Each time CCXP starts, nearly everyone in São Paulo feels it. A 40-minute drive to the São Paulo Expo convention center can suddenly take three hours with traffic. Some attendees travel over 1,800 miles to watch as many panels as possible at the entertainment and comics event. In 2023, fans...
J-pop icon LiSA talks crafting perfect anime theme songs and one that’s stuck with her
This week, a giant screen in the lobby of Sony’s headquarters glowed with the image of J-pop rock icon LiSA to celebrate her first-ever tour stop in New York City. The mega-star beamed even brighter when we met in person days after the show. Over the past decade, LiSA has...
Season: A Letter to the Future is way more intense than your typical vacation bike ride
Late October in the Hudson Valley the leaves had peaked and all turned to brown. You could take the train out of the city and bike the rest of the way, up into the highlands from the river. In the mountains there was an old trail, and after a few...
David Lynch’s influence on video games goes far beyond Twin Peaks
There’s been an outpouring of grief following the announcement of David Lynch’s death on Jan. 15 at the age of 78. Among the assorted tributes online were several posts from prominent developers from the gaming industry, including Remedy Entertainment’s Sam Lake, Hidetaka “Swery” Suehiro, and Pacific Drive developer Ironwood Studios....
Anora actor admits his notorious button-mashing scene was a win in the end
I sometimes receive messages from audiences for Anora that are like, ‘Hi Mark, why are you playing video games like this? It’s a shooter, why are you pushing all the buttons all the time? It’s a fake. You’re not playing really.’And it’s partly true. Because I’m not a video game...
28 Years Later needed to be a stark reminder that the infected aren’t zombies
28 Days Later offered a singular twist on a horror trope: Instead of the dead rising up from the graves, the “zombies” of Danny Boyle’s zombie movie would be normal humans transformed by the man-made “Rage Virus.” And they could run. So, after years and years of Boyle and writer...
Disney has landed in the middle of a fight over an Indigenous language
For decades, the New Zealand government in Aotearoa has tried to eliminate te reo Māori, the language of the Indigenous Polynesian people of Aotearoa. Thus far, it’s failed. While the current right-wing government coalition is working to suppress the language with the largest political backing in years, organizers, storytellers, and...
Nobody understands gambling, especially in video games
In 2025, it’s very difficult not to see gambling advertised everywhere. It’s on billboards and sports broadcasts. It’s on podcasts and printed on the turnbuckle of AEW’s pay-per-view shows. And it’s on app stores, where you can find the FanDuel and DraftKings sportsbooks, alongside glitzy digital slot machines. These apps...
Kelly Marie Tran’s new horror movie turns the ‘pressure we feel to have it all together’ into a monstrous, consuming itch
The horror movie Control Freak, now streaming on Hulu, has a super relatable premise: the intense, nagging sensation of a persistent itch. It stars Kelly Marie Tran (Raya and the Last Dragon, Star Wars: The Last Jedi) as Val, a motivational speaker tormented by an itch on the back of...
D&D 5e exclusive reveal: Inside Crooked Moon’s new scarecrow and plague rat PC species
The Crooked Moon, Legends of Avantris’ folk-horror setting for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition, became the game’s most successful crowdfunding campaign to date, earning more than $4 million on Kickstarter. Ahead of the book’s June 16 release on D&D Beyond, Polygon spoke with Legends of Avantris lead writer and creative...