Your weekly guide to staying entertained any day of the week
Your weekly guide to staying entertained any day of the week
July 31, 2026
Welcome back to The Big To-Do. Incredibly, August starts tomorrow, and the weekend forecast calls for some enjoyably un-August-like weather. You’ll need to head back indoors eventually, and when you get there, the week’s streaming selections from the Globe’s Matt Juul will be waiting. Among them is “The Drama,” set and filmed in Boston, toplined by Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, and recipient of a juicy zero stars from the Globe.
In happier cultural news, former president Barack Obama shared his summer playlist and reading list this week. New Englanders Noah Kahan and Elizabeth Strout made the cut, and Matt Juul has the lowdown. Another book with local ties is this week’s One Special Thing. And the arts brief section The Rundown includes some great news for fans of “Calvin and Hobbes.”
Film & Movies
Spider-Man and Boomerang in "Spider-Man: Brand New Day." SONY PICTURES
The hype surrounding “The Odyssey” in IMAX 70mm is, Henderson contends, “a gimmick.” Yes, director Christopher Nolan intended the film for that format, and “I’m not saying you shouldn’t ... see a movie the way you want to see it,” he writes. “I am saying that it’s not good to feel pressured or guilted into doing so just because the marketing told you that you had to do it.”
TV & Streaming
Emmy Rossum as FBI Agent Alice Black in "Furious." SARAH SHATZ/DISNEY
BTS make their Gillette Stadium debut Aug. 5-6. COURTESY OF HYBE
With BTS reunited and on tour, Gillette Stadium will be K-pop central next week. “The devotion of BTS’ fans is remarkable even in an age of online bickering and ever-ballooning ticket prices,” writes Globe correspondent Maura Johnston. The “human-to-human bonds the group has formed have helped transform them into something that seems larger than life.”
Speaking of devoted fans, Phish plays Fenway Park this weekend. Devotees gather before shows at events packed with “art, food, drinks, trinkets, and pins for sale, as well as music circles, costumed fans, and other eccentric sights that might not even be related to the band.” Globe correspondent Sam Shipman reports on the phenomenon known as “the lot.”
The Fenway Music Hall of Fame is an exclusive neighborhood. Zac Brown Band is in there along with just three other acts: inaugural member Billy Joel, Paul McCartney, and new inductee Noah Kahan. That leaves out a ton of high-profile artists, among them Ray Charles, Lady Gaga, and Bruce Springsteen. Wasylak, writing for Sound Check, explores the criteria.
Headed to this weekend’s Newport Jazz Festival? One of “the greatest joys of the annual gathering is the art of discovery — finding a new act (or three) that you’ve never heard of, or hadn’t taken the time to listen to, until now,” writes Sullivan. He spotlights 10 artists who are worth seeking out.
Theater
Students in the Huntington Theatre's Summer Theatre Institute perform a 10-second improvisation exercise during a rehearsal for "The Taming of the Shrew."
The Huntington’s Summer Theatre Institute is celebrating a milestone anniversary. For 20 years, the program has helped Boston public high school students explore whether acting professionally is for them. Globe correspondent Janira Skrbkova has a backstage look at an experience one of this year’s participants says “helps you hold yourself to a higher standard.”
Dance
Jason Janas leading a youth intermediate tap class at last year’s Boston Tap Party. DEBORAH MASON DUDLEY
The elephants, made from an invasive plant from India, are en route to Boston, the next stop on their worldwide tour. AMI VITALE
Elephants are headed for Boston. The Great Elephant Migration is a pack of 100 pachyderms “crafted by hundreds of artists in India,” reports Globe correspondent Daisy Levine. The traveling public art installation benefits local nonprofits. “Though their main location will be on Commonwealth Avenue, be on the lookout for elephants elsewhere in the city.”
Claudia Rankine’s “Triage” is “colorfully, referentially, and intellectually dynamic.” It follows “the narrator” and “the theorist,” college friends reunited decades later. The genre-defying result “is the narrator’s attempt at understanding how and why their bond, cinched in an act of mutual rescue, has been weathered nearly to disintegration,” Globe reviewer Walton Muyumba writes.
Memoir didn’t come easily to Smith College professor Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor. “I kept thinking no, I’m a scholar!” But only she could tell the personal and professional story that unfolds in “Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me.” She chats with Tuttle about her famous father and writing as “a really kind of healing process.”
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.
Boston Globe Media Partners thanks its sponsors for supporting our newsletters. The sponsoring advertiser does not influence or create any editorial content for this newsletter. If you are interested in advertising opportunities, please contact us here.