The Magic Life (2012)

Director
Nelson Cheng

Main cast
Matthew Noah Falk; Michael Howard

Genres
Documentary

Description
"The Magic Life" chronicles the journey of three magician hopefuls: a 17-year-old from Beijing who travels to the U.S. to attend magic school, a 25-year-old trying to make rent by performing on Hollywood Blvd for tips, and a 32-year-old New York University MBA graduate who moves to Los Angeles to perform at the world famous Magic Castle. The film depicts the challenges of following an unconventional career path. Forget about parents, family, or friends who may not understand or support your choices - there's almost an invisible societal pressure in terms of what types of jobs are acceptable. "The Magic Life" is about those who are willing to risk everything to take the road not normally taken. Sometimes the risk pays off, sometimes it doesn't.


Similar movies

The life and career of renowned magician and sleight of hand artist Ricky Jay.
Wild Man Blues is a 1998 documentary film directed by Barbara Kopple, about the musical avocation of actor/director/comic Woody Allen. The film takes its name from a jazz composition sometimes attributed to Jelly Roll Morton and sometimes to Louis Armstrong and recorded by both (among others). Allen's love of early 20th century New Orleans music is depicted through his 1996 tour of Europe with his New Orleans Jazz Band. Allen has played clarinet with this band for over 25 years. Although Allen's European tour is the film's primary focus, it was also notable as the first major public showcase for Allen's relationship with Soon-Yi Previn.
The Mars Underground is a landmark documentary that brings to life, through the use of state-of-the-art 3D animation, the daring first human mission to the red planet and explores the challenges of surviving on Mars.
A documentary about the White family of Boone County, West Virginia. The 1991 documentary The Dancing Outlaw focused on Jesco White, a famous mountain dancer. This film focuses on the other members of his family.
African Cats captures the real-life love, humor and determination of the majestic kings of the savanna. The story features Mara, an endearing lion cub who strives to grow up with her mother’s strength, spirit and wisdom; Sita, a fearless cheetah and single mother of five mischievous newborns; and Fang, a proud leader of the pride who must defend his family from a once banished lion.
A film profiling the unusual cross-demographic fandom of the ostensibly girl oriented television series "My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic"
The academy award winning documentary depicting the lives of child prostitutes in the red light district of Songachi, Calcutta. Director Zana Briski went to photograph the prostitutes when she met and became friends with their children. Briski began giving photography lessons to the children and became aware that their photography might be a way for them to lead better lives.
Vancouver-based voice artist Ashleigh Ball has been the voice of numerous characters in classic cartoons such as Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake, Cinderella and more. When Ashleigh was hired to voice Apple Jack and Rainbow Dash for Hasbro's fourth series to use the My Little Pony name - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic - she had no idea she would become an Internet phenomenon and major celebrity to a worldwide fan-base of grownups. Bronies are united by their belief in the show's philosophy. This documentary gives an inside view of the Pony fan-world, and an intimate look at the courage it takes to just be yourself...even when that means liking a little girls' cartoon.
By vividly recounting the TT's legendary rivalries and the Isle of Man's unique road racing history, this 3D feature documentary discovers why modern TT riders still risk their lives to win the world's most dangerous race. The Isle of Man Tourist Trophy is the greatest motorcycle road race in the world, the ultimate challenge for rider and machine. It has always called for a commitment far beyond any other racing event, and many have made the ultimate sacrifice in their quest for victory. A story about freedom of choice, the strength of human spirit and the will to win. It's also an examination of what motivates those rare few, this elite band of brothers who risk everything to win.
The story of Cuban refugees who risked their lives in homemade rafts to reach the United States, and what life is like for those who succeed.
Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans interweaves stunning newly discovered footage and voice recordings with original interviews. It is the true story of how a cinema legend would risk almost everything in pursuit of his dream.
It’s simple math: we can burn less than 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide and stay below 2°C of warming — anything more than that risks catastrophe for life on earth. The only problem? Fossil fuel corporations now have 2,795 gigatons in their reserves, five times the safe amount. And they’re planning to burn it all — unless we rise up to stop them.
Notorious killer whale Tilikum is responsible for the deaths of three individuals, including a top killer whale trainer. Blackfish shows the sometimes devastating consequences of keeping such intelligent and sentient creatures in captivity.
One of the most ambitious and exciting theories ever proposed—one that may be the long-sought "theory of everything," which eluded even Einstein—gets a masterful, lavishly computer-animated explanation from bestselling author-physicist Brian Greene, when NOVA presents the nuts, bolts, and sometimes outright nuttiness of string theory.
On the surface, “Bottoms Up” is a documentary film that examines the newest booming trend in aesthetic surgery – big butts. Placed under a microscope, the film explores the media’s impact and other societal pressures that have propelled big butts from a cult fetish to a mainstream phenomenon.
The first major uprising against police brutality, harassment, and societal oppression was not at Stonewall in 1969, but at Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco three years earlier. Those who stood up were trans women and gay men. Now, nearly 40 years on, Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman tell the story of this oft-overlooked event in the history of American civil rights.
Klaus Kinski has perhaps the most ferocious reputation of all screen actors: his volatility was documented to electrifying effect in Werner Herzog’s 1999 portrait My Best Fiend. This documentary provides further fascinating insight into the talent and the tantrums of the great man. Beset by hecklers, Kinski tries to deliver an epic monologue about the life of Christ (with whom he perhaps identifies a little too closely). The performance becomes a stand-off, as Kinski fights for control of the crowd and alters the words to bait his tormentors. Indispensable for Kinski fans, and a riveting introduction for newcomers, this is a unique document, which Variety called ‘a time capsule of societal ideals and personal demons.’
"Sticky" is everything your mother was too embarrassed to tell you about masturbation, in one stimulating documentary. Full of candid interviews from celebrated figures to everyday people, health care professionals, sex therapists, zoologists, anthropologists, and religious figures, this feature length doc answers age-old questions like: What is masturbation? Will it make me go blind? Is it "normal"? Is it wrong? And why are we so afraid to be caught in the act? In a world where confusion about sexuality remains at the root of so many societal problems - rape, sexual abuse, and the threat of sexually transmitted diseases - "Sticky" will help shatter misconceptions and myths surrounding this intimate aspect of human sexuality.
This documentary reflects on the 1983, thirty-hour hostage siege at Shannon Street in Memphis, TN. It compares that era to the current societal events of religion, racism, police involved shootings of civilians and the death of police officers. While briefly touching on the proactive approaches by law enforcement enacted since the siege, interviewees reflect on the emotional impact the incident had on their personal lives.
Mother, the film, breaks a 40-year taboo by bringing to light an issue that silently fuels our largest environmental, humanitarian and social crises - population growth. Since the 1960s the world population has nearly doubled, adding more than 3 billion people. At the same time, talking about population has become politically incorrect because of the sensitivity of the issues surrounding the topic- religion, economics, family planning and gender inequality. The film illustrates both the over consumption and the inequity side of the population issue by following Beth, a mother, a child-rights activist and the last sibling of a large American family of twelve, as she discovers the thorny complexities of the population dilemma and highlights a different path to solve it.
A behind-the-scenes look at the fans who gather by the thousands each year in San Diego, California to attend Comic-Con, the world's largest comic book convention.
Ai Weiwei is known for many things – great architecture, subversive in-your-face art, and political activism. He has also called for greater transparency on the part of the Chinese state. Director Alison Klayman chronicles the complexities of Ai’s life for three years, beginning with his rise to public prominence via blog and Twitter after he questioned the deaths of more than 5,000 students in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The record continues through his widely publicized arrest in Beijing in April of 2011. As Ai prepares various works of art for major international exhibitions, his activism heats up, and his run-ins with China’s authorities become more and more frequent.
Using archival footage, United States Cabinet conversation recordings, and an interview of the eighty-five-year-old Robert McNamara, 'The Fog of War' depicts his life, from working as a WWII Whiz Kid military officer, to being the Ford Motor Company's president, to managing the American Vietnam War, as defense secretary for presidents Kennedy and Johnson.
Mine Your Own Business is a 2006 documentary film directed and produced by Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney about the Roșia Montană mining project. The film asserts that environmentalists' opposition to the mine is unsympathetic to the needs and desires of the locals, prevents industrial progress, and consequently locks the people of the area into lives of poverty. The film claims that the majority of the people of the village support the mine, and the investment in their hometown. The film presents foreign environmentalists as alien agents opposed to progress, while residents are depicted as eagerly awaiting the new opportunity.
From the rain of Japan, through threats of arrest for 'public indecency' in Canada, and a birthday tribute to her father in Detroit, this documentary follows Madonna on her 1990 'Blond Ambition' concert tour. Filmed in black and white, with the concert pieces in glittering MTV color, it is an intimate look at the work of the music performer, from a prayer circle with the dancers before each performance to bed games with the dance troupe afterwards.
Since the assassination of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas in 2009, only four doctors in the United States continue to perform third-trimester abortions. These physicians, all colleagues of Dr. Tiller, sacrifice their safety and personal lives in the name of their fierce, unwavering conviction to help women.
An unconventional documentary that lifts the veil on what's really going on in our world by following the money upstream - uncovering the global consolidation of power in nearly every aspect of our lives. Weaving together breakthroughs in science, consciousness and activism, THRIVE offers real solutions, empowering us with unprecedented and bold strategies for reclaiming our lives and our future.
In this biographical drama, Selena Quintanilla is born into a musical Mexican-American family in Texas. Her father, Abraham, realizes that his young daughter is talented and begins performing with her at small venues. She finds success and falls for her guitarist, Chris Perez, who draws the ire of her father. Seeking mainstream stardom, Selena begins recording an English-language album which, tragically, she would never complete.
Performing at the Celebrity Star Theater in Phoenix on July 23, 1978, Carlin mesmerizes his audience in the second of his 12 HBO specials. The show was originally planned as part of a concert/sketch movie, The Illustrated George Carlin, that never came to fruition.The routines include: Death, Kids & Parents, Newscast #2, Time and Al Sleet, the Hippy-Dippy Weatherman. -- From Amazon.com
Chronicling the controversial career of bad boys N.W.H. (Niggaz With Hats), this uproarious 'mockumentary' lampoons all of hardcore rap's hot-button issues. This underground laugh riot recounts the rise, fall and resurrection of a clueless bunch of would-be rappers, Ice Cold, Tone-Def & Tasty Taste performing as N.W.H.
Burroughs: The Movie is the first and only documentary to be made about and with the full participation of writer William S. Burroughs. Howard Brookner began shooting the film in 1978 as his senior thesis at NYU; with Burroughs’ cooperation it subsequently expanded into a feature completed 5 years later in 1983. The film was shot by Tom DiCillo and the sound was recorded by Jim Jarmusch; both NYU classmates. In a collaboration between Burroughs and director Howard Brookner the film explores Burroughs’ life story along with many of his contemporaries including Allen Ginsberg, Brion Gysin, Francis Bacon, Herbert Huncke, Patti Smith, Terry Southern, and Lauren Hutton. Burroughs: The Movie documents Burroughs’ long, controversial and productive life in great detail, film traveling from the American Midwest to North Africa, through defining moments of his wildly unconventional life, including several personal tragedies, charting the development of Burroughs’ unique literary style.
During a two-day period before and after the University of Alabama integration crisis, the film uses five camera crews to follow President John F. Kennedy, attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, Alabama governor George Wallace, deputy attorney general Nicholas Katzenbach and the students Vivian Malone and James Hood. As Wallace has promised to personally block the two black students from enrolling in the university, the JFK administration discusses the best way to react to it, without rousing the crowd or making Wallace a martyr for the segregationist cause.
In one single, epic camera move we journey from Earth's surface to the outermost reaches of the universe on a grand tour of the cosmos, to explore newborn stars, distant planets, black holes and beyond.
Valentino: The Last Emperor is an intimate and engaging fly-on-the- wall exploration of the singular world of one of Italy's most famous men. It is a portrait of an extraordinary partnership, the longest running in fashion, and a dramatic story about a master confronting the final act of his celebrated career.
Described as being a film about determination, danger and the ocean’s greatest depths, James Cameron's "Deepsea Challenge 3D" tells the story of Cameron’s journey to fulfill his boyhood dream of becoming an explorer. The movie offers a unique insight into Cameron's world as he makes that dream reality – and makes history – by becoming the first person to travel solo to the deepest point on the planet.
DEEP WATER is the stunning true story of the fateful voyage of Donald Crowhurst, an amateur yachtsman who enters the most daring nautical challenge ever – the very first solo, non-stop, round-the-world boat race.
Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which will celebrate its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. The film is an exploration of urban spaces in major cities and the type that inhabits them, and a fluid discussion with renowned designers about their work, the creative process, and the choices and aesthetics behind their use of type.
No special effects. No stuntmen. No stereotypes. No other feeling comes close. Surfers and secret spots from around the world are profiled in this documentary.
Driven by passion fed from a life-long fascination with sharks, Stewart Stewart debunks historical stereotypes and media depictions of sharks as bloodthirsty, man-eating monsters and reveals the reality of sharks as pillars in the evolution of the seas.
Filmmaker Sarah Polley interviews members of her family as they look back on decades-old events.
A mysterious story of two magicians whose intense rivalry leads them on a life-long battle for supremacy -- full of obsession, deceit and jealousy with dangerous and deadly consequences.
Mr. Conductor's supply of magic gold dust, which allows him to travel between Shining Time and Thomas's island, is critically low. Unfortunately, he doesn't know how to get more. Meanwhile, Thomas is fending off attacks by the nasty diesel engines. Getting more gold dust will require help from Mr. C's slacker cousin, his new friend Lily and her morose grandfather, plus the secret engine.
The son of a sorceress, armed with weapons, armour and six magically summoned knights, goes on a quest to save a princess from a vengeful wizard.
A Princess in the Joseon Dynasty travels to the Qing Dynasty to marry. On the way to there, she meets a young magician and falls in love with him.
Set in the 1920s French Riviera, a master magician is commissioned to try and expose a psychic as a fraud.
The movie combines a diverting story, songs, color and sequences of live action blended with the movements of animated figures. Mary Poppins is a kind of Super-nanny who flies in with her umbrella in response to the request of the Banks children and proceeds to put things right with the aid of her rather extraordinary magical powers before flying off again.
It's the ultimate fairytale musical! Barbie stars as Alexa, a shy princess who discovers a secret door in her kingdom and enters a whimsical land filled with magical creatures and surprises. Inside, Alexa meets Romy and Nori, a mermaid and a fairy, who explain that a spoiled ruler named Malucia is trying to take all the magic in the land. To her surprise, Alexa has magical powers in this world, and her new friends are certain that only she can restore their magic. Discover what happens when Alexa finds the courage to stand up for what's right and learns that the power of friendship is far more precious than magic.
After breaking up with his longtime stage partner, a famous but jaded Vegas magician fights for relevance when a new, "hip" street magician appears on the scene.
A young girl, Margaret Dauncey, is caught between the forces of a charlatan magician, Oliver Haddo, whom she is unable to resist,and the love of a young surgeon, Arthur Burdon, who has saved her from being a helpless cripple by performing a delicate operation on her spine which startled the medical world.
The classic role-playing game comes to life in this magical adventure. The empire of Izmer is a divided land: Elite magicians called Mages rule while lowly commoners are powerless. When Empress Savina (Thora Birch) vows to bring equality and prosperity to her land, the evil Mage Profion (Jeremy Irons) plots to depose her. But this good-vs.-evil battle is no game!
In the second installment of the two-part conclusion, Harry and his best friends, Ron and Hermione, continue their quest to vanquish the evil Voldemort once and for all. Just as things begin to look hopeless for the young wizards, Harry discovers a trio of magical objects that endow him with powers to rival Voldemort's formidable skills.
With his eye on a lovely aristocrat, a gifted illusionist named Eisenheim uses his powers to win her away from her betrothed, a crowned prince. But Eisenheim's scheme creates tumult within the monarchy and ignites the suspicion of a dogged inspector.
Simon, a young man with magic power, invokes the help of the evil forces in order to take revenge of a man who cheated him with a bad cheque.
Oscar Diggs, a small-time circus illusionist and con-artist, is whisked from Kansas to the Land of Oz where the inhabitants assume he's the great wizard of prophecy, there to save Oz from the clutches of evil.
In this modern retelling of the Virgin birth, Mary is a student who plays basketball and works at her father's petrol station; Joseph is an earnest dropout who drives a cab. The angel Gabriel must school Joseph to accept Mary's pregnancy, while Mary comes to terms with God's plan through meditations that are sometimes angry and usually punctuated by elemental images of the sun, moon, clouds, flowers, and water.
Based on a true story. After graduating from Emory University in 1992, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandoned his possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska to live in the wilderness. Along the way, Christopher encounters a series of characters who shape his life.
The story begins with Makoto Segawa, a freshman at Meikei University. On the day of his university entrance ceremony, Makoto meets a fresh-faced, quirky girl named Shizuru. Makoto has a complex which causes him to shy away from contact with other people, but she succeeds in getting him to open up to her naturally. All Shizuru wants is to be with Makoto, so she takes up a camera too. The two spend their days together taking photos in the forest behind the campus. However, Makoto has feelings for another student named Miyuki. Shizuru decides that if Makoto likes Miyuki, she wants to like her too. She wants to like everything that he does. One day, she tells Makoto that she wants to take a photo of them kissing in the forest as a present for 'her birthday'. He obliges for her sake, and they kiss in the forest.
Newly widowed Kathy plans to skip out on decking the halls and trimming the tree this Christmas, trying to avoid anything that will bring back memories of her late husband. The only Christmas tradition she will observe is baking cookies for her friends, a passion since she was a child. When Kathy meets handsome Christmas tree shop owner Tim, their undeniable chemistry - along with an ornament Tim gives her that symbolizes hope - helps Kathy open up to the joys of the season again. With the support of her best friend Jenna, and the budding relationship with Tim, Kathy begins to embrace the hopeful message of the ornament. Although Kathy wants to take a chance on Tim, she struggles to find the balance between preserving the memory of her husband and moving on with her own future. Is the Christmas ornament a sign that she can have a hopeful future?
When the Muppets graduate from Danhurst College, they take their song-filled senior revue to New York City, only to learn that it isn't easy to find a producer who's willing to back a show starring a frog and a pig. Of course, Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy won't take no for an answer, launching a search for someone to take them to Broadway.
Country girl Yu Hong leaves her village, her family and her lover to study in Beijing. At university, she discovers an intense world of sexual freedom and forbidden pleasure. Enraptured, compulsive, she falls madly in love with fellow student Zhou Wei. Driven by obsessive passions they can neither understand nor control, their relationship becomes one of dangerous games - betrayals, recriminations, provocations - as all around them, their fellow students begin to demonstrate, demanding democracy and freedom. Was the only Asian film selected to compete for the Palme d'Or in 2006. In September of 2006, director Lou Ye was barred from making movies for five years because the film incorporated footage of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and wasn't screened for Chinese officials. The Chinese government also demanded that all copies of the film be confiscated

© Valossa 2015–2024