The Magic Box

Robert Donat stars as William Friese Green, a real life film-maker and photographer whose work was under appreciated in the early years of film, and who apparently made the first film camera. Through experimentation and obsessive interest in his ambitions, his work was brushed aside and he neglects other aspects of his life, such as his family and other interests.

Apparently this movie didn’t do too well at the box office, which is slightly ironic in some ways. However, I liked the interior sets of the houses in the movie and Robert Donat was good in the film because he portrayed the man at any age as his face can easily be adjusted to age. I understood most of the film references towards the beginning of the movie (in the opening credits they made a reference to Louis le Prince, a filmmaker who mysteriously disappeared in 1890 after trying to promote his film Roundhay Garden Scene), and when they walked into the tent and showed some of the Lumiere Brothers’ work.

Overall, it was a good movie and I hope to watch it again at some point.

3.5/5

 

Comparison between Sims 3 and Sims 4

I don’t really play a wide variety of games like my brother and friends do but my favourite game is definetly Sims. Sims, as you might know, is a game about controlling life simulated characters, building houses for them, making them do things and killing them off if you want. The Sims was released in 2000 and it went on to release 3 more games, the most recent base game being Sims 4, which was released in 2014.

Although I went through a Sims Freeplay phase, I don’t really like it anymore because it’s basically sims for beginners compressed into an iPad game where you waste your time completing a load of boring quests. I don’t think I would want to go back to it due to its simplicity and all the memory hungry updates.

In terms of the console games, I like the PC versions of Sims 3 and 4 but I haven’t played the original 2 sims games since I was little but it is very nostalgic looking at them. I haven’t got any of the expansion packs for Sims 3 but Sims 3 reminds me of Sims 2 and Sims 4 is quite cool because you can do a bit more when designing the character (I liked the Star Wars costumes but all my Star Wars sims died). They’ve omitted the toddler stage from Sims 4 but the baby/toddler stage does drag a bit. Sims also allows you to use your imagination in some ways but I doubt that all the coding behind it is all that creative.

If you have a few days/weeks/months to spare, go ahead and play it.