The Magic Faraway Tree is a beloved children's book written by Enid Blyton. It tells the story of three children, Joe, Beth, and Frannie, who discover a magical tree in the Enchanted Wood. The tree is called the Faraway Tree because it leads to different magical lands at the top. In the book, the children befriend magical creatures like Moon-Face, Silky the fairy, and Saucepan Man. Together, they embark on exciting adventures and visit fantastical lands like the Land of Birthdays, the Land of Topsy-Turvy, and the Land of Do-As-You-Please. Each land has its own unique quirks and challenges, making the story full of surprises and enchantment.

Put the shotgun down, David Blaine: the real magic is your audience's reactions

D avid Blaine has always looked a bit weary. The illusionist once said that he only feels alive when close to death, which might explain it. Unless he’s having a flutter with oblivion, life’s just a bit… leaden. Judging by the dark circles under his eyes and a monotone more glacial than ever, Blaine’s new show David Blaine: Beyond Magic (Monday, 9pm, Channel 4) depicts a man who may not have felt a thrill in years. What better pep, then, than to shoot a gun into your own mouth and catch the bullet in your teeth?

The bullet trick – “Twelve magicians faked it… and died,” warns the narrator over a lemon barley water Aphex Twin soundscape – is built up as the climax of this one-off. Without giving too much away, Blaine doesn’t fake it and he doesn’t die. Which should come as a surprise to no one. Can you really imagine if this were being written after Blaine had not, in fact, caught a bullet from a .22 caliber rifle in his gob and instead it had fired out the back of his big, handsome skull and that was that? You can’t, can you?

Because Blaine’s life never really feels precarious. Even with shotguns. Even with mates, fellow magicians and even his dentist shaking their heads and telling him over and over that he’s one crazy son of a bitch. You absolutely know he is not going to die or else David Blaine: Beyond Magic would not have been finished or broadcast. You know it like you know you’re going to blink again before you get to the end of the next sentence. It makes the attention-seeking stunt by far the least exhilarating in this 42-minute extravaganza. It makes you want to pat him on the head and say: “It’s all right, mate. You don’t have to be such a try-hard.”

Hooked… Cara Delevingne on Beyond Magic

Naturally, there are no such dissenting voices here. For TV, Blaine has roped in the usual gaggle of celebrities to look bedazzled. There’s Arnold Schwarzenegger, who now resembles less a human man and more some sort of glazed crocodile puppet as he looks on at Blaine doing some classic end-of-pier wine-glass eating. Jennifer Lawrence – very much still all human woman – screams at Blaine over FaceTime that he’s a witch, after an impressive cross-continent card trick. Later, Blaine enters John Travolta’s home and does something with his wedding ring, a clothes hanger and his oesophagus. Stop sniggering.

For the Beckhams (also in their home) and for Drake, Blaine does actually seem to go beyond magic, somehow turning his stomach into an aquarium and bringing up a medley of live frogs for his lucky hosts. There is literally nothing not to like about watching Drake and at least 20 entourage members reduced to a collective babbling mess while watching writhing amphibians slip out from between the lips of a man.

And ultimately that’s what makes Blaine a commanding performer: not the card tricks, the glass eating, the endurance tests, being electrocuted for three days straight etc, in and of themselves, but the reactions he draws from those bearing witness to them. It’s the squeals of terrified rapture he elicits from people he meets on the street whose money and belongings he makes disappear (look out for the proper weird one involving an iPhone and a river). In the end, watching 1,000-volt human emotion trumps Tesla coils and chainmail. So put the gun down, David, and stick to coughing up sea creatures in the company of rap megastars.

David Blaine Is Not a Magician

ABC aired a special on Tuesday titled Beyond Magic, which featured tricks performed by the world-famous illusionist David Blaine. Once known for his guerrilla-style “Street Magic” sleights of hand, and then his dramatic public-square endurance spectacles, Blaine spends most of Beyond Magic performing a great variety of tricks — from dinner-party card flimflam to field-artillery miracles — in the company of celebrities such as Drake, David Beckham, and, naturally, Johnny Depp, who is an eccentric bohemian weirdo just like Blaine.

In Beyond Magic, Blaine harasses random passersby and Hollywood acquaintances alike to prove just how incredible, and occasionally nauseating, his magic is. He eats a wine glass in front of Don Cheadle and Arnold Schwarzenegger. He FaceTimes with Jennifer Lawrence for a private card trick. He enters Margot Robbie’s home and, with an assist from Robbie’s sister Anya, reads her mind to predict that she is thinking of the words “bunny” and “numerous.” In their amazement, the Robbie sisters are more gracious than Harrison Ford, who years ago famously told Blaine, “Get the fuck out of my house.”

In the most viral bit of Beyond Magic, Blaine regurgitates three live frogs into three different champagne flutes that he hands, respectively, to Drake, Dave Chappelle, and Steph Curry, who are all gathered at an after-party that the magician besets with Biblical plague. There are drinks on the table, but no one is touching them, not after that; who knows what Blaine might have done to that half-finished Corona? Chappelle is so disgusted with Blaine’s three-peat antics that he wraps his scarf around his face and retreats to the corner of the room. How does Blaine even make, much less keep, all of these celebrity friends when his signature behavior repels them? When I look at Drake, Chappelle, and Curry reacting so theatrically to the frogs erupting from Blaine’s throat, I’m retching, too, and that visceral camaraderie briefly places me — and all of Twitter — right there alongside them. It’s this rare and precious moment of relatability that quite possibly explains why so many A-list celebrities would subject themselves to Blaine’s gag-inducing magic for broadcast and posterity — if only to show that they are just like us.

But not everyone is happy with Blaine, let me tell you. Google executives, who pay top dollar to hire celebrity talent to speak and perform at their annual conferences, complained to anyone who would listen, including Page Six, after seeing Blaine cough up a live frog and then swallow it again — alive and whole — on stage at a VIP retreat hosted by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in Sicily. (This was just before a lunch break, according to the Page Six report.) Blaine explained to the Google crowd — as he also explains in Beyond Magic — that he’s working with physicians to turn his stomach into an aquarium where frogs could live for hours at a time; he’s not practicing magic so much as he’s studying biology. His tricks get you thinking about the climate and precise dimensions of various stops along your gastrointestinal tract, and insomuch as your imagination will run away with this imagery, it is fascinating and gross.

While Beyond Magic opens with a parade of Hollywood spectators so that you’ll know just how far Blaine has made it in life, the bits of the show that build up to his most complex and dangerous tricks show him solo, studying and consulting with experts, unlocking new levels of science. Where cynics might seek to reveal a magic show’s mundane backstage mechanics — say, the secret to sawing a woman in half convincingly — Blaine’s demystification yields the opposite effect. The research, the customized equipment, and the physical training ultimately make his tricks seem like great physical feats. Blaine is, in a word, secularism, which substitutes the great wonders of myth with the great wonders of reality.

The special concludes at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. For the evening’s final trick, Blaine — wearing a carefully crafted mouth guard — catches a .22-caliber rifle bullet in his mouth. He doesn’t die, though he does suffer a small laceration, according to a spot-check EMT who rushes to Blaine’s side. There are no great celebrities on hand for that performance, save for Blaine himself.

Each land has its own unique quirks and challenges, making the story full of surprises and enchantment. The Magic Faraway Tree has captivated the imaginations of children for generations with its whimsical characters, imaginative settings, and exciting plot. It sparks a sense of wonder and invites children to explore their own creativity.

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David Blaine: Beyond Magic (2016)

David Blaine is undoubtedly the biggest name in magic today, and his new ABC special Beyond Magic follows the illusionist on another of his escapades performing for public figures.

The 42-minute special begins with an apt contradiction: a light quote from British writer Roald Dahl and the first inklings of an ominous score by audio studio Antfood. From there, the richly animated opening produced by Buck takes a plunge down the rabbit hole into voids of blue and black and red, into shapeshifting and body horror, into unanswerable questions and Dalí-esque landscapes – the heart of the ineffable.

“He wants to thrill us. He wants to get our attention,” says the voice of actor Christopher Walken, his stilted and strange cadence tying together Cheshire Cat grins and bubbling eyeballs. A figure is slammed through spirals and space, maneuvering that crazy edge between the real and the supernatural. This sequence bears its own magic, a wily and adroit skill that borrows from the past but uses the technology of today, hiding its tricks for the sake of the impression. At its end, and the picture’s start, there is nothing to ground us, no title card – just an image of a spade, the stylized “db” of David Blaine.

Directed By: Buck

Executive Creative Director: Orion Tait
Creative Director: Thomas Schmid
Creative Director: Daniel Oeffinger
Executive Producer: Anne Skopas
Senior Producer: Kevin Hall
Production Coordinator: Alexi Yeldezian
Storyboard: Justin Fines, Olivia Blanc, Thomas Schmid
Design: Daniel Oeffinger, Jaedoo Lee, Justin Fines, Lucas Brooking, Olivia Blanc, Thomas Schmid, Yeojin Shin, Yker Moreno
Cel Animation: Benjy Brooke, Gonzalo Menevichian, Harry Teitelman, Jake Armstrong, Jaedoo Lee, Kyle Mowat, Olivia Blanc, Thomas Schmid, Tim Beckhardt, William Trebutien, Yeojin Shin
After Effects Animation/Composite: Andreas Bjoern Hansen, Alex Perry, Daniel Oeffinger, Fede Reano, Rasmus Bak, Wei Shen Wang, Yeojin Shin, Jaedoo Lee
3D Animation: Arvid Volz, Bill Burg, Bill Dorais, Chris Phillips, John Karian, Tao Ye
Editor: Chad Colby, Daniel Oeffinger

Narrator: Christopher Walken
Audio: Antfood

The book teaches valuable lessons about friendship, courage, and the importance of embracing adventure. Recently, The Magic Faraway Tree has also been adapted into an audiobook, bringing the charm and magic of the story to life in a new way. Audiobooks provide the opportunity for children to listen to the story unfold with lively narration, sound effects, and music. They allow children to engage with the story in a different way, stimulating their imagination and enhancing their listening skills. The Magic Faraway Tree audiobook is a great option for children who enjoy listening to stories or for those with visual impairments. It provides a wonderful alternative to reading the book, allowing children to experience the story in a different format. The audiobook captures the spirit of the original story, making it an enjoyable and magical experience for children of all ages. In summary, The Magic Faraway Tree is a classic children's book that continues to capture the hearts of young readers. The recently adapted audiobook brings the story to life in a new and immersive way, providing an enchanting experience for children. Whether read in print or listened to as an audiobook, The Magic Faraway Tree is sure to spark the imagination and inspire a love for storytelling..

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