The Movies (Mac) | 
| From: Feral Interactive
List Price: $49.95
Buy New: $42.95
You Save: $7.00 (14%)
New (6) from $42.95
Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 4167
Format: Dvd-rom
Platform: Mac Os X
Genre: Role Playing Games
ESRB: Teen
Media: DVD-ROM
Edition: Standard
Batteries Included: No
Age: 12 - 20 years
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 0 x 0.1 x 0.1
Legal Disclaimer: Warranty does not cover misuse of product.
MPN: 312
Model: 312
UPC: 644247003129
EAN: 0644247003129
ASIN: B000GCBOV6
Release Date: October 30, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: CHARITY SALE!! Brand new & shrink-wrapped! 100% of the proceeds benefit the literacy efforts of Books for America.
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| Features:
| • | E-mail creations to family and friends or share with the world online | | • | Design and run your own movie studio in this exciting game | | • | Build a commercially successful studio in Story mode | | • | Focus exclusively on making movies in Sandbox mode | | • | Make comedies, action films, romances, sci-fi flicks, and more |
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Product Description
The Movies answers a question that many of us have had: What if YOU were in charge of a movie studio? Imagine if you could make any movie you wanted, any way you wanted. Would you create epic action films? Campy b-movies? You can make it big in Hollywood by building the ultimate movie studio. Choose the scripts, control budgets, design & build sets, and settle into the director's chair and see if you can make a hit. Once you've created your box-office smashes, you can even watch them -- adding your own voiceovers and saving them to your Hard Drive or publishing to a Web site.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
 Ready for Some Lights, Camera, Action? January 16, 2007
John Arpin (Warwick, RI USA)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
This game is fantastic, combining the aspects of a Tycoon game where you manage and run your studio, pay attention to your employees behavior, and build what is needed with the aspects of Directing and creating your own movies!
Game runs great! only issue I see (not sure if anyone else has this Issue) is in the post production I can record my dialog and should be able to have the actors lip-sync to my voice. This feature works Great in the PC version. But the Mac version I cannot get it to work. Even after a clean install of my Machines Software (running on 10.4.8 Intel 2.16 Duo core Macbook Pro 15" 2GB Memory, 256 MB video)
Great Game! Even with that one small glitch!
(anyone else have the lip-syncing issue? anyone have it work?)
 A little easy, but... January 29, 2007
Jason C. Ditz (Saginaw, MI United States)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
For people who play a lot of business sims, The Movies comparatively low difficulty level may seem off-putting. I understand that the sandbox mode is this game's true bread and butter, but the possibility of multiple diffuclty settings for the game mode itself would've been a really nice touch. Unless you're really sloppy it's almost impossible to not end up the top studio in the game by the end of World War 2. And once you get there, it's really not that hard to remain there for the rest of the game.
But that's not what it's about, right? The reason people are willing to shell out full price for this game is not the game mode, it's to make your own movies. And if the PC version was passable in this regard, the Mac version truly shines. With full integration into the iLife series (though if you use copyrighted music off iTunes you can't upload your movie to the Lionhead site whether you had permission to use it or not) post-production has never been easier, and you have the possibility to make movies that PC users could only dream of.
One interesting sidenote for owners of the MacMini and Macbook systems. While the box clearly says "The Movies does not support GMA950 graphics cards with shared RAM", this is not strictly true. They may not officially support the card, but the game actually runs quite well on such a system, provided you have enough RAM.
And that to me was the most impressive thing about this game, the performance. With my CoreDuo Mini seemingly at or slightly below the system requirements stated on the box (though with 1 GB of RAM) the game performs absolutely spectacularly. While UB-patched games like Sims 2 require bare minimum settings and even then experience major slowdowns on my system, I was able to crank The Movies up to a healthy widescreen resolution with some nice effects and the game still never so much as hiccups during play.
It is truly a pleasure to play and if you're looking to play around at making some simple Machinema there is no cheaper or easier way to do so. And if you don't think you have machine enough to run it, do yourself a favor and download the demo: you might be pleasantly surprised at how well this runs on low end configurations.
 A Good Game When It Works - But Poor Instuctions January 27, 2007
Thomas Burka (New York, NY USA)
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
I have had problems with Feral's products before -- Sim Theme Park comes to mind (they released a patch 4 years after I purchased it -- no lie) -- and while the Demo runs smoothly on several of my Macs, I cannot get the purchased game to install on any of my machines. When the Movies Installer reaches "0 files left to install," it stays there forever.
Update: Feral says that once the installer indicates it is done, one should wait 20 minutes and let the installer keep running. I tried it and it actually worked, although I cannot think of any reason I would be expected to know or try this.
However, a caveat to mac owners -- the small print in the tech specs warns that the game supposedly will not run on MACBOOKS (as opposed to the Pro line). Although the release is a Universal binary (runs on Intel macs), it allegedly does not run on any machine that shares graphics memory with system memory -- which applies to all Macbooks on the market as of this writing.
Update: as commenter Ditz noted, although Feral claims the game will not run on shared memory systems it apparently does. You can be sure that if yo have problems, however, they will say that they do not support it.
I would give it more stars now than when I originally wrote this reveiw, since the game seems moderately enjoyable.
The tutorial is fairly helpful, but it does not tell you how to delete buildings, for instance. The makeover building is supposed to help your stars improve their images, but this usually consists of simply picking out the most fashionable outfit.
It becomes a little frustrating locating your screenwriters and dragging them back to their desks. There is no reason to have a screenwriter ever doing anything besides writing (since they never get stressed or overworked) -- but finding staff members and putting them to work should be easier.
This is a good game which would be excellent if they made the interface allow you to more easily accomplish tasks that you have to constantly repeat.
And it is true, as other reviewers have said, that the twenties women look like me in drag. Very odd.
 Good game. Bad price for Mac owners. January 22, 2008
Nix Cadavre (Michigan, USA)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I won't comment on the game's mechanics or details. You know it by now. It's movie studio simulation game and it does what it does fairly well.
My problem is with the vast difference in price between the Mac version (45) and the PC version (20). Why am I being asked to pay more than twice as much for the same game on a different operating system?
Because of this, I don't recommend buying the Mac version. Buy the Windows version and run it in Boot Camp, instead. If you already have Windows installed on your Mac, this runs great in Boot Camp, and it will cost a lot less.
We don't have to take this sort of blatant robbery. I may pay a little more for my computers, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to get ganked on the price of software. Offer it at the same price for all platforms if you want to be taken seriously.
Good Game February 8, 2007
N. Haley (Texas)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This game is a MUST HAVE for people who want to run a movie studio.... even though that might be a big dream. What you probably want to do is make movies. In that case you need to know that this game doesn't give you ABSOLUTE freedom, as I had thought, but instead has a lot of pre-rendered "scenes", that you can put together to make a movie. You can still do alot, just not everything.
But in the actual game mode, you don't really focus on even what your movies are about! You're too busy trying to run everything and keep your stars happy. Stuff gets out of hand really fast! What I loved about this game is that you start out thinking, "Ya sure, I could run a studio", and the game goes "ok", and just puts you there. And you're like "ummm, now what...?". lol. It teaches you a lesson!
Excellent game overall but you really do need a FAST system. I've got a Mac: Dual-2GH G5 Tower with 2.5GB of Ram, and I was still running into slow reaction times. :-( I guess if you've got the new Pentium Quad Mac.... But ya, like who does...
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