Welcome back to The Big To-Do. Sunday is Mother’s Day, Duckling Day, and Lilac Sunday — the only day of the year the Arnold Arboretum allows picnicking — and Globe correspondent Annie Sarlin has the lowdown. Build a coffee run into your morning if you plan to check out “Saturday Night Live,” with host Matt Damon and musical guest Noah Kahan. And make time for a new surprise episode of “The Bear,” one of this week’s streaming picks from the Globe’s Matt Juul. This week’s One Special Thing is a 40-year-old album in an unexpected genre. The arts brief section The Rundown includes the latest on FOUND Magazine’s 25th-anniversary celebrations.

And the funniest Globe story of the week is about high school students doing something so shocking that “all the Gen X parents and teachers are asking: What the heck is happening, and why are they not on their phones?” The answer, Billy Baker reports: They’re playing hacky sack.

Movies

Sophy Romvari’s “Blue Heron” earns 4 stars from Globe film critic Odie Henderson, who calls the semi-autobiographical drama “one of the best films of the year.” He first saw it eight months ago, and “I’ve been thinking about it ever since.” The film begins with a child’s-eye view of family drama, then shifts as “[e]verything clicks into place with such understated emotional force that it quietly devastates.”

“Mortal Kombat II” is “a bloody good popcorn flick for folks who enjoy over-the-top fights punctuated with the type of gore that would make ‘Saw’ fans blush.” Still reading? Karl Urban makes Johnny Cage “by far the most compelling character,” the Globe’s Matt Juul writes in a 2½-star review. The movie delivers “when, really, all people want to see is these super-powered brawlers ripping each other’s limbs off.”

TV & Streaming

“Devil in Silver” takes place in a psychiatric hospital overflowing with “pure bad vibes.” Dan Stevens (“Downton Abbey”) plays Pepper, a patient who “wants to know if the devil himself is on the premises,” writes Globe TV critic Chris Vognar. “In projects like this, there can be a fine line between committed performance and psych hospital schtick. The cast of ‘Devil in Silver’ walks that line without tripping over it.”

“The Other Bennet Sister” picks up where “Pride and Prejudice” left off, imagining the fate of “bookish, somewhat stilted” middle sister Mary. After her elder sisters marry, Mary meets “two handsome and eligible beaux” and soon finds herself in a love triangle. “The series, much like Mary herself, is torn between the tropes of this kind of story and a desire for a more unconventional narrative,” writes the Globe’s Lisa Weidenfeld.

In a time of “simply too much” TV, it’s inevitable that some series fly under the radar. Vognar zeroes in on five that “strike me as exemplary or at least intriguing, and certainly worth a look amid the perpetual onslaught of the shiny and new.” They include the true crime saga “Murdaugh: Death in the Family,” the self-explanatory “Something Very Bad is Going to Happen,” and the star-studded “DTF St. Louis.”

Museum & Visual Art

The Venice Biennale “is an art exhibition, but it’s also one of the world’s preeminent stages for cultural diplomacy.” The “most important showcase of contemporary art in the world” starts tomorrow, with sculptor Alma Allen representing the US. But “the international cultural community now sees the US as a pariah state,” writes Globe art critic Murray Whyte, who explains the unprecedented situation.

Frank Lloyd Wright designed just five homes in New England. The two that are open to the public belong to the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, N.H. The Zimmerman House and the Kalil House are “one of the most exciting aspects of our collection,” says museum director and CEO Jordana Pomeroy. The Globe’s Amanda Gokee takes a look.

Images of “factories and mills, assembly lines and shipyards” make up “Made in America: The Industrial Photography of Christopher Payne.” The show, at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, extends beyond the industrial to “pencils, pinball machines, pianos, and Peeps,” the Globe’s Mark Feeney writes from New York. “Stunning to look at, the photographs become that much more interesting to think about, thanks to extensive, highly informative captions.”

Theater

Valeriy Pecheykin’s “Beethoven” consists of “sketches of 17 scenes from Beethoven’s 56 years of personal torment and creative ferment.” Arlekin’s production is “a kind of impressionistic collage rife with deliberate anachronisms,” writes Globe theater critic Don Aucoin. Polina Dubovikova “is a compellingly fiery and anguished Beethoven, while Arlekin regular Gene Ravvin ... brings an amusing swagger to his Mozart.”

A “pun-laden, allusion-heavy musical sendup of musicals,” “Something Rotten!” centers on William Shakespeare. As the Bard in Lyric Stage’s production, Jared Troilo “delivers another in a long line of inspired performances,” Aucoin writes. “But it’s the comic force that Ryan Mardesich brings to his portrayal of Nick Bottom that matters most to the success of this ‘Something Rotten!’”

The Tony Award nominations are out, and they have some local flavor. Rachel Dratch (Lexington) and David Lindsay-Abaire (South Boston) made the cut, as did “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York),” which had its American premiere at the ART. Click through for highlights from the Globe’s Matt Juul as well as the full list of nominees.

Comedy

Boston Fringe returns next week for its second year, “heavy on comedy shows, but not necessarily traditional stand-up.” The festival “banks a lot on this idea of there’s nobody that you need to impress, no sample that you need to submit, no one needs to say yes,” cofounder Anton Monteleone tells Globe correspondent Nick A. Zaino III. Says cofounder Deby Xiadani, “There is nothing like seeing new work. It’s electric.”

Music

The inaugural Mojo Boston festival takes over City Hall Plaza tomorrow, aiming “to get the attention of an entire major US city.” The Mojo brand originated at UMass Amherst in 2021 and has since operated in “college bubbles,” says director Emily Donovan, who’s also a DJ and will perform tomorrow. The lineup is “a balancing act of electronic artists and rock groups,” Globe correspondent Victoria Wasylak writes for Sound Check.

Astor Piazzolla called his 1986 album “Tango: Zero Hour” “absolutely the greatest record I’ve made in my entire life.” This week’s One Special Thing consists of eight tracks that are “at once wild, driving, urgent, intense, ruminative, sardonic, and, always, hopelessly atmospheric,” the Globe’s Mark Feeney writes. “Perhaps Buenos Aires has never been like this. Who cares: Was Casablanca ever like ‘Casablanca’?”

Violinist Ray Chen is on a mission. Promoting classical music “is very important to me,” says Chen, who makes his Boston Pops debut this weekend. “[W]hat’s also really important to me is, I love watching anime and I love playing video games, and it’s just a simple selfish, ‘I love this music, and why can’t we have both?’” Globe correspondent Marc Hirsh chats with the social media phenom, who observes, “There are so many things to try.”

Matt Smith first worked at Club Passim as a volunteer. Now managing director, he says the nonprofit institution is “not looking for the hot new trend. We’re just trying to encourage art at every level.” An all-star show next week celebrates his three decades on Palmer Street, and Globe correspondent James Sullivan has a preview.

Jon Butcher Axis plays its “soul-inflected modern rock” for the last time tonight in Gloucester. “We’ve had breaks that most bands don’t have, and we’ve had an audience that has stayed with us for over 40 years,” Butcher tells Globe correspondent Noah Schaffer. “It seemed like the perfect time to bring this particular chapter to a close while it’s all good, when I don’t have to shuffle onstage with a cane quite yet.”

Colombian superstar Carlos Vives calls his music “tropical pop music — tropipop!” Ahead of a show in Boston next week, he talks with Schaffer about the rise of Colombian music, the 30th anniversary of his album “La Tierra del Olvido,” and more. Says Vives, “The theater and acting, as well as music, has always been part of my life. I always combine them, and that has helped me to survive.”

“There’s a lot to lose when the media isn’t in the photo pit.” An unfortunate trend sees major artists “increasingly forgoing photo coverage in favor of providing outlets with pictures taken by their own team or a venue’s staff photographer.” Wasylak explains why that’s a problem not just for journalists and journalism but for readers as well.

Books

“American Rambler: Walking the Trail of Johnny Appleseed” tells how Isaac Fitzgerald “decided to embark on his own Appleseed journey.” The result is “[p]art travelogue, part memoir, part historical musing,” writes Globe critic Chris Vognar. The author of “Dirtbag, Massachusetts” proves to have “a gift for intelligent, gimlet-eyed straight shooting, for writing with a bared soul but minimal ego.”

Harriet Clark’s debut novel, “The Hill,” considers “the destabilizing and life-altering consequences of incarceration almost entirely from the perspective of those on the outside.” Protagonist Suzanna’s mother is in prison — as was Clark’s mother, a former Weather Underground member. “Clark’s prose frequently feels ever so slightly off balance, sometimes stopping you in your tracks,” writes Globe reviewer Cory Oldweiler.

Globe lead meteorologist Ken Mahan regularly fields the question “What should I read if I’m into weather?” He assembles “a few suggested good reads on meteorology and the weather in general for a variety of ages, whether you’re just getting started or you’ve already got a radar app open around the clock.”

In “The Author Weekend,” Laura Zigman says, “I really wanted to write about how hard publishing is.” The Cambridge resident’s seventh novel concerns a fan retreat that goes “terribly, fatally wrong.” It aligns with her belief that “you have to write the book you want to write because if you try to write to the tastes or fads of the industry, it will never work,” she says in a Q&A with Kate Tuttle, who edits the Globe’s Books section.

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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