Welcome back to The Big To-Do. June isn’t kidding around, with midsummer-style weekend weather and a nonzero chance of seeing the Northern Lights. Outside of the (potential) sky show, the most colorful event of the weekend is tomorrow’s Boston Pride Parade. Remember to hydrate! As the temperatures rise, some of the hottest new movies and TV shows are hitting streaming services,” the Globe’s Matt Juul writes. Also hot: tempers, as Boston and Philadelphia bicker like siblings over top billing for the country’s 250th birthday (less than a month away!). This week’s One Special Thing is a series based on a groundbreaking movie. And the arts brief section The Rundown includes the launch of all-ages bingo — with books.

If you have New Yorkers in your life, you already know the NBA Finals are underway. Game 2 is tonight in San Antonio. Both French Open titles will go to first-time champions, with the women’s final tomorrow and the men’s final Sunday. And the World Cup finally opens Thursday, with matches in Mexico City and Guadalajara. Watch parties are happening all over the place every day, very much including June 13, when Haiti and Scotland tangle in Foxborough. And the prospect of Massachusetts bars staying open late for the event sparked the Globe quote of the week, from bartender Tairon Martins: “Boston is already a drunk city.”

Movies

John Carney’s “Power Ballad,” starring Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas, earns 3 stars from Globe film critic Odie Hender​son. Cowriter Carney “mixes music and melodrama” in the story of a former boy-band member (Jonas) who collaborates with a wedding singer (Rudd, “not bad at all”) on a hit song — and neglects to share the credit. The result isn’t up to the level of Carney’s “Once” but “is still an entertaining mix of singing and plot.”

As he’s already proven, Oscar winner Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson “knows how to make a music documentary.” His latest is the 3-star “Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial vs. That’s the Weight of the World).” Frontman Maurice White “is the focal point, and we follow his journey from his earliest days in Jim Crow Tennessee to the arenas where EW&F’s greatest hits were performed,” writes Henderson.

“Masters of the Universe” is “a watchable, if overlong, replica of the ‘He-Man’ cartoon.” Nicholas Galitzine plays He-Man, looking “more like a go-go boy in a fantasy-themed gay bar than the protector of a planet,” Henderson writes in a 2½-star review. “Insert some intense space battles here, some witty banter there, a cameo or two, and a few life lessons explained by a character at the end of the movie.”

What is the best Steven Spielberg movie? In advance of “Disclosure Day,” opening next week, Henderson ranks the director’s 34 theatrical releases — “Duel” (1971) is a TV movie, he reminds us. He acknowledges, “Everyone has their favorites, and my list is sure to be controversial.” Agree? Disagree? Wade into the back-and-forth in the comments.

When Spike Lee reimagined his directorial debut, “She’s Gotta Have It,” as a series, he unlocked something special. The reboot, this week’s One Special Thing, “sheds immense light on the harsh realities of being a woman, being queer, and being an artist,” writes the Globe’s Auzzy Byrdsell. “If the movie was ahead of its time in 1986, the show’s bold exploration of the same struggles still felt fresh, crucial, and as thorny as ever in 2017.”

TV & Streaming

“Cape Fear” has been a novel, two movies, and now a series starring Javier Bardem as Max Cady. Played by Robert Mitchum in 1962 and Robert De Niro in 1991, Cady is a vengeful ex-con. Bardem’s Cady is “playing a long game, for the simple reason that he’s in the middle of a long story” — “about nine hours of creeping terror,” writes Globe TV critic Chris Vognar. He tracks the evolution of the I.P. from page to screen to screen to screen.

The doppelganger — “an eerie mirror version of oneself” — continues to fascinate. With the series “Dark Matter” returning this summer and “Black Swan” morphing from a dramatic film to a stage musical, Globe TV critic Chris Vognar is seeing double, and doubles. “What exactly are we afraid of in doppelganger tales? The answer can be boiled down to the title of Jordan Peele’s 2019 doppelganger horror movie: ‘Us.’”

Theater

On Broadway this season, “the knottier aspects of human nature have come vividly into view.” Ahead of Sunday’s Tony Awards, Globe theater critic Don Aucoin surveys a competition encompassing everything from “Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman” to “the irresistible cotton-candy confection that is ‘Schmigadoon!’” He finds a clear theme: “[T]here have been a lot of truths bouncing around Broadway.”

Local angles abound on the list of Tony nominees, which is “back down to earth” with half as many musicals as last year. In additional to “will win” and “should win” picks, Globe correspondent Christopher Wallenberg offers an “upset alert” in eight major categories. And he ventures into the world of streaming to observe that “the race to actually win these prizes has been as heated as Shane and Ilya at the cottage.”

Vaccines “light the fire of a wide-ranging conflict within a strenuously high-minded private elementary school” in “Eureka Day.” Jonathan Spector’s prescient satire, written and set before the pandemic, “mines laughs from the spectacle of well-meaning progressives tying themselves in lexical knots as they try to process events that defy ideological pigeonholes,” Aucoin writes. The Huntington production runs through June 28.

“The Mystery of Irma Vep” is “a giddy, irreverent sprint.” Gabriel Graetz and Paul Melendy animate Charles Ludlam’s “naughty, pun-happy pastiche of Victorian literature, horror movies, Shakespeare, and ... the Bible,” writes Globe critic Chris Vognar. They “harness the material’s controlled chaos and bring hairpin precision to the insanity.” At Central Square Theater through June 21.

Sharyn Rothstein’s “Bad Books” pairs a “badass librarian” with a mother who “really, truly wants to protect her child.” Grappling with issues of censorship and parents’ rights, her characters are “both loaded for bear,” the playwright tells Globe correspondent James Sullivan. The ripped-from-the-headlines plot, says director M. Bevin O’Gara, feels both “very personal and very universal.” At the Gloucester Stage Company through June 27.

Museums & Visual Art

Lucy Raven’s “Rounds” is up at the ICA Watershed, the museum’s summer annex in East Boston. The heart of the installation is her 2025 film “Murderer’s Bar,” which “documents the explosive release of a decommissioned century-old dam holding back the Klamath River in Northern California,” writes Globe art critic Murray Whyte. “What’s happening here, I think, is the violent unraveling of a dominant myth of America.”

The Declaration of Independence “was, in effect, a set of fighting words, 1,320 of them.” Exhibitions for the 250th anniversary of the document — and the United States — are open at five local institutions, and three feature the Declaration. “Tea and (liberty) trees, midnight rides and muskets: All played a Revolutionary role,” writes the Globe’s Mark Feeney. “None of them ... mattered as much as words on paper did.”

Whatever your feelings about AI, there’s something tasty about a “painting” of Benjamin Franklin going to town on a hot dog. “Benny Franks” is part of an AI-aided effort by the MFA and Chelsea-based Fenway Frank manufacturer Kayem to, um, add protein to Revolutionary War-era paintings. “[W]e really wanted to zero in on that tri-corner-hat era of American history,” Kayem’s Carlos Anguizola tells Globe correspondent Celina Colby.

Music

When actor, musician, and nurse Ned Brower was cast on “The Pitt,” he says, “I was pulled back into the art world.” Then the irresistible urge to create struck. He soon formed the electropop duo Bloodwerk with composer John E. Low, a Berklee alum who’s done extensive work for “Frontline.” They chat with the Globe’s Matt Juul about their new music video, the “strong overlapping sensibilities” they share, and touring, someday.

Somerville did not invent Porchfest. No Massachusetts municipality did, but the concept is more popular in the Bay State than in any other. Fifteen years in, Somerville booked more than 500 acts this year, and it’s just one of 40-plus cities and towns that “have embraced the idea of spending an afternoon gathering outside your neighbors’ houses to listen to live music.” Globe correspondent James Sullivan takes a look.

Somehow, Stella Lefty’s “Boston” is just the third single with the city’s name in the title to land in the Billboard Hot 100. “For some reason, Boston has been the throughline of a lot of things,” the 23-year-old pop-country artist tells Globe correspondent Victoria Wasylak, writing for Sound Check. OK, fine, the other two are Dave Loggins’s “Please Come to Boston” (1974) Augustana’s “Boston” (2005).

Books

Stoneham (yes, that Stoneham) was once home to a car manufacturer. The Shawmut Motor Company might be better known if its victory in a coast-to-coast race in 1909 had stood up, but chicanery was afoot. “The Hardest, Longest Race: Henry Ford and the Cross-Country Contest That Changed America” tells the story. The author, former Globe staffer Eric Moskowitz, chats with Kate Tuttle, who edits the books section.

Ann Patchett is “working at the height of her powers,” and “Whistler” is the result. The “truly magnificent” novel unfolds on two timelines “neatly intertwined in a way that builds tension, deepens character, and allows for unexpected discoveries,” writes Globe reviewer Priscilla Gilman. “[I]t is difficult to say much about the plot without giving away the surprises or short-shrifting the agility with which Patchett manages the twists.”

Of Maggie O’Farrell’s three historical novels, including “Hamnet,” the best is the latest, “Land.” Set in 19th-century Ireland, it’s “deeply moving and never depressing, lightened by myth, nature and song,” Globe reviewer Laurie Hertzel writes. “The unbreakable connection between the past and the present makes it clear that what happens to any one person is almost immaterial; the land itself is eternal.”

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.

 View in Browser | Unsubscribe |  Manage Your Account | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | Help Center

You're receiving this because you signed up for the newsletter or attended a related Globe event.