Anyone with a weakness for dark, dangerous-looking men will fall hard for “Criss Angel: Mindfreak,” the man and the new series on A&E (Wednesdays, 10 p.m. EDT beginning today).
Angel is handsome. Angel is fit. Angel is part hard-rocker, part Houdini. Angel is a young man whose illusions must never, never be emulated by those of us with lesser skills. He has rightfully earned the two Magician of the Year awards he owns.
In tonight’s premiere episode, “Levitation,” Angel takes an old conjurer’s trick and brings it into the 21st century by levitating himself and a passerby on Fremont Street in Las Vegas, not a piddling inch off the ground but several feet, all the while circled by the camera in a 360-degree shot.
Are you a believer? It really doesn’t matter. Angel will engage his viewers, if only for the few minutes they lose themselves in something that defies all the “rules” we know and live by.
When we tell this young illusionist, this provocateur, this artist that we were unable to watch Episode 2, “Burned Alive,” for reasons of personal issues with fire, he is forgiving: “I used to nearly pass out when I went to have blood withdrawn, but then my Pop was diagnosed with cancer, and I saw what a powerful tool the mind can be.” Apparently his father’s ability not only to endure considerable pain but work through and past it inspired Angel to confront his own fears. End result: Mindfreak.
Fact is, Angel’s first love was and remains music (he has several CDs out and another due by year’s end), and viewers will get a bit of that, too, in the show’s theme music, created in close collaboration with Korn’s Jonathan Davis.
“I got interested in music first, but then I saw my Aunt Stella do a card trick when I was about 7,” Angel remembers. A magic set for Christmas came not long after that, and by age 10, he was obsessed with music and magic.
“I wasn’t interested in the way magicians were doing it at the time, though.” He says he wanted to create a kind of MTV magic, combining it with original music and peformance art. He has realized that dream with an array of performances, special and serial events.
“A lot of it is hypnosis,” he admits, “the blurring of lines between reality and illusion. And making a connection, an emotional connection, with the audience, like in the days of Houdini, leaving his audiences with the hope that if he could escape a straightjacket, maybe they could escape poverty.
“I think that’s what’s missing in magic today; there’s nothing that connects to the audience.”
What’s missing for Angel?
“Not taking the time to smell the flowers,” he says. “I’m always thinking, always planning, always taking notes, writing down ideas. But I’ve been at this non-stop for the past 10 weeks, and I’m ready for a week on the beach in Mexico.”
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