Clockwise from top left: Ikarao Smart Karaoke Systems; Downton Abbey: The Ultimate Legacy Collection; The Wes Anderson Archive: Ten Films, Twenty-Five Years; Lego Game Boy
The holidays are upon us, along with roughly a foot of snow (at least, for those of us in the Midwest) and excessive pressure to demonstrate how much we care for others by spending a ton of money. Gift guides play right into those consumerist tendencies, of course, but at least you can count on our gift guide to be full of selections we’d actually want to give or receive. In this special midweek edition of Staff Picks, The A.V. Club presents the best gifts for the pop culture lovers in your life.
Matt Schimkowitz: The Wes Anderson Archive: Ten Films, Twenty-Five Years (Criterion)
The Wes Anderson Archive: Ten Films, Twenty-Five Years (Photo: Criterion)
Known for its meticulously considered DVD releases, Criterion outdid itself with its new 20-disc Wes Anderson collection. Containing the director’s first 10 films on 4K UHD DVD, the Anderson Archive brings the auteur’s precise design sensibilities to this stunning box set. At $400, the price dares potential purchasers to wait for one of Criterion’s many 50% off sales. Still, with the holidays around the corner, it’s a hefty, luxurious gift for the extremely lucky Anderson fanatic in anyone’s life, or the perfect start to a burgeoning cinephile’s physical media collection. We highlighted the collection back in the fall, but it bears repeating: This set contains new 4K masters of the director’s first 25 years of output, running from his early breakout Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and Royal Tenenbaums through 2021’s The French Dispatch. His two stop-motion features, Isle Of Dogs and The Fantastic Mr. Fox, appear alongside 25 hours of special features, 10 illustrated books, and new essays from writers Richard Brody, Bilge Ebiri, and Moeko Fujii, as well as filmmakers James L. Brooks and Martin Scorsese. Could we ask for anything else? Sure, Asteroid Cityand The Phoenician Scheme. For now, this is most satisfactory.
List price: $400
Saloni Gajjar: AMC A-List subscription
It may feel like a basic choice, but AMC’s A-List tier is actually worth the price for anyone who frequently takes trips to a theater (or for someone who wants to start doing just that in 2026!). It’s an incredible deal that offers up to four movies a week at monthly range of $20-$26 depending on your location. That’s usually the amount it takes to just go watch a couple movies in general—just think about how much your Barbenheimer experience cost you. There are more cool and chic theaters in almost every city, but AMC’s subscription feels reasonable at a time when tickets and concessions keep getting pricier. Another benefit is that most AMC Theaters tend to release a lot of international stuff, do secret advance screenings, and re-release old movies. I know that the number of films I’ve watched after getting on the A-List has increased because the subscription was encouragement enough. Well, that and Nicole Kidman’s AMC pledge of allegiance ad, in which she loves to remind us that we do, in fact, come to this place for magic.
List price: Three-month membership for $79.99; six-month membership, $154.99; 12-month membership, $299.99
Jacob Oller: The Metrograph, Issue 2
The Metrograph, No. 2 (Image: Metrograph)
Despite working for a digital publication, my love for physical media extends to print, especially magazines about movies. The glorious rebirth of Fangoria has been a goopy, bloody balm, and the continued existence of The Metrograph—the beefy, beautiful edition from the arthouse theater in New York, now releasing its second issue—offers a similarly heartening experience (without all the gore, for better and worse). I wrote up their first issue last year, and they’ve only expanded for their follow-up. Boasting 60 contributors across its 160 pages, this glossy read boasts a passionate density befitting its indie subjects. Whether you’re a slow cinema geek (Apichatpong Weerasethakul is in there) or an Elaine May diehard (there’s an interview from her and an essay about her work) or just someone who loves legends of film criticism (and if you’re reading The A.V. Club, you should also be reading Jonathan Rosenbaum), The Metrograph has something for you. A copy will run you $25 unless you opt for a membership in some form, but if you want to fully commit to a bundle, the Metrograph’s streaming service continues to be one of the most adventurous and curated out there, and if you’re in New York, I can’t imagine not wanting to camp out at a theater that’s seemingly always screening the 4K restoration of Possession.
List price: Copies of the print magazine are $25; gift membership to the theater/streaming service is $50 for one, $85 for two
Drew Gillis: Ikarao Smart Karaoke Systems
Ikarao Smart Karaoke Systems (Photo: Ikarao)
Karaoke in a bar can be fun, karaoke in a private room can be better. But karaoke in the privacy of your own home? Awesome. Ikarao has debuted a new set of smart karaoke systems, ranging in price from $160 to $532, depending on what kind of muscle you’re looking to put into your amateur singing. All of the systems come with two self-charging wireless mics and a speaker-cum-lyric screen-cum-carrying case. Even the cheapest purports to offer more than 500,000 licensed songs and has built in YouTube. Start doing your vocal warmups now, and you may be ready to tear it up in time for the holidays.
List price: Ranging from $159 to $500
Nebula Subscription
2025 was the year I really got into watching videos on Nebula; it’s a part of my routine at this point, often before I even go to YouTube. Nebula is a premium, worker-owned streaming platform of informative and critical videos that has already drawn some of YouTube’s most talented and insightful creators. (If you’ve ever watched a Lindsay Ellis or F.D. Signifier video to the end, you’ve probably heard this sales pitch before.) The platform offers early access and exclusive videos that scratch the itch I have for the History or Discovery Channels of decades ago. Nebula also seems to escape the censorship that seems increasingly common on YouTube, with a creator like Brooey Deschanel exploring Taboo On Screen, a series she’d have been likely unable to produce on the Google-owned competitor. At $60 for a year, the price is more than fair for the quality of the content. Nebula also offers a lifetime subscription for a flat $300, if you want to keep watching forever.
Downton Abbey: The Ultimate Legacy Collection (Photo: Universal Pictures)
The box set has become almost a stock gift for TV lovers, which can make it tough to single out just one for inclusion here. But this comprehensive Downton Abbey Blu-ray set is as luxe as its namesake, from its gold-limned cover to the original costume and set design sketches to the 13 hours of bonus content—which are all on top of the 13 discs that span six seasons of the flagship series and three spin-off films. You can buy this for the Abbey faithful and the uninitiated, or a friend looking to (re)build their physical media library with a handsome collection.
List price: $102
Garrett Martin: Hüsker Dü, 1985: The Miracle Year 4xLP / 2xCD Box Set
Hüsker Dü, 1985: The Miracle Year 4xLP / 2xCD Box Set (Image: Numero Group)
1985: The Miracle Year, a new 4xLP / 2xCD box set with over 40 live tracks—including an entire show at First Avenue in January ’85—chronicles Hüsker Du’s most seismic year, when they released not one but two of the most important records of the decade: New Day Rising and Flip Your Wig. The January show is a scorcher, a full-force blast through the band’s best material, including several Flip Your Wig songs that wouldn’t be released for several months, and capped off with a handful of covers—the Byrds, the Beatles, The Mary Tyler Moore Show—that underlined the inspirations that drove the band past punk orthodoxy, all in a pristine-sounding restoration by producer-engineer Beau Sorensen. And the 20 extra tracks, from a smattering of shows played throughout 1985, reinforces that the power and skill of the First Avenue show was no fluke: they did this every night. It all comes in Numero’s customarily top-shelf packaging–a sturdy box, fantastic artwork—with a 36-page book that takes an in-depth look at the band’s crucial year. And with the band’s classic SST albums seemingly never getting the much-needed restoration and deluxe reissue treatment, 1985: The Miracle Year is, well, truly miraculous.
List price: $100
Elijah Gonzalez: Lego Game Boy
Lego Game Boy (Photo: Lego)
Lego has made a point in recent years of targeting millennials’ disposable incomes like a heat-seeking missile, releasing numerous expensive sets meant to cash in on a wave of ’90s nostalgia. While the Lego Game Boy—a near 1:1 recreation of Nintendo’s seminal 1989 handheld—seems like the personification of this trend, it stands apart thanks to its appealing design, build ingenuity, and perhaps most notably, a price that acknowledges most people in its targeted age bracket are probably still paying off student loans. The process of putting it together is a series of minor “oohs” and “aahs” as you lay out the equivalent of its internal circuitry brick by brick, eventually resulting in pressable buttons powered by rubber bands and other clever gizmos, as well as a holographic screen that gives it an extra bit of life. Then, when it’s finally assembled, its impressive resemblance to the genuine article satisfies the simple pleasure of holding old school gaming hardware in your hands as you marvel at this weirdly visually pleasing gray rectangle. Even judged against a moment where retro nostalgia has become so dominant in pop culture that it can be a bit grating, the Lego Game Boy is a well-earned trip down memory lane.
