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This afternoon in the caption gallery, a brief discussion about magic erupted. Not too much was said, and I wasn’t there for long, but it’s bugged me ever since — I think in part because I got the feeling that Penn and Teller, whose work I respect and admire, were being equated with Fox’s “Masked Magician”, whose work (to put it mildly) I do not. I’ve never quite understood why people want the secrets of magic revealed to them, or why they need to prove that some magicians are fake. All magic is fake, it’s all a lie, and the joy in watching a performance is not knowing how it’s done, allowing yourself to be fooled by that lie. I know David Blaine didn’t entomb himself in a block of ice, and I know David Copperfield never made the Statue of Liberty disappear, but that’s why they call it a trick. Magic is the art of misdirection — a palmed card, a hidden coin, a rabbit up the sleeve — anything is possible if you look the other way, if you are willing to be deceived. To strip away that deception and show the bare bones is to eliminate the wonder an audience feels in letting themselves believe a lie.

In an interview with the Onion, Teller said:

Everything that’s evil about lying, once you put it in a frame on a stage, becomes virtuous and becomes wonderful. And people love that, and they love measuring one view of reality against another. They love situations in which they can look at something and sort out for themselves where make-believe leaves off and reality begins. So I’m not surprised that that [masked magician] show is popular, because it’s not in any way a dismissal of magic. It’s a tribute to the fact that people are fascinated by magic. They’re not fascinated by illusion, as Doug Henning would have us believe. Magic is a much tougher thing: It’s not about watching a cartoon or a special effect. It’s about seeing something that seems to violate all your previous experiences in the world, and coming to some sort of terms with that — whether it’s coming to terms with it as poetry, or coming to terms with it as deceit, or coming to terms with it as technology. It’s an incredibly vigorous kind of natural form to work in.”

Penn and Teller tell you they’re revealing secrets, but they’re not. That, too, is part of the trick.

Sweet merciful heaven. Whose Line is it Anyway? fan fiction? This seems almost too strange and pathetic to make fun of:

“Jolly good, then…” Clive Anderson said briskly, rubbing his hands together with a slightly manic giggle. He was a small, balding man with bright eyes and a knowing, arrogant smirk. “Colin, are we ready?” Tall, fair-haired Colin Mochrie wandered into the room, his brown eyes vacant.

I mean, come on. I’m a big fan of the show, but this is a little ridiculous.

Of the original “Star Wars”, Bruce Sterling writes: “Science fiction writers, myself included, marveled to see levitating hover cars rendered as rusty, dust-covered relics. It seemed so true, so right.” (requires nyt registration, found through Boing Boing)

Stephanie Zacharek of Salon writes:

[George] Lucas, on the other hand, has created an imaginary universe that pretends to fuel our imaginations even as it seals them off: He doesn’t want our imaginations to soar, because then they will no longer be in his power. That’s why every plot detail in “Attack of the Clones” is so neatly planned out and controlled. This is a fantasy with no poetry in it.

The general consensus among critics seems to be that the movie sucks, but that that’s largely irrelevant for the people who will most want to see it. There’s also the question of how it will look on most screens, since less than one hundred theaters nationwide will project “Attack of the Clones” digitally, which Lucas insists is the only way to truly experience the film. He has a point, since the film was shot digitally and the vast majority of it was created by computers, but most people don’t have access to digital projection. I would have to go out of state if I wanted to see it that way. “Lucas is so eager to promote his vision of the digital future,” says Roger Ebert, “that he is willing to penalize his audience, just to prove a point.”

Of course, a lot of critics are saying that seeing the film in any format is penalty enough. “For some moviegoers,” writes Zacharek, “the two-hours-plus of ‘Attack of the Clones’ may qualify as fun. But what I loved best about it was running, almost literally, from the theater afterward: I can’t remember ever feeling so glad that a movie was finally over.”