well taught, with every thing explained thoroughly and professionally. Those not into flourishes might have a problem with that segment since it's "video-only" instructions there.

Presentation: 10
It's all about the visuals with these discs and these pieces have them in spades. Throw your own verbal components to things and you've got some memory-making material here.


Shane

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