Think it’d be cool to receive a mystery box every month that includes things like gadgets, devices, DIY coding projects, and techie toys? Maybe you have a child who’s showing an interest in such things? The right subscription box is like a Christmas gift every month: always a pleasant surprise to receive and always lots of fun to open. The hardest part is finding a subscription box that fits what you’re looking for....

Funko Pops don’t have the best reputation among serious collectors. Despite thousands of different models, they all share the same basic shape and they’re all designed to look very similar. However, there are some great Funko Pop figurines on the market—ones that are surprisingly unique and won’t cost you a fortune to purchase. They still have the trademark Funko eyes and expressions, but their subtle differences make them worth collecting....

Sports and anime is a strange combination, but it somehow works. The best sports anime don’t focus solely on the game—they focus on characters, and how they manage to do the unthinkable. Each of the following anime center around a different sport, but you don’t have to be an athlete to watch or understand them. 8. Slam Dunk Hanamichi Sakuragi is at the center of Slam Dunk ’s story. As the delinquent leader of a gang, he’s not very popular with the ladies....

In 1987, a young video game auteur released his first-ever original game concept called Metal Gear for the MSX2 computer. It garnered positive reviews and led to a sequel in 1990 called Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake , which also released for the MSX2 computer. By 2015, Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear series had become one of the most critically acclaimed video game franchises of all time, primarily for its story (which has been heralded as one of the most dense and innovative tales told in any medium) and its characters....

Music is an incredibly important factor in making a video game enjoyable, and it’s one that we often overlook. A great soundtrack will make an otherwise middle-of-the-road game more memorable, while a weak soundtrack will drag down even the best games. What about your own music though? A surprisingly small number of video games let you bring in your own music. Here are some of the best rhythm games where you can use your own music files to play dynamic levels!...

While growing up, my house only had three games for the family to play: Monopoly , Uno , and a weird dexterity game called Jumpin’ Monkeys that involved catapulting plastic monkeys onto a plastic 3D model of a tree and hoping they clung on. I’m sure you can guess which game got the most play. Uno is a classic, and for good reason: it’s simple to learn, it’s easy to play, it can accommodate a large group of players, it has “Take that!...

In movies and TV shows, some characters are shifty and vague and exude a sense of untrustworthiness—and sometimes that happens because they’re unreliable narrators . Unreliable perspectives can come from dark motives, mental instability, or clouded emotions. Unreliable narrators are tricky because they might be intentionally lying to deceive other characters (or viewers), or they might just be lost in themselves and trying to pick up the pieces of their stories....

Since 1929, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has recognized the best in the film industry with the Academy Awards of Merit. Better known as the Oscars, these gold statuettes have become the most prestigious awards in the entertainment industry. The very first Oscars event was held during a private dinner function at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in 1929, making the Oscars one of the oldest entertainment awards ceremonies in the world....

For the past several decades, Disney has spent a lot of their time bringing fairy tales to life for the audience—tales adapted from old myths, legends, folklore, and Hans Christian Andersen. During that time, the mouse house has introduced the world to all kinds of heroes, heroines, and princes; however, none are better loved than their princesses. All of them have had grand adventures where they’ve had to confront unspeakable evil in all its forms....

American video game developer Naughty Dog has had a long string of hits over the years. From the iconic Crash Bandicoot series for the original PlayStation to modern hits like The Last of Us and Uncharted , everything they touch seems to turn to gold. But buried beneath all of their high-profile franchises, there’s one classic Naughty Dog series that often gets overlooked. The Jak and Daxter series first debuted in 2001 for the PlayStation 2 with Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy , then went on for three more main games plus several spin-offs (the kind that every game seems to get once they reach a certain level of popularity)....

Everyone loves a hearty laugh, but sometimes our biggest laughters can come from dark subjects that don’t seem very funny at all. We’re talking about black comedy , a term coined by the surrealist French author André Breton in 1935. Black comedy has also come to be known as morbid humor , dark humor , or gallows humor . Black comedy isn’t like the comforting humor found in sitcoms and rom-coms....

It’s been years since the original Bleach anime ended, but it then returned in 2022 to cap off the Thousand-Year Blood War Arc that was never covered in the anime’s original run. This sequel series covers the final part of Tite Kubo’s iconic manga, bringing the total number of story arcs in Bleach to 18. Most anime fans have strong feelings about Bleach , which had problems with uneven pacing and too much filler....

What comes to mind when you think of butlers? A top hat, a bow tie, and a posh British accent, probably. And you wouldn’t necessarily be wrong. After all, most of the characters we’ve seen as butlers—both in movies and on TV—fit that exact description, serving their masters with charm and a sniff of snobbery. Although butlers generally sit on the sidelines of life, they still manage to win a quiet spot in our hearts....

Most directors stay behind the camera, but many have made cameos in their own films, and a few of them have done it several times! Sometimes the appearance is so trivially minimal that you don’t even realize it happened, and you might even mistake the director as an uncredited background extra. Other times, however, these moments of fan service are easy to pick out and fun to see. Here are some of my favorite director cameos in cinema!...

You ever just want to settle down for a lazy afternoon and get sucked into an engrossing, immersive film that’ll distract you from the real world for several hours? That’s the perfect time for movie epics (or epic films ). The epic movie genre is one of my favorites because you can completely resign yourself to hours of vast, sprawling, sweeping narratives. But what exactly is an epic film? In cinema, the term epic was first used to describe films that felt like ancient epic poems: lengthy stories involving a central heroic character caught up in legendary adventures....

We all know what it’s like to have a crush on someone, and there’s nothing like the memorable intensity of our very first love. So, it’s no surprise there are so many movies about this! Young love is steeped with emotional turmoil and dramatic potential, but such is life. Movies about young love touch on everything from awkward crushes to palpable first loves to heartbreaking flings. They’re rich in conflict, lust, and anguish....

Forgiveness is an important skill to learn because living with a grudge is one of the hardest things in the world. However, forgiveness isn’t always so simple. We’re complex creatures who develop strong emotional bonds, and once those bonds are betrayed, that connection is broken and hard to repair. We’re not just talking about apologies and acknowledgments. Forgiveness is about reconciliation, rectification, and restoration of trust—and we all have to forgive at one point or another....

Netflix’s output is so high at this point, it’s almost intimidating. They’ve been pumping out Netflix Originals over the past few years, loading up the Netflix library with exclusive content to replace lost licenses. And you can lose hours while scrolling through all the different Netflix genres and titles, yet never actually choosing something to watch because nothing catches your eye—and you’re convinced that something better is waiting just around the corner....

Every TV series can be boiled down to a core value. Friends was about connections. The Sopranos was about family. Seinfeld was about nothing. As for Ted Lasso ? Underneath its veneer of comedy, there’s hope. Hope is something not many TV series choose to explore as a foundational element, perhaps because darkness is so much easier to do. However, that’s why Ted Lasso has won so much acclaim. The show has managed to harness this important emotion that so few have managed to do, and it has given its ever-growing audience a real feeling of warmth and acceptance—all thanks to the talent behind and in front of the camera....

Building off our ancient oral storytelling tradition—a tradition that precedes even the written word—the voice-over has long been a cinematic device to express what’s going on within a character’s mind. But as with all cinematic devices, it’s done poorly more often than not. Bland narration, misfit voices, and uninspired lines can be off-putting at best, but when it’s really bad, it can make you want to stop watching. Of course, there’s also the flip side: some movies have done voiceover narration to great effect, with several voice-over examples that are so good that they’ve gone on to become iconic, legendary, and unforgettable....