It's not Wesley James, and it's not Allan Ackerman.
Having already offered a lengthy discourse on the content of the Wesley James DVDs, I have to question the value of repeating the exercise for Mr Ackerman.
What I will say, is that the Ackerman set is pretty much what I was expecting from Wesley James when I heard about the MM project. That is, a technically sound magician attempting to demonstrate moves that he himself has long since discarded for "more modern and practical" alternatives, probably before ever really mastering them to any significantly advanced level.
The James project, however, thanks to the mans sheer incompetence, angered me into writing a comprehensive, scathing, but absolutely fair and justified critique.
In fact, if you removed the anger and frustration at Mr James' fundamental misunderstanding of sleight of hand (and magic in general,) you'd be left with a pretty accurate review of the Ackerman project.
Specifics aside, it exhibits all the expected shortcomings including failure to demonstrate the moves precisely as described in the book, omission of important details, inability to demonstrate techniques to an inspiring level of expertise and a general bias towards modified and "modernized" techniques.
That's not to say it's all bad. Ackerman does excel in certain areas and, if nothing else, it will serve as corroboration of some of my more "controversial" comments regarding Wesley James.
If you do decide to purchase this DVD set, may I just advise you not to approach it with the attitude that Ackerman unquestionably represents the book faithfully. He doesn't, and therefore I can not recommend this set as a learning tool.
When you buy an Erdnase DVD set, it's not to see how an overhand stack should look. Even if you didn't put the time into learning it yourself, this is just not one of the more elusive sections of the book now is it.
You watch the DVDs to see just what in the hell Erdnase is talking about when describing the SWE Shift, for example. Just how is that damn thing supposed to look after years of dedicated study and practice?
Well then you can understand my less than enthusiastic attitude towards the Ackerman set when it is in these very sections that he completely ignores the technical descriptions in the book and offers his own greatly inferior modifications. Sometimes commenting words to the effect "I never really could learn to do this, but here's an alternative," and sometimes with no acknowledgment at all.
