The film is a true passion project, and it shows. Peter Jackson, director of Lord of the Rings and Hobbit, has been a lifelong World War I buff, the grandson of a veteran of the Great War. He hired lipreading experts to figure out what the Great War soldiers must have been saying. Jackson has also invested much of his hit-moviemaking wealth into collecting memorabilia, including more than 40 fighter planes that still really fly, which he keeps in an aerodrome in his native New Zealand.

Sunday, Feb. 24: Fellow arts impresarios Chris Silva and Mark Morganstern will face off in “word-to-word and arm-to-arm combat” at the Rosendale Cafe to benefit UlsterUnited4Vets.

For the next two weekends: When Mark Haddon wrote this novel in 2003, he was careful to avoid using the words “autism” or “Asperger’s syndrome” in describing his protagonist. Yet the novel, along with Simon Stephens’ 2012 stage adaptation, went on to garner high praise from the spectrum community for their sensitive depiction of the world as seen by a young man who is neurologically atypical.