Looking for kid-friendly videos about sleight-of-hand with cards.

March 24, 2014 12:57 PM

My kids have become fascinated with card games lately, and more specifically, being able to handle the cards well and do stuff like shuffling, fanning them, flipping them domino-style, etc. I'd like to blow their minds with videos of people who are AMAZING with sleight of hand. But it needs to be clean and age-appropriate (ages span between 6 and 11). Basically, I'm looking for the Jackie Chan of card manipulation.

I'm aware, for instance, of Ricky Jay being pretty amazing, but given his work with David Mamet I'm reluctant to put any of his videos on without pre-screening the whole thing for profanity or adult patter. Are there any of his videos that are both amazing and kid-friendly? Who else is great and would be a good fit?

Please note that I'm not necessarily looking for card tricks, but really amazing card manipulation. Although I suppose the odd trick would be fine, as long as it emphasizes amazing SOH skills. Tutorials would also be appreciated.

posted by jbickers to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (8 answers total)

Sorry no tutorials but Helder Guimarães is really fun to watch. (OK it's a little creepy when he just stares at the camera while doing sleight of hand. Still cool!)

phunnimee's post on card shuffling has a bunch of good videos.

And OMG Lennart Green is fantastic. If he's got any blue material (and to my recollection this performance is clean) it's buried under a lot of innuendo and not obvious at all.
posted by carsonb at 1:21 PM on March 24, 2014

There's a lot of good footage in the Ricky Jay documentary (Deceptive Practice, currently streaming on Netflix), and I don't remember there being a lot of salty language.

If he's looking to learn some card manipulation, these no-frills videos are pretty good.
posted by theodolite at 1:21 PM on March 24, 2014

Teller (of Penn and Teller) is actually an amazing, amazing sleight of hand magician. There are videos of just him if you search (Shadows (the one with the rose) is probably the coolest one I can think of off the top of my head, and the coins in the bucket thing is cool, but neither of those use cards). Teller, when he is talking, is kind, soft spoken, and thoughtful. It's the bloviating galoot he works with who isn't particularly kid friendly.
posted by phunniemee at 1:22 PM on March 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Also Green is fantastic because he's so good with sleight of hand he can be bad at sleight of hand while being really freakin' excellent and masterful at sleight of hand.
posted by carsonb at 1:22 PM on March 24, 2014

Not strictly about sleight of hand but there's a really cute documentary on Netflix called Make Believe which is about young magicians practicing their craft in advance of a magic competition. While Ricky Jay's seventies stuff can get a little blue (can't believe in retrospect that I was allowed to have the book Cards as Weapons as a seven year old!), I would agree with theodolite that I don't remember anything inappropriate in Deceptive Practice.
posted by raisindebt at 1:45 PM on March 24, 2014

There are some amazing David Blaine street magic card tricks on youtube -- usually the videos are short. He doesn't curse, but every now and again a bystander does -- but those would be easy for you to prescreen because the lengths are so short.
posted by BlahLaLa at 1:49 PM on March 24, 2014

I'm pretty sure the language stays clean in Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants, as well.
posted by snarkout at 6:28 PM on March 24, 2014

Jeff McBride is pretty awesome with cards (and coins, canes, bowls, masks, ropes, etc.).

*grumble* Sub-par camera work on that clip. You can really tell when camerapeople know how to film magic and when they don't.
posted by Lexica at 8:37 PM on March 25, 2014