Magic (1978 film)

Magic is a 1978 American psychological horror film directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Anthony Hopkins, Ann-Margret and Burgess Meredith. The screenplay was by William Goldman, who also wrote the novel upon which it was based.

Plot

Charles "Corky" Withers has just failed in his first attempt at professional magic. His mentor 'Merlin' (E.J.André) says that he needs to have a better show business gimmick. A year later, Corky comes back as a combination magician and ventriloquist with a foul-mouthed dummy named Fats and is a huge success.

His powerful agent Ben Greene is on the verge of signing Corky for his own television show, but Corky bails out for the Catskills, where he grew up, claiming to be "afraid of success." In truth, he does not want to take the TV network's required medical examination because doctors might find out that he suffers from severe issues, and that even off-stage he cannot control Fats (a manifestation of Corky's id).

In the Catskills, he reunites with his high-school crush, Peggy Ann Snow, who is stuck in a passionless marriage with Corky's friend from high school, Duke. A magic trick with a deck of cards charms Peg into thinking they are soulmates. She and Corky make love, which sparks the jealousy not only of Peggy's tough-guy husband but also the dummy Fats.

1978 in film

The year 1978 in film involved some significant events.

Highest-grossing films (U.S.)

The top ten 1978 released films by box office gross in North America are as follows:

Events

Film

A film, also called a movie, motion picture or photoplay, is a series of still images which, when shown on a screen, creates the illusion of moving images due to the phi phenomenon. This optical illusion causes the audience to perceive continuous motion between separate objects viewed rapidly in succession. A film is created by photographing actual scenes with a motion picture camera; by photographing drawings or miniature models using traditional animation techniques; by means of CGI and computer animation; or by a combination of some or all of these techniques and other visual effects. The word "cinema", short for cinematography, is often used to refer to the industry of films and filmmaking or to the art of filmmaking itself. The contemporary definition of cinema is the art of simulating experiences to communicate ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty or atmosphere by the means of recorded or programmed moving images along with other sensory stimulations.

The process of filmmaking is both an art and an industry.

Magic

Magic usually refers to:

Magic or Magick may also refer to:

Aviation

Computing

Film and television

Mystery meat navigation

Mystery meat navigation (also known as MMN) is a disparaging term coined in 1998 by Vincent Flanders, author and designer of the website Web Pages That Suck, to describe a web page where the destination of the link is not visible until the user points their cursor at it. Such interfaces lack a user-centered design, emphasizing aesthetic appearance, white space, and the concealment of relevant information over basic practicality and functionality.

The epithet "mystery meat" refers to the meat products often served in American public school cafeterias whose forms have been so thoroughly reprocessed that their exact types can no longer be identified by their appearances: like them, the methods of MMN are clear to the producer but baffling to the consumer.

Flanders originally and temporarily described the phenomenon as Saturnic navigation in reference to the Saturn Corporation, whose company website epitomized this phenomenon. Flanders writes, "The typical form of MMN is represented by menus composed of unrevealing icons that are replaced with explicative text only when the mouse cursor hovers over them".