Criss Angel (born Christopher Sarantakos, December 19, 1967^[1] in East Meadow, New York) is a Greek-American musician, magician, illusionist, escapologist, yoga master, stunt performer, and the creator and director of the Criss Angel Mindfreak television series on A&E Network.

Career as an Illusionist

Criss Angel is currently starring in the second season of Mindfreak which is filmed at the Aladdin Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada, as well as in Los Angeles, California, and Angel's hometown of East Meadow, New York.

Legitimacy

Some of Angel's levitation tricks have been explained by Criss himself, notably on a DVD which is available for purchase from his official website store. The levitation featured on the DVD was an original invention of Jacob Spinney. Angel often states that several of the levitations, teleports and demonstrations of telekinesis he performs are done through the power of mind, body and spirit attained through meditation. Some of the other methods are well known within the magic fraternity and have been performed previously by magicians such as David Copperfield, David Blaine and the Pendragons. Angel is writing a book entitled Mindfreak: Secret Revelations from the Master of Surreality.

Many viewers and critics allege that Angel uses camera special effects, post-production effects, forced viewing angles, and assistants acting as amazed spectators for the TV audience. This has caused controversy among fellow magicians. Many magicians who perform magic without camera tricks resent these methods while others simply see them as modern tools of magic on television. Criss Angel himself claims he does not use camera trickery, and had made an attempt to debunk these rumors during the second season by introducing a "Spectator's Point of View camera", a handheld video camera given to a what he says is a random person in the audience to literally shoot the action in any way he or she wants. However, the camera has seemingly fallen out of favor as the second season continued, only showing up very sporadically. Criss Angel guest starred on an episode of "Las Vegas" in which he says "If it's real, it's not magic!".

Competition and popularity

Fans of Criss Angel have compared him to similar street magician David Blaine, to the point of assuming there is a rivalry going on between them. However, Criss has indicated that he doesn't see any such rivalry existing between them, noting that Blaine had come to visit him and offer his support during his 2002 Oasis stunt. Criss also sympathized with Blaine regarding his failure to successfully complete his own similarly-themed 2006 stunt, Drowned Alive.^[2] However, he did state in an interview on Penn Jillette's radio talk show that, if David Blaine was able to perform an illusion that he wasn't able to trump or duplicate, he would retire on the spot. So far, however, Blaine and his associates haven't taken him up on his challenge.^[3]

It has been reported that Criss Angel will be fronting a new Cirque du Soleil show at the Luxor in Las Vegas. The report says that Criss signed a 10-year deal.^[4]

Musical career

Criss Angel was in an industrial band called Angeldust, which he started with Klay Scott (now known as Klayton of Celldweller) after Klayton's previous band Circle of Dust broke up. Angeldust released an album called Musical Conjurings from the World of Illusion in 1998 and performed in Madison Square Garden. He has also released several more CDs as Criss Angel.

In a more recent tone, Criss Angel created the video "MF2" featuring Sully Erna, the lead singer of Godsmack. The video debuted on Yahoo! videos.

Discography

All of these albums were self-released under APITRAG Records.

References

1. ^ Born December 19, 1967 according to Public Records and Copyright Records, copyright.gov - United States Copyright Office.
2. ^ http://www.dailynews.com/entertainment/ci_3869726
3. ^ http://tv.zap2it.com/tveditorial/tve_main/1,1002,271%7C84358%7C1%7C,00.html
4. ^ Blog entry reporting Criss Angel information

External links

Official web sites

• Official Criss Angel website
• Official Criss Angel Mindfreak website at A&E
• Official Criss Angel MySpace profile

Media

• Forbes biography
• New York Times review

Resources

• Criss Angel at the Internet Movie Database

Fan sites

• Angel Of Illusion
• Mindfreak Connection