Welcome back to The Big To-Do. The post-holiday glow has faded, the New Year’s resolutions are on the ropes, and here comes a more-than-welcome three-day weekend. In observation of Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, Boston offers concerts, free museum admission, and more. Globe correspondent Gitana Savage rounds up eight events honoring the legacy of the civil rights leader.

Bundle up if you’re going out — after a brief January thaw, the weekend weather looks seasonally chilly. And if curling up on the couch wins out, your streaming options feature plenty of big names, including Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in “The Rip,” and the Globe’s Matt Juul has the details. If you haven’t seen Affleck and Damon joining Jimmy Fallon on “The Tonight Show” to crank up their Boston accents and name every town in Massachusetts, do yourself a favor.

As you may have heard by watching the local news or just talking to other people, the Patriots continue their playoff run by hosting the Houston Texans on Sunday. Meanwhile, insomniac tennis fans are resting up for the Australian Open. The year’s first major starts Sunday, with Carlos Alcaraz and Aryna Sabalenka the top seeds. In this hemisphere, Monday night is all about the college football national championship game, which pits undefeated Indiana against Miami. And on Tuesday, BU tangles with Harvard in the women’s Beanpot final.

Feeling more artsy than sporty? The Globe’s experts are on the case, starting with an overflowing guide to the season’s cultural offerings. And if nothing else rings your chimes, check out the Globe’s new arts briefs section, The Rundown, for even more on- and off-couch possibilities, including a soda with a musical pedigree and an important mission.

Winter Arts Guide

The NYC-based Gibney Company at the ICA in Boston, in March 2022. CARLIN STIEHL FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE/CARLIN STIEHL

A team of Globe writers collaborated on the centerpiece of this package, a full 50 fun things to do in and around Boston this winter. Spanning hundreds of miles and thousands of years, it’s packed with more diversions that you’d ever have time for — including plenty that you’re going to want to make time for.

As a rule, winter is “Hollywood’s dumping ground” — but there are exceptions to every rule. Odie Henderson previews new films and repertory offerings to see as awards season unspools. In the pipeline: Emerald Fennell’s take on “Wuthering Heights,” “the awesomely titled” “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die,” and Rachel McAdams in a horror movie.

On TV, the documentary series “Henry David Thoreau” “feels like an integral piece of the familiar Ken Burns canon.” Brothers Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren Ewers, veterans of Burns’s Florentine Films, lined up “both classical and new wave” Thoreau experts, in Chris’s words. George Clooney narrates the three-hour project, with Jeff Goldblum as Thoreau. James Sullivan has a sneak peek.

The winter TV schedule features “returning favorites, buzzy new series, and plenty more to keep your eyeballs occupied.” Big names abound on Chris Vognar’s list of 10 shows, including Ryan Murphy (“The Beauty” and “Love Story”), Sterling K. Brown (“Paradise”), and Lisa Kudrow, playing Valerie Cherish on “The Comeback” again after a 12-year hiatus.

“Say It Loud: AAMARP 1977 to Now,” opening at the ICA next month, captures “decades of determination by an energized community of Black artists, inflected by activism, righteousness, and joy.” Murray Whyte looks at the origins of the African American Master Artists in Residency Program (AAMARP) at Northeastern, which started with Dana Chandler and endures today.

Alex Bechtel composed “Penelope” during pandemic lockdown, creating a score he describes as “Joni Mitchell meets Philip Glass.” The solo cabaret-style show inspired by Homer’s “Odyssey” comes to the Lyric Stage next month. “[I]t’s moments like these when the echoes of these ancient stories tend to show up for us and help us understand,” Bechtel tells Christopher Wallenberg.

Singer-songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello has spent a decade “intimately threading [James] Baldwin’s wisdom into her music.” She brings her “echoey sagas of spoken word poetry, jazz-rock experiments, and slow-burn ambient musings” to Boston next month, writes Victoria Wasylak. “I really am trying to work harder on my lyrics,” says the 57-year-old, “because I’m not a flashy bass player anymore.”

“A decorated composer of concert music branching out into experimental pop might as well have been tailor made for the Stave Sessions.” Ringdown — Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw and her spouse, Danni Lee Parpan — plays the annual fringe festival next month. Performing as Ringdown is “really vulnerable,” Shaw tells A.Z. Madonna. “I’m going to show you this whole world that lives inside our head.”

After 15 years, the Trisha Brown Dance Company returns to Boston next month. Brown (1936-2017) “was so deeply committed to challenging herself,” associate artistic director Carolyn Lucas tells Karen Campbell. “We’re really excited to share this program. Her choreography is so beautiful. I think Trisha’s work still inspires and moves people.”

Movies

Ralph Fiennes as Dr. Henry Guthrie in "The Choral." NICOLA DOVE/SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

Set in England during World War I, “The Choral” stars Ralph Fiennes in a story that reminds Globe film critic Odie Henderson of “Sister Act.” Not a complaint! “For starters, I love ‘Sister Act.’ But more importantly ... both films use music as a morale-booster for both the audience and the singers, and both feature plot arcs where the choir gets better over time despite facing adversity.” Three stars, “perfect for viewing on a lazy Sunday afternoon.”

Ralph Fiennes fares less well in “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” Although he’s “the best thing in the movie, besides the production design of his bone temple and the relentless score,” that all adds up to just 2 stars and an irritated Henderson. “When a gorehound like me is impatiently looking at my watch while people are slowly (and I mean slowly) being skinned alive on camera, you know this movie’s in trouble.”

As the title character in “The Testament of Ann Lee,” Amanda Seyfried delivers “a fierce, impressive performance.” Unfortunately, the story of the founding leader of the Shakers left Henderson feeling “curiously empty,” he writes in a 2-star review. “The unobtrusive manner in which [director and cowriter Mona] Fastvold depicts the unwavering faith of Ann Lee and her followers is the film’s most intriguing component.”

When the Academy Award nominations drop on Jan. 22, “You can expect to hear ‘One Battle After Another’ in one category after another.” Other attendees at Henderson’s “Come Watch Me Botch My Nomination Predictions Again” party include “Sinners,” “Wicked: For Good,” and, “no matter how many pins I stick in my Marty Supreme voodoo doll,” “Marty Supreme.”

TV & Streaming

Peter Claffey, left, and Dexter Sol Ansell in "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms." STEFFAN HILL/HBO

The “Game of Thrones” prequel “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” “feels more like a helium-filled trial balloon than a big splash.” The six-episode first season “represents a lighter side of George R.R. Martin, whose ‘Song of Ice and Fire’ novels spawned this whole fire-breathing enterprise,” writes Globe TV critic Chris Vognar. The show serves as “a reminder that not every fantasy enterprise needs to go supersize.”

Music

Jazz saxophonist John Coltrane (left) and trumpeter Miles Davis. ATLANTIC RECORDS/GETTY IMAGES

Born 100 years ago, John Coltrane and Miles Davis “redefined what was thought possible for jazz.” Centennial shows tonight at Scullers include music they recorded together and separately. “You spend years and years learning about it,” trumpeter Joe Magnarelli tells Globe critic Chris Vognar. “Eventually, hopefully you’re in a place where you can play it on a certain level. It’s definitely not just a gig, it’s your whole life really.”

Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir, who died last week at 78, “rose to become the perpetually boyish free spirit of the group.” Over three decades together and three more preserving and promoting the band’s legacy after Jerry Garcia’s death, “chasing magic was a constant pursuit,” Globe correspondent James Sullivan writes in an appreciation. “He didn’t plan it — he just did it."

A musical tribute to David Lynch, who died a year ago, is aptly named “Too Dreamy.” The show, Sunday in Somerville, will “be a little retro, but also a little weird,” says organizer Sarah Fard, a.k.a. Savoir Faire, one of three acts on the bill. It features “selections from each artist’s catalog that feel fit for appearances in works like ‘Twin Peaks,’ ‘Blue Velvet,’ or ‘Mulholland Drive,’” Globe correspondent Victoria Wasylak writes for Sound Check.

Theater

From left: Yetunde Felix-Ukwu and Victoria Omoregie in "The Great Privation." KEN YOTSUKURA/PHOTO BY KEN YOTSUKURA PHOTOGRAPHY

Based on true stories of 19th-century graverobbing, “The Great Privation” centers one of “the less well-known chapters in the nation’s grim history of racism.” Nia Akilah Robinson’s play “moves back and forth from the 19th century to the present day,” with a mother and daughter anchoring both timelines, writes Globe theater critic Don Aucoin. “[T]he 19th-century scenes are far more compelling ... But Robinson is a gifted writer, and she’s building toward something.”

Moderating internet comments is a high-pressure task, and that pressure propels Max Wolf Friedlich’s “Job.” Jane (Josephine Moshiri Elwood), “whose office meltdown went viral,” can’t return to work until crisis therapist Lloyd (Dennis Trainor Jr.) signs off. The play “goes to some very dark places, but creates a safe environment to explore an unsafe topic,” Marianna Bassham, who directs the SpeakEasy Stage production, tells Globe correspondent Terry Byrne.

In Najee A. Brown’s “Stokely and Martin,” the title characters — Carmichael and King, respectively — “represent clashing opinions about the strategic direction of the civil rights movement.” Set in 1967. the play animates Brown’s belief “that art serves three purposes. To educate the mind, to stir the heart, and to motivate the world toward change.” James Sullivan has a preview of the three-performance run.

Books

“This Is Where the Serpent Lives” by Daniyal Mueenuddin. KNOPF DOUBLEDAY PUBLISHING GROUP/SIOBHAN BEASLEY PHOTOGRAPHY

Seventeen years after his celebrated debut, Daniyal Mueenuddin is back with the “subtle, wide-ranging, and enthralling” novel “This Is Where the Serpent Lives.” Set in Pakistan, the book opens in “almost Dickensian” fashion, Globe reviewer Matthew Keeley writes. It “maps an entire society in flux over six decades while presenting half a dozen portraits of contradictory, sympathetic, flawed, and utterly believable individuals.”

Gabriel Tallent’s second novel, “Crux,” “pulsates with ambition, intensity, passion for the natural world, and devotion to life’s biggest questions.” Protagonist Tamma, “a semi-feral teenage girl in California,” is a rock climber with a demanding family. Her best friend, Dan, “is something of a cipher at first, but grows on you eventually,” writes Globe reviewer Marion Winik. As for Tamma, “well, really, why not make her just a little easier to like?”

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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