The first issue of The Left Bank of the Charles Review arrived with the new year, promised quarterly by Joseph Levendusky – a traveler, lover of music, left-leaning political critic and sitter in cafés.

This coronavirus edition of movies to shelter with includes some highlights of the art streaming at the “Brattlelite,” the antihero classic “Cool Hand Luke” and a bunch of others, including a Liam Neeson misfire, a pretty weepie and some sci-fi curiosities.

This coronavirus edition of movies to shelter with includes all those in the 18th annual Belmont World Film’s Family Film Festival and what’s in the Brattle Theatre’s new “Brattlite” initiative, but leave room for the classic “Steamboat Bill Jr.,” intriguing “Happy Face” and much more.

This coronavirus edition of movies to shelter with includes a prison movie unlike any other, a tale of a mother’s empowerment, a documentary that demands unpeeling – like an onion – and a crazy ride into a World War II bomber where the enemy may be inside.

If ever there was a signal for Cambridge to get over its weird, anti-democratic resistance to letting its meetings be seen and recorded consistently, it came last week when the School Committee failed to make clear if or how residents could watch an evaluation of the school district’s superintendent. 

Even without all the disenfranchising of voters, closing of polling places and sabotaging of the U.S. Postal Service, I can’t help but think Trump stands a good shot at reelection. It’s mainly because of a single dialogue I had with an acquaintance in 2018.

The human resistance against Skynet has a hangout in the Technoskeptic magazine’s Analog Sunday, coming to the Harvard Square wine bar Shays for a device-free two hours of “good, old-fashioned, face-to-face conversation, without distraction.”

A bill proposing a commission to promote local journalism in underserved communities should include more people with a ground-level view of the problem, and steer away from nonprofit models as a panacea, says Jason Pramas of DigBoston and BINJ.

In a look ahead at a week of Cambridge and Somerville events, there’s the premiere of “Role Playing Game,” a new opera; the 44th sci-fiction film festival ends with its 24-Hour ’Thon; Longy starts a monthly residency at Lilypad; Jill Abramson reads; and much more.

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.