Welcome back to The Big To-Do. Meteorological autumn is here, but the weather forecast for the weekend has a lot of summer-style humidity in it. Boston is getting a jump on Hispanic Heritage Month (official start: Sept. 15) with “free events that feature a wide range of Latin music, dance, and food,” and Globe correspondent Noah Schaffer has the details. If you’re staying in, the Globe’s Matt Juul has the lowdown on the latest streaming offerings, which range from “a hit Disney remake to the return of an action TV power couple.” And in the sports world, the NFL season is underway, and the Patriots are undefeated! They play host to the Las Vegas Raiders Sunday at 1 p.m.

Movies

Jennifer Beals in "Flashdance." PARAMOUNT PICTURES

In the 1980s, “the soundtrack album as marketing tool became movie business canon.” Globe film critic Odie Henderson dates the phenomenon to 1983, when “Flashdance” made Irene Cara’s title track inescapable. He ranks 20 “great movie songs from the 1980s. The sole rule: One song per movie.” Head to the comments to cheer, chime in, and complain about the absence of “Don’t You (Forget About Me).”

“Love, Brooklyn” is a “lovely little film” about a love triangle. It “uses gentrification as a symbolic representation of the changes its characters resist or reluctantly accept,” Henderson writes in a 3-star review. “The film has a light touch, so you may not notice this connection until the final scene.” Andre Holland, Nicole Beharie, and DeWanda Wise star, but “the production design by Lili Teplan is the film’s MVP.”

The president of Marvel Studios dismisses the idea of “superhero fatigue” — but he would, wouldn’t he? Box-office returns are diminishing, and “[w]ith countless streaming series adding to the supply ... there’s just too much superheroing happening,” the Globe’s Mark Shanahan writes in a wrap-up of the summer culture season. Also here: life changes for Stephen Colbert and Jeff Bezos, and of course the Coldplay couple.

This weekend’s Jamaica Plain Film Festival aims “to throw the umbrella as wide as possible.” “The collection of films we have gathered ... is emblematic of a new era [with]in a century of this house being a community hub,” founder Alice Hutton tells Globe correspondent Ryan Yau. The three-day event wraps up with a screening of “Wicked,” based on the novel by onetime JP resident Gregory Maguire.

TV & Streaming

Still from HBO’s “Task.” PETER KRAMER/HBO

The limited series “Task” “presents a master class in carving narrative out of character.” Tom Pelphrey stars as “a thief with a grudge” alongside Mark Ruffalo as “an FBI agent sick of it all.” Creator Brad Ingelsby (“Mare of Easttown”) “understands that the extremes of the crime genre provide the perfect basis for searing human drama, provided they’re handled with skill and conviction,” writes Globe TV critic Chris Vognar.

With “The Office” in its DNA, “The Paper” is “quite funny, in much the same way as its predecessor.” The mockumentary is set at the Toledo Truth Teller, but “[t]he newspaper isn’t as important here as, well, the office, with all its petty grievances, unrequited crushes, awkward small talk, and competing egos,” writes Vognar. One link: Oscar Nuñez as Oscar Martinez, because “the release he signed at Dunder Mifflin has no expiration date. Tough break, Oscar.”

Take a seat, human actors — “KPop Demon Hunters” is Netflix’s most viewed movie. “Given how much our viewing habits have changed over the years, it feels like a real rarity for something to break through the way this film has,” the Globe’s Lisa Weidenfeld says of the earworm-packed animated feature. “And ... we can probably all agree that there are far worse options than an empowering kids’ flick with a killer soundtrack.”

Eighteen years after “Mad Men” premiered, the pilot “stands on its own as a masterpiece and works even better in retrospect.” From the introduction of the “seemingly self-confident, immaculately put-together ad exec” Don Draper (Jon Hamm) to the twist ending, it “nimbly hits many of the themes that will guide ‘Mad Men’ for the next eight years,” Vognar writes for the Autopilot series.

The Big Day

Somerville's Amanda Macchia and Michael Krodel wed in a colorful Tuscan micro-wedding in the province of Pisa with 38 guests on June 24, 2025. JASON COREY PHOTOGRAPHY

The Globe’s weddings column, The Big Day, tells stories of how couples found each other, fell in love, and said “I do.” Amanda Macchia and Mike Krodel, who live in Somerville, met in 2016 and married twice — in November 2023 in Central Square and this past June in in Buti, Italy. That fits well with their shared photography business. “Even to this day, working weddings is great for our relationship,” Mike tells Globe correspondent Rachel Kim Raczka.

To apply to be featured, recently married and engaged couples (vow renewals and commitment ceremonies, too!) with ties to New England can click here for the application form.

Books

Elizabeth Gilbert and the cover to her book “All the Way to the River.” PENGUIN GROUP/DEBORAH LOPEZ

Elizabeth Gilbert (“Eat, Pray, Love”) is out with her third memoir, “All the Way to the River.” Writes Globe reviewer Rebecca Steinitz, “[W]hether readers enjoy it or even pick it up may depend upon their tolerance for its copious visitations from dead lovers and their mothers, dialogues with God, mediocre poems, lectures on codependence, and doodles with inspirational slogans, not to mention the author herself.”

In “Dark Renaissance,” Harvard historian Stephen Greenblatt “conjures the life and times of the playwright Christopher Marlowe (1564-93).” The story of “Shakespeare’s greatest rival,” as the subtitle calls him, is “less a straightforward biography, more an evocation of Marlowe’s milieu, swimming in lush detail, immersing us in England’s social ferment at a hinge moment,” writes Globe reviewer Hamilton Cain.

“Christina the Astonishing” is “based on a true story but not,” says author Marianne Leone. Drawing on her upbringing in Newton, the actor and memoirist tells the story of a girl who “was just a weirdo and couldn’t help it,” the Kingston resident says in a Q&A with Globe correspondent Lauren Daley. “I found my tribe of weirdos in the acting world and writing world. And that’s what a coming-of-age story is about.”

Music

The Pogues perform at the Stage at Suffolk Downs this weekend as part of the Seisiún. Left to right: band members James Fearnley, Spider Stacy, and Jem Finer. DAN COMERFORD

The Pogues are in town. Almost two decades after they last played in the US, the Seisiún festival has lured “the long-running group that infused traditional Irish music with punk spirit” to Boston. In place of frontman Shane MacGowan, who died in 2023, expect multiple singers including Lisa O’Neill. The gig is “one of the most exciting things that’s ever happened in my career,” she tells Globe correspondent James Sullivan.

The effort to resurrect Great Scott has one more big hurdle to clear. Before “one of Boston’s most storied rock clubs,” closed since 2020, can go forward with plans to reopen, it needs a thumbs-up at Tuesday’s Zoning Board of Appeal meeting, Globe correspondent Victoria Wasylak writes for Sound Check. Business partner Paul Armstrong says this is “the closest we’ve been to moving from plans on paper to actual construction.”

Theater & Performing Arts

Director Dawn M. Simmons (center) watches performers Janelle Grace and David J. Castillo (left and right) rehearse. BEN PENNINGTON/FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

With Eboni Booth’s “Primary Trust,” opening next week, SpeakEasy Stage Company enters a new era. New artistic director Dawn M. Simmons has plotted out a “roller coaster ride of a season,” she tells Globe correspondent Christopher Wallenberg. “I want SpeakEasy to be a good hangout. ... I want to make [it] an essential institution, a third space as vital and necessary as church, school, your favorite cafe, park, club, library.”

In the 7 Fingers show “Passengers,” at the ART, “train travel is a metaphor for life.” Méliejade “MJ” Tremblay-Bouchard, who uses as many as a dozen hula hoops onstage, is one of the circus troupe’s nine performers. “We’re holding each other. We’re supporting each other,” this week’s Working Artist tells Globe correspondent Cate McQuaid. “That’s the beauty of this show, and people can feel it.”

“Instead of a concrete linear plot with characters like a traditional theater offering, ‘Passengers’ features a more thematic emotionality augmented by circus arts, music and sound.” It rests on “the gallantry and physical prowess of the ensemble,” Globe reviewer Jacquinn Sinclair writes. “[T]here’s a wistful and slightly melancholic tone to the show that explores the transience and beauty of life and all of its journeys.”

The Ufot Family Cycle continues with “The Ceremony,” opening next week. Installment six “marks an important turning point,” writes Globe correspondent Alyssa Vaughn. “While previous plays featured the younger generations alongside the elders, this show is the moment where the torch is officially passed down.” Says playwright Mfoniso Udofia, “This is the point of the cycle where the heartbeat, the thrust, the pull of the story is actually with the kids.”

A renovation physically transformed St. Augustine’s in Cambridgeport, and Heart of the Culture is transforming its mission. The monthly series is part of the Black Space for Arts and Empowerment program spearheaded by Northeastern professor Kris Manjapra. “St. Augustine’s has always been a place that has stories to tell,” he says in an interview with Globe correspondent Jeffrey Kelly, who offers a look at the initiative.

Museums & Visual Art

Martin Karplus, "Girls along Skyline (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)," 1960. MCMULLEN MUSEUM OF ART

Martin Karpus was a world traveler, a talented photographer — and a Nobel laureate in chemistry. “Martin Karplus: Memories and Monuments,” at Boston College’s McMullen Museum of Art, shows “his obvious enthusiasm for the medium and his subjects,” writes the Globe’s Mark Feeney. “These are photographs of both people and places, but people matter to Karplus more. He clearly responds to them.”

Today's newsletter was written by Marie Morris and produced by the Globe Living/Arts staff. Marie Morris can be reached at marie.morris@globe.com. Thanks for reading.

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