Welcome back to The Big To-Do. Finally, after weeks of seesawing between “Why do we live here?” and “Why would we want to live anywhere else?,” the weekend weather looks stunning — sunny, dry, and not too hot. The Red Sox bring a 10-game winning streak into the second half of the season, and even with Caitlin Clark on the bench, WNBA All-Star weekend promises to be a thrill ride. If you’re staying in, Tuesday’s Emmy nominations had a strong Massachusetts flavor, and this week’s streaming spotlight focuses on Bay State natives in the hunt for a statuette, including Ayo Edebiri, Bill Burr, and Jenny Slate. But really, go outside!

Film & Movies

Smurfette (Rihanna) in "Smurfs," from Paramount Animation. PARAMOUNT ANIMATION

Even Rihanna and “a murderer’s row of great voices” can’t redeem “Smurfs.” “I was cautiously optimistic,” Globe film critic Odie Henderson writes in a 1½-star review. “When the credits rolled on this animated bore, I felt like a Smurfing fool for getting my hopes up. I wanted to kick my own Smurf.” And/but: “Your kids will probably love this movie.”

Writer-director Ari Aster’s “Eddington” is more style than substance. The Globe’s Mark Feeney awards 2 stars, praising cinematographer Darius Khondji’s “visual scaffolding.” But the film’s look “helps obscure, at least for a while, how inchoate and tonally inert ‘Eddington’ is and its fundamental incoherence: morally, politically, intellectually.”

The new “I Know What You Did Last Summer” continues “one of the worst franchises in horror.” Henderson gives it 1½ stars, writing, “Between the obligatory stalking and murder scenes, you’re left with long stretches where you’re bored enough to start asking questions. Slasher movies aren’t bastions of logic by design, so this is a problem.”

To mark the return of “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” Henderson offers “a short history of the slasher movie.” He runs through the tropes, dredges up some titles you probably haven’t heard in decades (if ever), and ponders the “burning question” “what was the first legitimate slasher movie?”

TV & Streaming

(L to R) Eric Bana as Kyle Turner, Lily Santiago as Naya Vasquez in "Untamed." RICARDO HUBBS/NETFLIX/RICARDO HUBBS/NETFLIX

The ghost of “Yellowstone” hangs over “Untamed.” The Yosemite-set miniseries “understands the eternal appeal of a competent man on horseback, casting Eric Bana as a 21st century equivalent of the Lone Ranger,” writes Globe correspondent Gavia Baker-Whitelaw. “But if you’re hoping for a sophisticated, unpredictable mystery, it isn’t quite up to par.”

Sacha Jenkins’s “Sunday Best” offers “a lively pop history lesson.” The documentary “makes the case that Ed Sullivan, derided early in his career for being a stone-faced stiff, was a low-key but high-profile civil rights pioneer,” writes Globe correspondent Chris Vognar. And it “leans into performance footage, which is a very good thing.”

The Big Day

Cambridge residents Eli Cotton and Matoaka Kipp wed at City Winery on June 15, 2025. JASMINE JORGES

The Globe’s weddings column, The Big Day, tells stories of how couples found each other, fell in love, and said “I do.” Matoaka Kipp and Eli Cotton chose their wedding venue to suit “their love of live music and large guest list.” They married in Boston in June, two years after each executed a surprise marriage proposal — on the same day. “I think that everyone should have a reason to throw a party,” Matoaka tells Globe correspondent Rachel Kim Raczka. “It doesn’t necessarily need to be marriage, but marriage is a really good reason to do it.”

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.

Theater

Kevin Paquette, Lauren R. Elias, and Cristhian Mancinas-García in "The Understudy." KAI CHAO/APPLE PHOTOS CLEAN UP

“The Understudy,” Theresa Rebeck’s “fast-paced spoof of backstage drama,” is Hub Theatre Company’s summer show. “It’s a hilarious look at the non-glamorous side of theater,” says founder Lauren R. Elias. The company attracts, in Elias’s words, collaborators who are “ready and willing to roll with the punches.” Globe correspondent Terry Byrne has a look backstage.

“As You Like It,” this year’s Shakespeare on the Common selection, is “ultimately about escaping, rebuilding, and finding community.” Timely! Globe correspondent Alyssa Vaughn has a look at the comedy-romance, starring Nora Eschenheimer as Rosalind, “the female Hamlet.” The Commonwealth Shakespeare Company production opens Wednesday.

William Jackson Harper plays a prison inmate in the relatively obscure Tennessee Williams play “Not About Nightingales.” As for the role, “I’m scared of it,” the star of “The Good Place” tells Globe correspondent Jeremy D. Goodwin. “I don’t really know how I’m supposed to play this part.” The Williamstown Theatre Festival production runs through Aug. 2.

“Few playwrights have endured a more sustained critical drubbing than [Tennessee] Williams did.” Globe theater critic Don Aucoin surveys his prolific career and evolving legacy. “Part of his strength, and a key reason that theater companies are increasingly willing to venture into the lesser-known plays, is that he offers so many doors to open.”

In “Out of Character,” Ari’el Stachel reckons with his “complicated identity — quite literally, who he is.” The Tony Award winner (for “The Band’s Visit”), who is of Middle Eastern heritage, wrote the “candid and engrossing one-man show” and is “able to find humor in the bumpy journey he’s been on,” in Aucoin’s words. The Berkshire Theatre Group production runs through July 26.

Museums & Visual Art

Ming Fay (American, 1943 – 2025), Ming Fay at NYC Subway Station with Pepper, 1984. Photograph. MING FAY STUDIO

“Ming Fay: Edge of the Garden,” at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, is “whimsical refuge, an escape.” The “playful papier-mâché sculptures” of fruits, vegetables, and other agricultural products “transcend likeness to the uncanny,” writes Globe art critic Murray Whyte. “[B]asketball-size cherries might prompt an initial chuckle, but wonder soon takes its place.”

For the MFA’s Community Arts Initiative, Szu-Chieh Yun and 170 kids aged 6 to 12 created a 37-foot mural. “Into the Forest” is up through Oct. 26. “A way to overcome fear is to make room to imagine a pathway forward,” this week’s Working Artist tells Globe correspondent Cate McQuaid. “Just like [her young collaborators] did in this project.”

Boston sculptor Alison Croney Moses was “really thinking: Do I need a full-time job again?” Then came the $50,000 Rappaport Prize. It’s the cherry on the sundae of a year that’s already seen her work commissioned for the inaugural Boston Public Art Triennial and included in the ICA’s Foster Prize exhibition. Whyte has the details.

Faced with more than 100 photographs, “[t]rying to find patterns or themes ... verges on parlor game — or delusion." The Juried Members’ Exhibition at the Griffin Museum of Photography is “diverse in form and content,” writes the Globe’s Mark Feeney. “That makes sense, since it’s in the nature of photographers to be diverse in sensibility and style.”

“A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250” is “a show of considerable charm and no less considerable substance.” The Morgan Library & Museum’s holdings are vast, and the exhibition makes great use of them. “Part of what makes Austen’s novels so satisfying is the fullness of the world she presents,” Feeney writes from New York. “There’s a comparable fullness here.”

Music

Pastor George Bullock Sr. (left) is one of two original members still singing in the Bullock Brothers, which also includes his brother Richard (right). JACOB BROWN/1TAKE VISION

The Boston gospel group the Bullock Brothers is turning 75, and that’s not a typo. Pastor George Bullock Sr., 90, and Richard Bullock, 92, are still performing, including Saturday at an anniversary banquet in Dorchester. “The all-Bullock bill features four other artists with family ties,” writes Globe correspondent Noah Schaffer, who shares the family’s fascinating history.

Start strategizing now to make the most of next weekend’s Lowell Folk Festival. The free event opens July 25 with “the sequins and multi-colored feathers of Boston Caribbean Carnival favorites Dynasty Productions as they lead a parade of nations.” Noah Schaffer has an in-depth look at the stacked lineup as well as a reminder that the “food offerings are just as special.”

When John Lennon and Yoko Ono separated in the mid-’70s, Lennon took up with May Pang. “Like any smitten partner, Pang frequently took photos of Lennon,” Globe correspondent Victoria Wasylak writes for Sound Check. The pop-up show “The Lost Weekend: The Photography of May Pang” captures the interlude. “It makes me feel good that [visitors] finally see a John that has a smile on his face,” says Pang.

Somehow Cambridge has never played host to a Porchfest — until this weekend. The action centers on Cambridgeport and Central Square, and organizers hope to expand in the future. The Globe’s Emily Sweeney has the lowdown on the two-day event.

Books

Laurie Gwen Shapiro and the cover to her book “The Aviator and the Showman.” PENGUIN/FRANCO VOGT

The title characters of “The Aviator and the Showman” are Amelia Earhart and George Palmer Putnam. Who? Exactly. He was the legendary pilot’s husband, “huckster and Svengali extraordinaire.” Author Laurie Gwen Shapiro “suggests that financial concerns may have incited him to push Amelia to begin her fateful last record-setting attempt before she was ready,” writes Globe reviewer Marion Winik.

Spoken-word artist Andrea Gibson, who “wrote poetry that explored and illuminated life’s rich ambiguities,” died this week at 49. The Maine native, who was Colorado’s poet laureate at their death, “could send a spoken word poem spinning through space and time knowing it would reach its perfect home,” writes Globe obituaries editor Bryan Marquard.

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