Death Defying Acts

• During Harry Houdini's tour of Britain in 1926, the master escapologist enters into a passionate affair with a Scottish psychic. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR Age: 796019815512 UPC: 796019815512 Manufacturer No: 81551

Short Plays / Comedy / 2m, 3f / 3 ints. This long-running Off Broadway hit features the work of three gifted playwrights. David Mamet's AN INTERVIEW is an oblique, mystifying interrogation. A sleazy lawyer is forced to answer difficult questions and to admit the truth about his life and career. The why and where of the interrogation provide a surprise ending to this brilliant twenty minute comedy. In HOTLINE by Elaine May, a neurotic woman with enough urban angst to fill a neighborhood calls a suicide crisis hotline late one night. The counselor who gets the call is overwhelmed - it is his first night on the job. This dark and desperate, wildly funny forty mi! nute piece ends Act 1. A well to do psychiatrist has just discovered that her best friend is having an affair with her husband in Woody Allen's wildly comic second act, CENTRAL PARK WEST. She has invited the friend over for a confrontation after getting thoroughly soused. Meanwhile, the husband is about to run off with a college student. CENTRAL PARK WEST provides an hour of constant hilarity. "A wealth of laughter."-N.Y. Newsday "Lighter than air, an elegant diversion."-N.Y. TimesDuring Harry Houdini's tour of Britain in 1926, the master escapologist enters into a passionate affair with a Scottish psychic.

Stills from Death Defying Acts (Click for larger image)
Death Defying Acts would more aptly be titled Houdini’s Whirlwind Romance as it focuses less on the famed magician’s ski! lls and more on what kind of secret lovers he may have had. In this historical drama, ravishing con-artists, Mary McGarvie (Catherine Zeta-Jones), and daughter, Benji (Saoirse Ronan), play two sharp girls ready to take Houdini (Guy Pearce) for a ride. Set in 1920s Scotland, the plot centers on a contest Houdini hosts in Edinburgh to find a psychic medium who can channel his deceased mother. Mary, tired of pick-pocketing to stage fake magic shows, desperately wants Houdini’s $10,000 cash prize and auditions successfully for the role of (real) medium. From there, passions flare up as they negotiate how much of their magic is sheer trickery. Director Gillian Armstrong’s (Little Women) rendition of Houdini’s life depicts him as a regular joe struggling to convince his pragmatic business manager, Sugarman (Timothy Spall), that magic and science are connected. Scenes in which Houdini trains for and then tests his boundaries and skills during famous theater acts, are ! highly entertaining and well re-created. Scenes in which McGar! vie and her daughter read characters for clues to rig their paranormal hoaxes are equally well-done, and Zeta-Jones is gorgeous as a spiritualist. But when Mary and Houdini collide, their definitions of magic turn to mush through Hollywood translation, as something semi-equivocal to faith in love. This unfortunate injection of melodrama in an otherwise smart film cancels out its better parts. Do Houdini fans really want to see him, on screen, grappling with CG angels as he floats, straitjacketed, in his sealed water tank? I doubt it. Still, Death Defying Acts stars Houdini, which automatically makes for some fun. â€"Trinie Dalton