Benefits of Legos for Kids You Never Thought Of

From My Kidsguide:  Yes, there are benefits of LEGOs beyond basic building skills! You might think of your kids’ LEGO pieces as something you dread finding in the dark. Those little plastic bricks offer much more than just sore feet and irritated parents. There are benefits your kids can reap from playing with LEGOs that you may not have thought of.

Helps Improve Dexterity

If your child struggles with their manual dexterity, working with those little colored bricks can certainly help them out. Start with the biggest blocks for younger kids and help your child work on picking them up and work with them. As their dexterity improves, introduce smaller and smaller blocks. This also helps develop fine motor skills as kids need to learn to manipulate their fingers in order to pick up and work with blocks of assorted sizes.

Helps Improve Attention Span



If you have a kiddo who bounces from activity to activity and flits from thought to thought, working with LEGO blocks can help improve their attention span. For highly distractible kids, working with and playing with those assorted blocks can give them something to focus on and help lengthen their attention span. Focusing on a task like building something with blocks can also help calm a hyperactive child. To improve attention and focus, give your child specific designs to build. For example, ask them to build a car or create a house out of LEGO blocks. This gives them a goal and helps them focus on meeting it.

Playing With LEGOs Helps With Following Directions

If your child enjoys LEGO building sets, this interest helps them improve their abilities to follow directions. How does that work? LEGO building sets come with specific instructions to create the design and those instructions must be followed step by step in order to create the play set. This also fosters an attention to detail in children as they must do each step in order and exactly as written if they want the set to turn out right.

Creates Interest in Art and Design



Creating designs and structures with LEGO blocks can help foster an interest in art and design. If your child seems to enjoy stepping outside the LEGO box and creating unusual structures, you can encourage their interests by adding more blocks and help them come up with designs to work on.

Greedy Man Wants Refund After Buying $650 in Tickets to ‘The Interview’

From yahoo, Sony apparently isn’t the only one who lost money on “The Interview” last week.

A man in Ohio tried to cash in on the buzz surrounding Seth Rogen and James Franco’s new comedy when he purchased $650 in tickets or 50 passes at $13 each to the movie.

According to WCPO in Cincinnati, Jason Best learned that a local theater in Clifton was among the 300 theaters to play the controversial film on Christmas Day and hoped to resell the tickets online at a higher price (i.e., he wanted to scalp them).

“I saw all the hype about ‘The Interview’ on the 23rd and thought, ‘Hey, folks are selling these tickets in other cities and it seems like that’s the thing to do right now so why not give it a shot so see how it goes,”’ he said.

But the plan backfired once Sony announced it was streaming the film online for half the price on sites like YouTube, Hulu and Netflix.

Now the man is demanding a refund from the Esquire Theatre.

“I thought I’d get my money back because the theater’s website *very clearly* said the tickets were refundable,” Best told WCPO in an email.

But a theater manager told Best that the arthouse didn’t have a website and that “The Interview” was listed as a special event.

It turns out Best had purchased the tickets from movietickets.com, which specifically warns on its website that theater owners reserve the right to withhold refunds for special events.

Plus the manager said that scalping tickets was illegal.

The $40 million-budgeted “Interview,” which expanded to iTunes on Sunday, recently changed from a wide to limited release after North Korean hackers threatened to harm theatergoers.

The R-rated comedy earned nearly $3 million at the U.S. box office this weekend.

Play-Doh toy looks like a penis and parents are upset about it

From mirror.co.uk, Play-Doh has been forced to redesign an 'icing extruder' toy after complaints from parents that it looks like a penis.

The Play-Doh Sweet Shoppe Cake Mountain set lets kids pretend to make "cakes" out of the colourful material using a series of moulds and shaping tools.

One of the tools is an "icing extruder" that is used to pipe out fake icing in swirls on top of the Play-Doh cakes.

The 'accidental penis' toy formed part of the 'Cake Mountain' playset


Unfortunately, it looks more like a sex toy - albeit a 3-incher - than a child's toy, and parents who bought the set for Christmas have taken to social media to complain.

I dunno if anyone else follows Play-Doh on Facebook but you should cause they're doing some serious damage control pic.twitter.com/TooleS5PgE— El Clarko (@Fatgoldfish4) December 29, 2014

I salute the designers who somehow managed to get this Play-Doh icing maker past their bosses. http://t.co/cRCnsEMmmo pic.twitter.com/0aQMtJS9Wi— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed) December 30, 2014

Play-Doh has since posted to its Facebook page that it's going to amend the design.

"We have heard some consumer feedback about the extruder tool in the Play-Doh Cake Mountain playset and are in the process of updating all future Play-Doh products with a different tool."

The company added that if anyone has bought the playset and wants a replacement, Hasbro's customer service department will swap it.

It's not the first accidental penis Play-Doh story this week.

A child's innocent Play-Doh sculpture of a 'dolphin on wheels' has gone viral online - sparking thousands of comments and shares on social media.

That's No Bantha: Custom Built Landspeeder Cat Bed

From geekology, This is the custom Star Wars landspeeder cat bed built by pet furniture maker Roxy's Dream. Ittook over 40-hours to complete and is for sale for $600. No word if the cat is included in the price, but for $600 it better be, and it better be able to talk. And not all sassy like my last cat, Miss Marple. She used to call me fat when I'd get out of the shower. But only if I'd already fed her that night -- she was smart. I wonder whatever happened to her. "Nothing, you made her up." Oh thank goodness. I was starting to worry maybe she got hit by a car or something.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the Most Anticipated Movie for 2015!

From starwars7news, No surprises here. According to a Fandango survey Star Wars beats Avengers 2 for most anticipated movie for 2015. Also Daisy Ridley is the “Biggest Female Breakout Movie Star” for 2015! John Boyega lost the first place in the category “Biggest Male Breakout Movie Star” to Jamie Dornan from “Fifty Shades of Grey”, the movie which trailer was the most watched one in 2014 leaving TFA teaser in second place…

From Variety:

That’s the takeaway from Fandango’s survey of the most anticipated films of 2015. The online ticketing company found that “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” is the film that moviegoers are most jazzed to see next year, while “Avengers: Age of Ultron” has to settle for runner-up status.

The Fandango poll shows just how sky high anticipation is for the return to a galaxy far, far away. An 88-second teaser for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” was viewed by more than 51 million fans on YouTube.

To get its results, Fandango polled 1,000 film fans on its website from Dec. 22 through Dec. 29. The company also looked at the biggest film stars and breakthrough performers going into the new year.

Most Anticipated 2015 Movie:

1. “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”
2. “Avengers: Age of Ultron”
3. “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2″
4. “Fifty Shades of Grey”
5. “Jurassic World”

Study Confirms Kids’ Movies are Rife With Death and Murder

From slashfilm, Films rated PG-13 and R tend to be more violent than PG or G movies; that’s partially the point of PG-13 and R movies. But it turns out kids’ films are rife with death and tragedy all the same.

The British Medical Journal has found that animated children’s movies actually involve morecharacter deaths than grown-up dramatic films, with murder occurring at nearly three times the rate of adult movies. Hit the jump for more results from the childrens movie death study.

The BMJ published the childrens movie death study as part of their Christmas Edition, which traditionally includes funny or lighthearted research pieces. This one is neither, though I guess it’s still fluffier than their usual fare.

The BMJ compared 45 top-grossing children’s animated films against 90 top-grossing adult-oriented dramatic films, using a “Kaplan-Meier survival analysis with Cox regression comparing time to first on-screen death.” (I’m not going to pretend to know what that means, but if you’re a mathematic / scientific type, there you go.)

Their findings:

Two thirds of children’s animated films contained an on-screen death of an important character compared with half of comparison films. Common causes of death in children’s animated films included animal attacks and falls (intentional or not), while in comparison films common causes of death were gunshots, motor vehicle crashes, and illnesses. Notable early on-screen deaths included Nemo’s mother being eaten by a barracuda 4 minutes and 3 seconds into Finding Nemo, Tarzan’s parents being killed by a leopard 4 minutes and 8 seconds intoTarzan, and Cecil Gaines’ father being shot in front of him 6 minutes into The Butler.

The researchers looked at a wide variety of films ranging from Snow White (1937) to Frozen(2013). Sequels were excluded, as were movies in which the main characters were neither human nor animal (so no Toy Story, for example.)

The grown-up dramas were pulled from the same years as the animated pics. They did not include action and adventure movies, as those are frequently targeted at kids, but did include horror pics (e.g., The Exorcism of Emily Rose) and thrillers (e.g., The Departed, Pulp Fiction).

The results seem counterintuitive until you think back to the plotlines of all those adorable kiddie cartoons. Lots of them center around characters who lose one or both parents, sometimes in the first few minutes of the movie (e.g., Finding Nemo, Tarzan). Heck, I’m still reeling from Mufasa’s death in The Lion King.

In conclusion, the researchers write, “children’s animated films, rather than being innocuous alternatives to the gore and carnage typical of American films, are in fact hotbeds of murder and mayhem.” They suggest parents watch these movies with their kids. Unless, presumably, you’re the parent in an animated movie, in which case you’re probably already dead.

New 'Phantasm V' trailer gives us another glimpse of some awesomeness!

Screech arrested for stabbing a man!

From ew, On Friday, Dustin Diamond—better known as Screech from Saved by the Bell—was arrested by the Ozaukee County Sheriff’s Department for allegedly stabbing a man. While few details were known at the time, reports of what happened are now starting to trickle out.



According to a report obtained by CNN, Diamond claims that the incident began when a group of intoxicated people became unruly, and so he left his girlfriend, Amanda Schutz, to go close out his tab. When he returned, he allegedly found Schutz bleeding with two men holding her hair. According to the report, Diamond was accosted by another man when he moved to intervene, and inadvertently stabbed the man in the process. The wound was not life-threatening.

CNNis also reporting that other people in the Port Washington, Milwaukee bar claim that the incident began when women started shoving each other, and that “a women was upset because people were taking pictures of her and her boyfriend.”

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Netflix to distribute the new "Pee-Wee Herman" movie

From darkhorizons, Netflix is reportedly nearing a deal to distribute the new "Pee-Wee Herman" movie which Judd Apatow is producing says The Wrap.

A Netflix spokesperson cautions that there’s no deal in place yet, but other sources tell the outlet this deal has been in the works for months. Paul Reubens, who co-wrote the script with Paul Rust, reprises his iconic role in the project which aims to begin shooting next year.

The project had previously been set up at Universal, but that is confirmed to no longer be the case. It also hasn't been revealed who will be serving as the film's director, though one is said to be in place.

Box Office

From ew, Although there were three huge wide releases in theaters this weekend, the third and final Hobbit beat them all by a landslide. The Peter Jackson film brought in $56.2 million over the weekend (and $90.6 million since its Wednesday opening), while Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb and Annie — all films showing in more than 3,000 locations — made almost $40 million less.

This is a win at the weekend box office, but compared to the rest of the Hobbit films, The Battle of the Five Armies didn’t fare as well: The first film in the trilogy made $84.6 million its opening weekend while the second took in $73.6 million.

The 23 percent drop in opening weekend grosses between the second and third film could be due to a number of things, including movie fatigue. The book — yes, singular book — the films are based on is just over 300 pages, but each movie is at least two hours long. You can only stretch one story so much, and The Hobbit has been stretched… and stretched… and stretched.

Like Battle of the Five Armies, the most recent Night at the Museum is the third in a trilogy — one that audiences also aren’t as jazzed about anymore. The first opened with $30.4 million and the second with $54.2 million, but the third opened with a comparatively lackluster $17.3 million. The lesson here? Don’t wait five years to make a sequel to a film that didn’t probably didn’t need a sequel to begin with.

Annie was neck and neck with Night at the Museum and made just one million less than the Ben Stiller flick. Although Annie is full of star power — the cast includes Jamie Foxx, Cameron Diaz, and Quvenzhané Wallis (who’s already nabbed a Golden Globe nod for this role) — it also got a ton of bad reviews.

Exodus: Gods and Kings and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1 were able to keep spots on the top five this weekend — but this will likely be their last weekend in the upper ranks, as Into the Woods, Unbroken, and The Gambler all open wide next weekend.

1. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies — $56.2 million
2. Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb — $17.3 million
3. Annie — $16.3 million
4. Exodus: Gods and Kings — $8.1 million
5. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1 – $7.8 million

Wild made its way to the number six spot this weekend with $4.2 million after adding nearly 1,000 locations. Top Five ($3.6 million), Big Hero 6 ($3.6 million), and Penguins of Madagascar ($3.5 million) followed close behind, while the Indian sci-fi comedy PK – a film only in 272 locations – rounded out the top 10 with $3.5 million.