Welcome back to The Big To-Do. It’s Friday the 13th. Thursday afternoon’s gnarly traffic was a good sign that the long Presidents Day weekend and school vacation week are here. But before that: Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, and the week’s themed streaming picks by the Globe’s Matt Juul range from “an Oscar-nominated biopic to a coming-of-age cult classic.” The Year of the Horse begins Tuesday, and Globe correspondent Annie Sarlin explores an impressive lineup of local Lunar New Year celebrations. And the Winter Olympics move into Week 2, with more figure skating on the schedule.

The Rundown, the Globe’s new arts briefs section, is extra musical this week, with four genres in the news. For another new series, One Special Thing, members of the Globe’s arts staff “will choose something that speaks to us and sings to us, something timeless that we return to in good times and bad.” It starts this week with a classic book that spawned a classic movie.

Movies

Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgård in "Pillion." CHRIS HARRIS

“Pillion” “sounds like a standard issue rom-com.” It isn’t. The story of two men in “a year-long BDSM dominant/submissive relationship” earns 3½ stars from Globe film critic Odie Henderson. “Nordic god” Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling (Harry Potter’s cousin Dudley) play the lovers, and writer-director Harry Lighton tells their story “with unabashed glee, explicit sex scenes, and a surprising amount of heart.”

Harry Lighton, the Coolidge’s Breakthrough Artist of the year, picked up his award in Brookline this week. In a Q&A with Wicked Film Institute CEO James Nadeau, he talked about casting “Pillion” — London Gay Bikers Motorcycle Club members play themselves — and the heartening response the film has drawn from mainstream audiences. Globe correspondent Gitana Savage has the details.

Emerald Fennell‘s “Wuthering Heights” is “a dreary slog.” Jacob Elordi is Heathcliff, Margot Robbie is Cathy, and Henderson is flashing back to high school and doling out 1½ stars. “The most positive thing I can say ... is that it continues a grand tradition of cinematic literary adaptations. That is, students will fail the ‘Wuthering Heights’ question on their final exam if they watch this instead of reading the book.”

As “Boyz N the Hood” turns 35, Henderson’s feeling nostalgic. In 1991, he identified with Tre (Cuba Gooding Jr.) “because I was the smart kid who wanted to get in trouble so that I could belong,” he writes. In his debut film, writer-director John Singleton “put his memories of growing up in a Black neighborhood on the big screen. ... I knew the world Singleton depicted like the back of my hand.”

For Valentine’s Day, “unconventional cinematic romances” are on the menu. Henderson’s list of 10 includes everything from a “very strange, quirky delight” from 1999 to a “morbid, very sick little movie” from 1971 to an A-plus deep cut, John Carpenter’s “Starman” (1984).

“To win your Oscar pool, you need to get the shorts right.” Henderson gets a jump on his predictions by handicapping the animated category, “tales of lusty sailors, an homage to Shel Silverstein’s ‘The Giving Tree,’ and a girl whose tear ducts produce what may or may not be pearls. All of the selections feature birds, which is probably coincidental.” Next week: documentaries and live action.

TV & Streaming

Sarah Pidgeon as Carolyn Bessette, Paul Anthony Kelly as John F. Kennedy Jr. ERIC LIEBOWITZ/FX

The latest from the Ryan Murphy universe is “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette.” It’s a nine-episode take on a story you probably know the ending of. “To those who might argue that none of this matters: Of course it does,” Globe TV critic Chris Vognar writes. “This is a story that revolves around a dynastic family and the outsider in their midst, and it’s also about the allure and double-edged sword of fame and image.”

The new incarnation of “The Muppet Show” is “a really smart and well-crafted variety-style comedy.” The special that aired last week, with Sabrina Carpenter, was intended as a backdoor pilot, writes the Globe’s Matt Juul. “Watching Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, and the rest of the gang play the music and light the lights warmed my soul in ways I didn’t think possible in 2026.”

James Van Der Beek, who died Wednesday at 48, “will be remembered as a loving husband and father, a generous castmate, and ... a celebrity who was always in on the joke.” The “Dawson’s Creek” star became a meme and “forged a clever path forward, taking on roles that poked fun at the inflated ego people assumed a former teen superstar would possess,” Globe correspondent Sonia Rao writes in an appreciation.

The ABA folded 50 years ago, “[b]ut you can see its legacy every time you watch an NBA game.” The documentary series “Soul Power: The Legend of the American Basketball Association” “has no trouble making the case that without the ABA, the high-flying, fast-paced, perimeter-oriented NBA of today would simply not exist,” Vognar writes. The league “was a perfect cultural match for a rebellious era.”

Museums & Visual Art

Harold Edgerton, "Paper Mill Worker." HAROLD EDGERTON, PHOTOGRAPHER, © MIT, COURTESY MIT MUSEUM. USED WITH PERMISSION.

MIT professor Harold “Doc” Edgerton created “some of the most famous images in photographic history.” Considering “Freezing Time: Edgerton and the Beauty of the Machine Age,” at the MIT Museum, you may join the Globe’s Mark Feeney in asking, “Are they science or art?” They’re both. Beyond photographs, the show includes “later works by others inspired by his example, a dozen pages from his notebooks, a selection of his photographic equipment.”

Theater

R.J. Palacio, author of “Wonder” the novel, at opening night of the ART’s world-premiere production of the musical inspired by the book. HAWVER AND HALL

The ART’s production of “Wonder” closes Sunday, not before gaining an important fan: R.J. Palacio, who wrote the novel the musical is based on. “It just felt magical to me,” she says in a Q&A with Globe correspondent Kate Tuttle. The production team has “created a magic that is inherent to the musical theater process, well beyond what you find on the pages of a book. I’ve been thrilled. It’s been amazing.”

In her first solo show, Boston theater veteran Aimee Doherty plays the title character in “Penelope.” The musical about Odysseus’s wife is “adroitly paced” by director Courtney O’Connor, the Lyric Stage’s producing artistic director. “The score by Alex Bechtel” (who co-wrote the book) “is often lovely, with a wistful quality,” Globe theater critic Don Aucoin writes, “and he can craft a lyric that pierces the heart.”

Kate Hamill’s “Little Women” lets us “look with 21st-century eyes at a character who burst onto the literary scene 157 years ago.” That would be Jo March, played by “a fiery, mischievous” Aislinn Brophy in the Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s production. Hamill’s take on Louisa May Alcott’s classic “delineates each character in vivid, economical strokes that deviate in small ways from the novel,” writes Globe critic Chris Vognar.

“The Moderate” is “likely to stay with you, whether you want it to or not.” Ken Urban’s drama follows Frank (Nael Nacer), a content moderator for a Facebook-like platform “whose professional and personal life are a mess.” The A Catalyst Collaborative@MIT Production, writes Aucoin, is “largely a gripping 90 minutes, ingeniously staged by director and multimedia designer Jared Mezzocchi.”

“The Moderate” is “part of a wave of dramas in recent years that have sounded the alarm about the blurring of humanity and technology, seeking to examine tech’s perils and its largely unexamined assumptions.” Aucoin goes deep: “[I]t seems certain that theatermakers will continue to pose moral and ethical questions about technology — especially AI — that reverberate well beyond the walls of any playhouse.”

Books

Fran Lebowitz. BILL HAYES

Ahead of an appearance in Boston next week, Fran Lebowitz is living up to her “reputation as a scathing — and very funny — critic of our times.” She talks with Globe correspondent Jon Garelick about the current political climate, and she doesn’t mince words: “The cruelty of this administration and the people in it is pretty shocking.” “The happiest person on the planet must be Putin.” “This is exactly what the Nazis did.” A must read.

George V. Higgins “had a golden ear for dialogue.” In “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” (1970), he “turned criminal patter into street poetry,” Globe critic Chris Vognar writes in the first entry in the new One Special Thing series. “The conversations can go on for paragraphs at a time, in long strings of banter that convey the lived-in energies of the streets, or dark bars that you wouldn’t want to visit at the wrong time.”

L.T. Thompson’s historical fantasy novel “Devils Like Us” is a Stonewall Honor Book for Young Adult Literature. “While I was living in Boston, I kind of got the seed of the idea of a queer sailing crew,” the author, who now lives in Iowa, says in a Q&A with Globe correspondent Kate Tuttle. “[O]nce I started getting into the story and having fun with these characters and this idea, I just fell so far down the rabbit hole.”

Christopher Castellani’s “Last Seen” is “a literary mystery with a supernatural twist, rooted in humanity and enduring love.” The narrators, four college students presumed to be victims of a serial killer, “connect in a dreamlike afterlife,” writes Globe reviewer Olivia Kate Cerrone. “Complex and absorbing, ‘Last Seen’ weaves together a wide assortment of characters and dovetailing narratives ... right up to the book’s moving conclusion.”

Music

Miguel performs at MGM Music Hall at Fenway this Saturday. BRANDON_BOWEN

R&B star Miguel, touring in support of his latest album, “CAOS,” plays Boston Saturday. “Becoming a father really helped shape ‘CAOS,’” the Los Angeles-based artist tells Globe correspondent Candace McDuffie. “I’ve never been one-dimensional, and my music is a reflection of that, and the constant support from my fans makes me love them even more.”

In times of political turmoil, creating art can feel trivial — or vitally important. “Some Massachusetts musicians are hesitant to release or promote new music,” Globe correspondent Victoria Wasylak writes for Sound Check. Some artists shift to fundraising for social causes, others dial back promotion, and others persist. Says one: “If I kept sitting on this album and not releasing it, I would just be complicit with the silencing I’m against.”