What’s going on here, sadly, is the slow erosion of artistic merit. The Academy is watering down (if not dumbing down) the significance of an Oscar as a mark of cinematic excellence.

It’s hard to know where to begin when discussing the complex career and legacy of Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti, but the Harvard Film Archive lays it all out for us cinematically with “The Complete Visconti,” beginning Friday and concluding July 15.

The Boston Calling music festival comes Friday to the Harvard Athletic Complex; this side of The Charles gets its Boston Calling Film Festival, running Tuesday through Thursday and curated by Academy Award-winning actress and Harvard alum Natalie Portman.

Hard to believe it’s been 50 years since Luis Buñuel’s “Belle de Jour” caused a minor stir by chronicling the soul-searching of a bored Parisian housewife who, for obscure reasons, takes up part-time work as a high-class call girl.

If Spike Jonze’s film “Her” seemed plausible in 2013, only a couple of years after people learned to say “Hey, Siri,” to their iPhones, its man-falls-in-love-with-a-device plot seems all the closer now that we’ve provided space in our digital assistant harems to Alexa and Cortana.

In the most famous operas, villains are stabbed, lovers die and suicides ensue. In Joseph Keckler’s delightful “Self-Portrait as an Opera,” too many shrooms might be consumed; more money than is sensible might be spent at a bondage shop; a worker might fall asleep at work.

Musicians and artists already upset over the loss of the EMF Building near Central Square have a new cause for outrage as the evil developer from a 1980s teen flick sends a letter to city officials as a patron of the arts.

For seven years, a group of non-narrative film fans and filmmakers have been bringing documentary films and filmmakers to The Brattle Theatre as part of the DocYard series, running every other Monday from January through April.

The Somerville Public Library launched its regionally focused “Small Press Collection” of zines with an opening reception attended by a small crowd of fans and creators that included Pagan Kennedy, once dubbed “Queen of ’Zines.”

Passim has awarded more than $40,000 to 28 musicians through its Iguana Music Fund – putting its 10-year total for the awards at more than $350,000 in grants meant to enhance careers or community outreach efforts.