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Research suggests that learning to perform magic tricks can promote both physical and psychological wellbeing. The current study extended this work by examining the impact of learning magic tricks on divergent thinking. A group of 10- to 11-year-old children completed Guilford’s Alternate Uses Test both before and after participating in either a magic-based, or art-based, activity. As predicted, compared to the art-based activity, the magic-based activity resulted in a significantly greater increase in both AUT Fluency and AUT Originality scores. Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale and Dweck’s Implicit Theories of Intelligence Scale for Children was also completed after each activity, and participants’ self-esteem scores were higher after the art-based activity than the magic-based activity. In an exploratory aspect of the study, the AUT was re-administered to both groups three weeks later, and yielded no significant differences. The practical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed, along with recommendations for future research.

Previous work suggests that unexpected and surprising experiences ( e.g ., living in another culture or looking at surreal images) promotes creative thinking. This targeted literature review examines whether the inherent cognitive disruption associated with experiencing the seemingly impossible has a similar effect. Correlational and experimental research across six domains (entertainment magic, fantasy play, virtual reality and computer gaming, dreaming, science fiction/fantasy, and anomalous experiences) provided consistent support for the hypothesis. In addition, anecdotal evidence illustrated the possible impact that the creative output associated with each of these areas may have had on technology, science, and the arts. It is argued that impossible experiences are an important driver of creative thinking, thus accounting for reports of such experiences across the lifespan and throughout history. The theoretical and practical implications of this work are discussed, along with recommendations for future research.

The “Too Perfect Theory” states that if a trick is too perfect, it might paradoxically become less impressive, or give away its secret method. This theory suggests that an increased impossibility results in a less magical effect. The Too Perfect Theory is often applied to magic effects, but it conflicts with recent scientific investigations showing that participants’ level of enjoyment of a magic performance is positively related to their perceived impossibility of the trick. The current article investigated whether an imperfect magic performance is more impressive than a perfect one. Across two experiments, we studied whether participants enjoy a performance more if the effect is not perfect. We also examined the different types of explanations people give to these two types of performances. The results showed that participants enjoyed a perfect performance more than an imperfect one. However, consistently with the Too Perfect Theory, participants watching the perfect performance also discovered the correct method behind the magic trick more frequently and believed the performance was staged more often. Moreover, participants’ method explanation significantly impacted their reports about the performance.

Previous research suggests that magic tricks can be employed within an educational context to enhance attention, engagement, critical thinking and recall. This study builds on this work by examining the impact of incorporating magic tricks into an online educational video. Adult participants ( N = 198) completed a need for cognition scale and then watched a video containing either several bespoke card tricks that had been specially devised to help tell the story of the Apollo Moon landings (Magic Video), or an almost identical video that did not contain any magic tricks (Control Video). All participants rated their levels of engagement, absorption and recall. Compared to the Control Video, the Magic Video was rated as significantly more interesting, informative and absorbing. There was no difference between the groups for recall. There was a positive correlation between participants’ need for cognition scores, and the degree to which they found the Magic Video interesting, and were willing to share it with others. The theoretical, methodological and practical implications of these results are discussed, along with recommendations for future work.

For hundreds of years, magic tricks have been employed within a variety of pedagogic contexts, including promoting science and mathematics, delivering educational messaging, enhancing scepticism about the paranormal, and boosting creative thinking for product design. This review examines this diverse body of work, focusing on studies that have assessed the impact of such interventions. Although the studies tended to yield positive outcomes, much of the work suffered from methodological shortcomings, including measuring the impact of interventions over a relatively short period of time, focusing on self-report measures and failing to employ control groups. The paper makes several recommendations for future study in the area, including assessing the longer-term impact of magic-based interventions, comparing these interventions to other types of pedagogic techniques, focussing on knowledge retention and behavioural outcomes, and collaborating with magicians to develop more impactful interventions.

News Sets In\"), was not the last to call the decision \"seismic\" for the industry.1 Another article began with what became a refrain in the following weeks: \"Are movie theaters dead?\"2 In the turbulent wake of Warner Bros.' decision, interested parties began (again) to signal the alarm for the future of cinema, something like the lighting of the beacons of Gondor in Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, spreading the flame from atop Minas Tirith to the borders of Rohan (to invoke another WarnerMedia property3 and a scene whose grandeur profited from big-screen theater; see Figure 1). [...]here we are again, witnesses to the ever-seismic phenomenon of cinema, which responds to its moment with alacrity. Because cinema has survived many momentous changes, what we have now may be perhaps less cause for worry than for curiosity: how and what those who make and/or love cinema will demand as the dust settles on a year of movie theater closures. [...]a decade ago is not even the most recent time theatrical exhibition has been at the heart of a set of worries about the future of cinema. In the wake of mounting expenses without customers to offset their costs, some major theater chains, like Regal, closed entirely for months.12 Others, like AMC, closed temporarily but remained open whenever possible with changes in operations according to their own protocols (for example, limiting seating in auditoriums and reducing choices at the concession stand to speed up service and diminish lines) or according to local mandates (for example, not serving food or drink where masks are required full time in public spaces).13 However, AMC too warned investors for months that if the situation of reduced capacities and declining attendance continued, it would run out of cash by the end of 2020 or early 2021.14 Indeed, the decline in attendance has been sharp (AMC experienced an estimated 92 percent decrease in attendance in October 2020 compared to October 2019).

In the early 1950s, ninety-two Inuit, including Flaherty's own son Josephie, were forcibly relocated by the Canadian government from Inukjuak and Pond Inslet, or what is now Nunavut, to the high Arctic region, where they faced harsh and unfamiliar terrain, a long and sunless winter, bitter cold, and the constant threat of starvation. (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luise Virgulillaño Indians), one of the guest filmmakers participating in \"The Necessary Image\" programmed by Greg de Cuir, Jr. and Kevin Jerome Everson, refused to sit underneath a banner bearing the Flaherty logo, which featured a silhouetted image of Allakariallak wielding a harpoon. [...]the School of Theology at Claremont had maintained nearly 1,500 photographs made between 1910 and 1921 as part of the production of Nanook of the North, including glass plates, slides, and nitrate negatives.3 These materials had been donated by Frances Flaherty, who, before she passed in 1972, worked with Jack Coogan to establish the Robert and Frances Flaherty Study Center, by which access to the life and work of Robert Flaherty would be made publicly available. Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, who curated Robert Flaherty, Photographer/Filmmaker: The Inuit, 1910–1922 at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1979 and wrote the accompanying exhibition catalogue, observed that \"most of the photographs predated Nanook of the North, some by more than ten years; that some had in fact been taken in British Columbia; and, surprisingly, that handwritten inscriptions on vintage prints were often misdated.

Magicians use several techniques to deceive their audiences, including, for example, the misdirection of attention and verbal suggestion. We explored another potential stratagem, namely the relaxation of attention. Participants watched a video of a highly skilled magician whilst having their eye-blinks recorded. The timing of spontaneous eye-blinks was highly synchronized across participants. In addition, the synchronized blinks frequency occurred immediately after a seemingly impossible feat, and often coincided with actions that the magician wanted to conceal from the audience. Given that blinking is associated with the relaxation of attention, these findings suggest that blinking plays an important role in the perception of magic, and that magicians may utilize blinking and the relaxation of attention to hide certain secret actions.

In 1894, French psychologist Alfred Binet (1857–1911) published an article titled “The Psychology of Prestidigitation” that reported the results of a study conducted in collaboration with two of the best magicians of that period. By using a new method and new observation techniques, Binet was able to reveal some of the psychological mechanisms involved in magic tricks. Our article begins by presenting Binet's method and the principal professional magicians who participated in his studies. Next, we present the main psychological tools of magicians described by Binet and look at some recent studies dealing with those mechanisms. Finally, we take a look at the innovative technique used by Binet for his study on magic: the chronophotograph.

In the following conversation, Mary Ann Doane and Doron Galili discuss their new books on theories of cinematic scale and the emergence of early television (respectively), both of which were written shortly before the pandemic. The authors consider the multifarious crises that COVID-19 has posed for concepts and experiences of film and media spectatorship, framing the present moment through formative debates in film theory, media historiography, and industry analysis.