Welcome back to The Big To-Do. The sun sets earlier every day, temperatures are plummeting, the Halloween candy is almost gone ... what to do? In a flash of bright colors and joyful music, the Globe’s Holiday Arts Guide is here. If you want more immediate remedies for late-autumn ennui, check out the latest crop of streaming picks  from the Globe’s Matt Juul, including a new take on “Frankenstein” and the latest from Celine Song (“Materialists”). Or tune in to see Nikki Glaser host “Saturday Night Live,” with musical guest Sombr. Or launch a search for half-price Reese’s pumpkins.

Holiday Arts Guide

Anthony Williams's "Urban Nutcracker" returns to Boston this holiday season. PETER PARADISE

You probably can’t hit all 64 events on the calendar constructed by the Globe’s experts, but it might be fun to try. Starting today and ending on First Night, the possibilities range from Symphony Hall to the Stone Zoo, from a Newport mansion to the streets of the Seaport, from tree lightings to every flavor of “Nutcracker” and “Christmas Carol,” and much, much more.

It’s “holiday time, and there’s a wide range of great stuff to stream.” Whether your taste runs to animation or dark comedy, whether you celebrate Festivus or “The Star Wars Holiday Special,” Globe TV and pop culture critic Chris Vognar has you covered.

Sherlock Holmes and Ebenezer Scrooge, together at last! “A Sherlock Carol,” by Mark Shanahan, opens in Boston next week. Christopher Wallenberg asks, “who better than to rehabilitate a grumpy Sherlock than the reformed bah-humbugger himself, ol’ Ebenezer?”

Béla Fleck and the Flecktones are on a tour with a Boston stop, refreshing fans’ memories of their 2008 Christmas album, “Jingle All the Way.” “It seemed like a fun way to get the band out of mothballs,” Fleck tells James Sullivan.

When the Aimee Mann & Ted Leo Christmas Show comes back to town, comedian Josh Gondelman will be in the cast again, He likes the break from touring solo “because I feel less pressure. ... I think as a Jew, you get a little leeway to be a little cantankerous or a little eccentric.” Nick A. Zaino III has the details.

The Globe’s A.Z. Madonna “heard warning bells ringing. Was AI slop seeping into our holiday mixes?” The answer was about what you’d expect, and the details come with good advice: “[I]f you’re streaming holiday music and you hear something that’s just a bit, you know, off, pay attention to that feeling.”

Cirque du Soleil had somehow never done a Christmas-themed show — until this year, “’Twas the Night Before…” is “a celebration for the whole family to bring everyone together,” the acrobatic choreographer tells Karen Campbell.

Movies

A scene from "Predator: Badlands." 20TH CENTURY STUDIOS

“Predator: Badlands” earns 3½ stars from Globe film critic Odie Henderson, who says the sci-fi horror flick is “‘It Happened One Night’ with a Predator monster.” In the Claudette Colbert role, “Elle Fanning is an absolute, hilarious joy,” he writes. “‘Touching,’ ‘funny,’ and ‘bittersweet’ aren’t adjectives you’d expect to find in a review of a ‘Predator’ movie, but here we are.”

“Train Dreams” is “a gorgeous movie to look at, to listen to, and to experience on an emotional level.” Starring Joel Edgerton, the adaptation of a Denis Johnson novella “unfolds in such a nonchalant fashion that we’re initially unaware of how affected we are by the story.” Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar’s follow-up to last year’s “Sing Sing” earns 3½ stars from Henderson.

James Vanderbilt’s “Nuremberg” is an ensemble drama about the post-World War II trials of Nazi officers. Rami Malek plays a psychiatrist determining whether Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe) is fit to stand trial, and their work “propels the heavy narrative,” writes Henderson. The 3½-star result “conveys complexity through Crowe’s acting, which is some of his best.”

Despite an “impressive” performance by Sydney Sweeney, the biopic “Christy” is KO’d by its “shockingly inept” script. As women’s boxing champion Christy Martin, Sweeney “is swimming upstream throughout,” Henderson writes in a 1½-star review. “The first woman boxer to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated deserves a better movie.”

Sydney Sweeney leapt at the chance to play the “incredibly inspiring and strong” Christy Martin. “Her story deserves to be told,” Sweeney says in a Q&A with the Globe’s Matt Juul. “She’s kind of become my best friend. She always jokes, ‘You’ve got me for life.’ And I’m like, ‘Good, because I wouldn’t want to have it any other way.’”

The Boston Jewish Film Festival is underway, and the artistic director is out to “show that Judaism isn’t a monolith.” Among the 25 films on the schedule, three are the work of local filmmakers — that romcom “Fantasy Life,” the documentary “For the Living,” and the documentary short “Of the Heart.” Globe correspondent Isabella Bernstein has a preview.

“Sunset Boulevard” turns 75 this year, and Henderson takes the opportunity to explore why it’s his second-favorite movie. The “classic story of the once-famous Norma Desmond, who used to be big before the pictures got small,” was “meta before meta was popular.” Bonus: a cameo by Carol Burnett.

TV & Streaming

Rhea Seehorn in "Pluribus." APPLE TV

“Pluribus,” the new series from Vince Gilligan (“Breaking Bad”), “is, at heart, a comedy of absurdity in which some very bad things happen.” Rhea Seehorn plays Carol, cranky even before an alien virus turns most humans into “blissed-out members of a hive mind,” writes Globe TV critic Chris Vognar. “The tone is tricky, and Gilligan, Seehorn, and Co. prove up to the challenge.”

“Death by Lightning” is “a sordid, engrossing tale” about the 1881 assassination of President James Garfield. No dry historical drama, it’s “deadly serious and weirdly irreverent,” Vognar writes. It “presents one of history’s great could-have-beens. ... And it does so in a mere four episodes, a minor miracle in these days of the bloated 10-hour ‘limited’ series.”

Museums & Visual Art

Winslow Homer, "The Adirondack Guide," 1894. MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON

“Of Light and Air: Winslow Homer in Watercolor,” at the MFA, documents a midcareer shift. Watercolor “would be the ultimate medium for an artist alive to his volatile moment,” Globe art critic Murray Whyte writes. He made his name with “heavy oils,” but his “parallel pursuit in watercolor rivals, and even supersedes, them in their brisk, close-to-the-bone touch.”

“Hammers on Stone: The Granite Industry on Cape Ann,” at the Cape Ann Museum, “engagingly brings together art and industry.” The show “never forgets that flesh-and-blood people wielded those hammers to extract that stone,” writes the Globe’s Mark Feeney. Beyond visual art, objects in the show include “tools, a quilt, a union account book (what fine penmanship the writer had).”

Theater

Sarah Fornace in "The 4th Witch." KATIE DOYLE

Manual Cinema’s “The 4th Witch” is “a throwback in the best sense.” The wordless performance uses “an ingenious blend of handmade shadow puppetry, live-feed cameras, old-fashioned projectors, large white screens, actors in silhouette, and live music” to tell a story inspired by “Macbeth.” Globe theater critic Don Aucoin is impressed.

The family-run Do Portugal Circus is back in town, “bigger and better.” Among the 114-year-old company’s new performers is Capitan Rudi de Las Vegas, a human cannonball. That’s “one of the most traditional circus acts, but it’s quite a rare one to find now,” choreographer and performer Susan Vance tells Globe correspondent Ryan Yau.

Jonathan Larson’s “Tick, Tick … Boom!” premiered five years after the composer’s untimely death and is best known as “the warmup act for ‘Rent.’” “[D]espite the best efforts and considerable talents of director-choreographer Ilyse Robbins,” Aucoin writes, Umbrella Stage Company’s “solid but seldom compelling production ... doesn’t make a convincing case for ‘Tick, Tick ... Boom!’ as a thing unto itself.”

Globe Summit

The Globe Summit returns Nov. 18-19.

At Globe Summit, you can meet the journalists and newsmakers behind the headlines during two days of bold conversations, breakthrough ideas, and exclusive networking. This year’s theme, “Revolutionary Ideas,” spotlights the visionaries, changemakers, and disruptors shaping our future across industries — from economics and healthcare to climate, technology, lifestyle, and more. For more information on the Nov. 18-19 event and to buy tickets, click here.

Comedy

Denis Leary performs during the Comics Come Home show at TD Garden on Nov. 18, 2017. BEN STAS FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

Comics Come Home comes home Saturday, bringing A-list talent — Conan O’Brien and Sarah Silverman top the star-spangled lineup — back to Boston. What’s more, “fans can almost certainly expect an unannounced guest or two to appear,” reports the Globe’s Matt Juul. The fundraiser for the Cam Neely Foundation is in its 29th year.

Dance

Boston Ballet artist Alexandria Heath will dance in all three sections of George Balanchine's "Jewels." BROOKE TRISOLINI, COURTESY OF BOSTON BALLET

“Emeralds,” “Rubies,” and “Diamonds” make up George Balanchine’s “Jewels,” Boston Ballet’s season-opening program. “I think it is the most important ballet for companies to do in the 21st century,” the George Balanchine Trust‘s Sandra Jennings tells Globe correspondent Karen Campbell. “It’s iconic, such a beautiful ballet for dancers and people who love ballet.”

As a dancer, says Howard Merlin, Boston Ballet’s director of costumes, “I was always calm backstage.” Thirty years ago, he began the transition to his current role, which he describes simply: “I make costumes appear on stage.” Globe correspondent Cate McQuaid has the fascinating details of what this week’s Working Artist does backstage.

Music

I'm With Her perform at the Boch Center Shubert Theatre Nov. 8. ALYSSE GAFKJEN

Before Boygenius, there was I’m With Her. The folk trio is touring in support of its second album, “Wild and Clear and Blue,” and plays Boston Saturday. The album “brings them together,” writes Globe correspondent Marc Hirsh, “merging [Sara] Watkins’s fiddle, [Sarah] Jarosz’s mandolin, and [Aoife] O’Donovan’s guitar into crystalline folk and a single voice.”

A new concert series stages “annual shows that spotlight central figures in Boston’s jazz history.” Up first is pianist, composer, and music theorist George Russell. Sunday’s tribute concert features “compositions that ... likely haven’t been performed in Boston in 15-plus years,” Globe correspondent Victoria Wasylak writes for Sound Check.

Books

Author John Irving KATHERINE HOLLAND

John Irving’s 16th novel, “Queen Esther,” is “bursting with Irvingisms.” The New Hampshire native talks with Globe correspondent Lauren Daley about his upbringing, Hollywood adventures, and writing process. “I read “Moby-Dick” and realized: ‘I love Dickens, but I’m going to have to write a novel the way Melville does, because he knows the ending before he begins.’”

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.