Welcome back to The Big To-Do. Labor Day is Monday, and the holiday falling on Sept. 1 means traffic pandemonium all weekend. At least the weather forecast looks comfortable for loading and unloading trucks — stay off Storrow Drive, please — and treating the friends who helped you move to pizza and beer. If you’re not headed out of town or toting boxes, your streaming choices are solid, and the Globe’s Matt Juul has the top picks. And if you’ve been wondering why the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution isn’t a bigger deal, the Globe’s Mark Feeney has, too. “It’s not just that the culture has fragmented, the media landscape has been transformed, and attention spans have shrunk,” he writes. “It’s that the culture just doesn’t seem interested.” (The 250th also figures into a widely shared AP photo this week; Feeney applies his critic’s eye.)

New Edition Day

New Edition on stage at TD Garden. MATTHEW J LEE/GLOBE STAFF

Saturday is New Edition Day in Boston, and the city will honor the homegrown R&B group by renaming Dearborn Street in Roxbury “New Edition Way.” The ceremony is just one part of For the Culture Week, which also includes a block party, other community activities, and HBCUs Johnson C. Smith University and Morehouse College playing football at Harvard Stadium. Globe correspondents Katarina Schmeiszer and Jessica Ma have the details.

Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins, Bobby Brown, Ronnie DeVoe, Johnny Gill, and Ralph Tresvant will be in the spotlight on New Edition Day. The block party “is just as important as the street naming,” DeVoe tells the Globe’s Matt Juul. “It’s New Edition being able to give back and to pay it forward.” If fans are feeling nostalgic, so are the kids from the Orchard Park projects. Says Brown, “We have a kinship that is just amazing.”

New Edition “had dance songs to liven up the party, and ballads that became more earnest and heartfelt as the group aged.” They “sang their way into my adolescent heart,” writes longtime fan and Globe film critic Odie Henderson. “I thought I’d set the mood for this article by putting on New Edition songs while I wrote. I repeatedly had to stop typing because I was too busy singing along.”

Movies

Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch in "The Roses." JAAP BUITENDIJK

“The Roses,” a remake of 1989’s “The War of the Roses,” is “a toothless take on the material.” Olivia Colman is “a great casting choice” in the Kathleen Turner role, and Benedict Cumberbatch succeeds Michael Douglas as “the type of guy you want to punch out.” But Tony McNamara’s script and direction by Jay Roach (“the wrong person for this job”) add up to just 2 stars from Odie Henderson.

“Caught Stealing” earns 2 stars from the Globe’s Mark Feeney, who says director Darren Aronofsky “doesn’t respect his characters.” As Hank, a baseball prospect turned bartender entangled in a criminal situation in 1998 New York, Austin Butler is “in nearly every scene, [and] he never wears out his welcome.” There are “laughs to be had, but they’re overwhelmed by how nastily violent ‘Caught Stealing’ can get.”

Celebrate “the versatility of the feline thespian” starting today at the Brattle Theatre. “Cat Fancy: A Feline Film Feast” spotlights films that “span decades, with release dates from 1949 to 2024,” Henderson writes. “Within that range, you’ll find Marvel movies, classic film noir, animated movies for kids (and most definitely not for kids), gruesome midnight movie fare, and a crowd-pleasing documentary.”

The Venice Film Festival is underway, and the Globe’s Chris Vognar is on the scene. He’s a Biennale College panelist, which he calls “a nice way to sample the worlds of up-and-coming international filmmakers.” As for the “more glamorous side of the festival,” he has the lowdown on the latest award bait from George Clooney and Adam Sandler (“Jay Kelly”), Julia Roberts (“After the Hunt”), Emma Stone (“Bugonia”), and more.

TV & Streaming

An image from "Katrina: Come Hell and High Water." COURTESY OF NETFLIX

Spike Lee’s “Katrina: Come Hell and High Water” “has the power to get the blood boiling anew.” Twenty years after the hurricane, the three-part documentary series presents “a step-by-step chronicle of systemic failure, compounded by an egregious case of blaming the victim,” writes Globe TV critic Chris Vognar. The finale, directed by Lee, “plays like a compassionate essay about the battered but not defeated soul of a city.”

“The Office” finally has a spinoff: “The Paper,” which premieres next week. Centered on the fictional Toledo (Ohio) Truth Teller, it’s “a love letter to local newspapers,” Alex Edelman, who grew up in Brookline, tells Globe correspondent Stuart Miller. “You can’t stop people from comparing it to ‘The Office,’ but they shouldn’t,” says Oscar Nuñez, a cast member on both series. “It stands alone as its own show.”

At two hours, “The Thursday Murder Club,” based on Richard Osman’s novel, “suffers from abbreviation.” Helen Mirren stars as the leader of the club, self-appointed investigators who live in a retirement community, But the members are “introduced with such haste that characterization becomes something to barrel through rather than grow with any subtlety,” the Globe’s Lisa Weidenfeld laments.

The tennis world is focused on the US Open, and so is the Globe’s Mark Shanahan. He’s been hooked since he was a kid, when, he recalls, “I’d never seen a night match and the crowd seemed slightly unhinged, loudly cheering and jeering after points." He’s no fan of “the broadcast’s fixation with celebrities in the crowd,” but “even that won’t prevent me from watching this year’s US Open well into the night.”

The Big Day

Northeastern University grads Rachel Eng and Nick Kaffine wed at The Maples Estate/Schoharie, N.Y., in June. AUTUMN JORDAN

The Globe’s weddings column, The Big Day, tells stories of how couples found each other, fell in love, and said “I do.” The pandemic permanently changed Rachel Eng and Nick Kaffine’s friendship — for the better. As undergrads at Northeastern in April 2020, they found themselves alone on what had been planned as a group video call, and something clicked. “This was the time to shoot your shot,” Nick recalls. Globe correspondent Rachel Kim Raczka tells the story of how they got from Huntington Avenue to their June wedding in Schoharie, N.Y.

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.

Music

At 83, Paul Simon sat during parts of his June performance at the Boch Center Wang Theatre. The audience sat for most of the show. BEN STAS FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE/THE BOSTON GLOBE

Plenty of touring musicians aren’t getting any younger, and neither are their audiences. Having witnessed fans and even artists sitting during shows, the Globe’s Meredith Goldstein wonders: “Who wins the standing/sitting debate when so many people’s attendance has been fueled not by the drugs of their youth but by Advil?” She enlists experts for a fascinating look at a question with no correct answer.

It should come as no surprise that “a look at why ‘We Built This City’ has become one of the most hated songs of all time” got readers riled up. In the comments, the Globe’s Christopher Muther finds kindred spirits who detest songs by other artists (almost) as much as he abhors Starship’s anthem. “Thousands chimed in, wickedly skewering everything from ‘MacArthur Park’ to ‘Living on a Prayer,’ and even ‘Sweet Caroline.’”

Before going on hiatus in 2008, Rilo Kiley “specialized in a certain kind of wistful, emotionally bracing song.” The band’s reunion tour reaches Massachusetts next week, and guitarist-vocalist Blake Sennett expects audiences of “primarily people who were there” the first time around. “I think we were the kind of band that people had an emotional connection to, it seems,” he says in an interview with the Globe’s Lisa Weidenfeld.

Lou’s in Harvard Square “isn’t just carving out a space for more live music; it’s also curating a calendar of friendly faces.” Formerly Beat Brew Hall, “[t]he speakeasy-esque den feels like an art deco twist on the space’s previous identities,” Globe correspondent Victoria Wasylak writes for Sound Check. She has a look at the new venue and restaurant, which one manager calls “jazz-adjacent.”

Guitarist Duke Levine is, in Peter Wolf’s words, “beyond a sideman.” The Malden resident tours with Bonnie Raitt, who plays Tanglewood Sunday. “Most musicians I know always want to play gigs, especially when you’re used to being out on the road,” Levine says in a Q&A with Globe correspondent Stuart Munro. “[Y]ou welcome an opportunity to play some different music after you’ve been playing a lot of the same stuff for a couple months.”

You already know that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are engaged. But did you remember that the pop superstar owns a 12,657-square-foot home in Watch Hill, R.I.? Mark Shanahan is way ahead of you, and the mansion looks like a wedding venue to him. “But why would Swift and Kelce want to get married in Rhode Island? Well, why not?”

Museums & Visual Art

Glen Scheffer, "Tree with Tire," 2024. GLEN SCHEFFER

Thirty-six images make up “Exposure 2025,″ at the Photographic Resource Center. The juried exhibition consists of three photographs each by a dozen photographers, and the selections are “notably, and happily, eclectic,” writes the Globe’s Mark Feeney. One trio is “sweet and affirming, though in no way treacly”; another “could be Dutch still lifes in watercolor.”

Dance

Alanna Logan, whose dance name is ILLana-Popz, rehearses at the Boston Center for the Arts. BARRY CHIN/GLOBE STAFF

“I call myself a wiggler,” says freestyle dancer Alanna Logan, who performs as ILLana-Popz. “I just want to show you the joy that I feel.” This week’s Working Artist finished second in Red Bull Dance Your Style East USA and will appear in the BCA’s “#HellaBlack Vol. 7: Shift” showcase in October. “I’ve danced my entire life,” the Cambridge resident tells Globe correspondent Cate McQuaid. “I don’t know anything else.”

Books

Joan Silber and the cover to her novel “Mercy.” CATAPULT/SHARI DIAMOND

Joan Silber “flies somewhat under the radar. And yet the same readers who have made Ann Patchett, Elizabeth Strout, and Jennifer Egan household names would love her.” Silber’s new novel-in-stories, “Mercy,” is “a jumping-off point for her delightful oeuvre,” writes Globe reviewer Marion Winik. It inhabits “a single fictional universe with a rotating cast of narrators. ... the sections leap decades and continents to uniquely dazzling effect.”

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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