Film: Writer-director John Gray (credited with creating TV’s Ghost Whisperer) grew up in Brooklyn and his latest feature film, White Irish Drinkers, feels like it has autobiographical elements in its coming-of-age tale of a young, sensitive artist trying hard not to sucked into the world of crime of his older, desperate brother. Nick Thurston impresses as Brian, who chooses instead to work at the local movie house where the Rolling Stones are slated to put in a guest appearance and Brian’s brother Danny is planning to rob the box office. Despite the plot cobbled from familiar parts, Gray manages to inject a few worthy surprises and some authentic-sounding dialogue and period atmosphere. Opening Friday at Mos’Art Theatre in Lake Park.

Theater: The local theater scene is winding down for the summer, but you can still catch Palm Beach Dramaworks’ first rate season-ender, Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane, a gorgeously twisted, dark comedy about a no-longer-young Irish lass who reaches out for what may be her last chance at happiness and her sour mother, who is desperate to thwart her. Artistic director William Hayes demonstrates why his company continues to grow, even in hard economic times. Of course, it helps when you’ve got the good taste to cast Kati Brazda as lovelorn Maureen and the wily Barbara Bradshaw as her mum. Through June 19. Call (561) 514-4042 for tickets.

Art: Summer has always been a time for movie blockbusters, and this weekend at the Norton Museum, the art powers that be have recognized that with a fun exhibit called Out of This World: Extraordinary Costumes from Film and Television. More than 30 costumes, including Jim Carrey’s Riddler getup from Batman and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s leather jacket from Terminator, are on display through Sept. 4 in a show that pays tribute to the power of costume to make the magic of film, on small and big screens.

The Norton also has extended the run of From A to Z, a collection of 26 photos alphabetically arranged by photographer name, and featuring in which the 26 pictures are grouped according to each photographer name in the alphabet, from Ansel Adams to George Zimbel. It had been scheduled to close Thursday, but now will remain open until Oct. 16. Tickets for the shows are $12; hours for the West Palm Beach museum are from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Call 832-5196 for more information or visit www.norton.org.

Music: The young Ukrainian-born pianist Sofiya Uryvayeva has become something of an audience favorite at the concerts of the Piano Lovers series at Boca Raton’s Steinway Gallery. This Saturday night, she returns to the room for a concert featuring all 24 of the Etudes from Opp. 10 and 25 of Frederic Chopin, pieces unique for their status as artworks and teaching pieces.

There are numerous videos of Uryayeva on YouTube playing some of the Etudes, the Ballades, and pieces by Messiaen and the Polish composer Gerard Drozd. Here’s one of her playing the Etude in B minor, Op. 25, No. 10, which is murderously difficult and tiring in the outer sections and calls for a rare sort of tenderness and taste in the middle. The Etudes were written beginning in 1829, when Chopin was only 19 years old and in that first flush of exceptional composition that included the two piano concertos. They are a remarkable exploration of everything the modern piano could do in its day, and to hear them all at once is to get a glimpse of the range of Chopin’s art. Uryvayeva takes the stage at 7 p.m. Saturday at the gallery on Federal Highway. Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door. Call 929-6633 or visit www.pianolovers.org.

Next week, two pop bands whose heydays were back in the 1970s and 1980s team for a concert at the Cruzan Amphitheatre. The first is the English pop-metal band Def Leppard, who had several monster hits including Photograph, Pour Some Sugar On Me, Pyromania and Foolin’. The band retains a strong following, and at its best, they produced catchy radio-friendly pop that had enough of an edge to make it dangerous enough for its fans.

Def Leppard will be joined by Heart, one of the first truly successful female-led rock bands, and unusual because its leads – sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson – were such able songwriters. Their list of classic songs includes Barracuda, Magic Man, Crazy on You and Tell It Like It Is, and the band has returned to the studio with new songs more reminiscent of that style than the AOR pop it pursued in the 1990s. The concert is set for 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. Tickets range from $25-$125. Call 800-745-3000 or visit www.ticketmaster.com or www.livenation.com.

Art: Two photographers – Alan Winslow and Morrigan McCarthy – traveled 11,000 miles by bicycle across the United States beginning in 2008 to gather opinions about the environment, get to know their fellow Americans, and, of course, take pictures of them.

They put together a show of this work (Project Tandem) that’s now touring the country, and through June 18, their impressions can be seen at the Palm Beach Photographic Centre (as well as on the Project Tandem Website). On the site, McCarthy can be heard talking a little more about the intent of the effort, which takes into account the way technology has shrunk the globe, but not necessarily increased understanding.

This is an earnest, well-crafted effort, judging by the photos on the site, and it’s the kind of thing that’s always heartening to see: Artists, engaged in the work and the message, redeeming the days in order to track it down. Hours at the Photo Centre (415 Clematis St., West Palm) are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Call 253-2600 or visit www.workshop.org or www.fotofusion.org for more information.

Film: Full of atmosphere and texture, the low-budget Canadian drama Small Town Murder Songs is set in an Ontario Mennonite farming community where police chief Peter Stormare tries to keep the peace. But he has a history of violence, which surfaces again when the dead body of a young girl is found by a lake. Stormare’s investigation is tainted by his own motives, as he tries to incriminate a white-trash loner that no one would miss. Director-writer Ed Gass-Donnelly unfolds his tale with wily care, placing the focus more on character development than plot turns. He also has a good touch with actors, including prominent support from Martha Plimpton and the police chief’s girlfriend. Opening today at Mos’Art Theatre in Lake Park and Living Room Theatres in Boca Raton.

Theater: This is the final weekend for Florida Stage’s stunning close to its first season at the Kravis Center, the enigmatically titled The Cha-Cha of a Camel Spider by one of the company’s most frequently produced writers, Carter W. Lewis. Only Lewis would think to construct a play out of his anger over our country’s increasing reliance on private mercenary armies and his new-found fascination with slam poetry. The play begins with a mother and daughter breaking into the offices of a Blackwater-like corporation to find out more about the death of their husband/father from “friendly fire.” It goes to a surreal spot that is intentionally open-ended and up for interpretation. Lou Tyrrell directs a terrific cast headed by Antonio Amadeo as a Muslim cab driver who might already be dead and Elizabeth Birkenmeier as a recent college grad who majored in spoken word poetry, a not very lucrative field that manages to come in handy. Through Sunday at the Kravis Center’s Rinker Playhouse in West Palm Beach. Call (561) 585-3433 for reservations.

Music: Although the level of arts activity drops off after season, fans of chamber music find that the hot months offer a couple back-to-back series.

The first one begins next Tuesday with the four-part Stringendo School for Strings faculty concerts on the campus of Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach. The brainchild of PBAU violin professor Patrick Clifford and his wife Belen, the Stringendo School has for more than a decade provided a four-week intensive summer camp for violinists, violists, and cellists.

As in past years, Stringendo is able to bring aboard accomplished players from major and regional orchestras to supplement the in-house team; visiting faculty this year include players from the Atlanta and Cleveland orchestras as well as the Naples Philharmonic. Tuesday night, the faculty concert features two fine players from the New England Conservatory: Violinist James Buswell and cellist Carol Ou. Buswell will play the Partita No. 2 in D minor of J.S. Bach and Ou will follow with the Suite No. 6 for solo cello, after which the husband-and-wife team will join for the Double Chaconne of American composer Richard Toensing.

All four concerts – which will include Schubert’s Trout Quintet as well as the Brahms First Piano Quartet and the Piano Quintet – begin at 7 p.m. on successive Tuesdays starting June 7. Tickets are $15. Call 803-2970 or send an e-mail to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

The Los Angeles Philharmonic, following in the steps of the Metropolitan Opera’s runaway HD simulcast success, offers a live concert in movie theaters Sunday afternoon across the country.

Conductor Gustavo Dudamel will lead the orchestra in an all-Brahms afternoon, beginning with the Double Concerto (in A minor, Op. 102), with violinist Renaud Capucon and cellist brother Gautier as soloists, and ending with the Fourth Symphony (in E minor, Op. 98). It’s the third and final concert the Angelenos have presented in NCM Fathom theaters (the other two were in January and March), which include Regal, AMC and Cinemark houses.

Reception of the concerts has been good and getting better, according to officials from the orchestra and from NCM Fathom, and part of that is surely because of Dudamel, a Venezuelan who is widely seen as just what the world of orchestral conducting needed at this time. The simulcast, broadcast live from the futuristic Disney Concert Hall (designed by Frank Gehry), begins at 5 p.m. and is hosted by John Lithgow.

The concert can be seen at Delray Beach 18; Cinemark Palace 20 and Shadowood 16 in Boca Raton; Royal Palm Stadium 18 in Royal Palm Beach; Jupiter 18 Cinemas in Jupiter; Downtown at the Gardens Cinema 16 in Palm Beach Gardens; and Port St. Lucie 14 in Port St. Lucie. Depending on the theater, tickets range from $12 to $20, with occasional discounts for students and seniors.

Meanwhile, flutist Jeanne Tarrant joins with pianist Fedora Horowitz for a Sunday afternoon of music at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Delray Beach.

Tarrant, a Florida Philharmonic veteran who now plays with the Boca Raton Symphonia, is a fine player with several well-received recordings to her credit; her virtually all-French program Sunday includes the Poulenc Flute Sonata and a sonatina by Henri Dutilleux, pieces by Faure, Debussy, Bizet, Saint-Saens and the once-familiar Benjamin Godard.

She also plans to play the Cantabile and Presto by the Romanian composer George Enescu, who lived much of his life in France, and was buried in Paris upon his death in 1955. Horowitz, a graduate of the National Conservatory in the Romanian capital of Bucharest, will play a movement from Enescu’s Second Suite (in D, Op. 10).

Tickets are $15-$18 for the 4 p.m. concert. Call 278-6003 for more information.

Theater: Ed Asner as Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It is one liberal icon playing another liberal icon in the one-man show FDR, opening a brief five-day run at the Caldwell Theatre in Boca Raton beginning Wednesday evening. The play, written by Roosevelt scholar Dore Schary (Sunrise at Campobello), looks at the public man who presided over the country during the Great Depression and World War II. To Asner, a seven-time Emmy winner, playing Roosevelt is more of a political mission than an artistic one, reminding the nation of the positive, lasting effects of government as a nurturer of social programs and the man who initiated them. At 81, Asner insists he is a better actor than he ever has been and the critical response from other cities where FDR has played suggests he may be right. Through June 5. Call (561) 241-7432 for tickets.

Film: Foreign language Oscar nominees get distribution around the country eventually, and South Florida at last gets to see the superb French-Canadian film Incendies (Scorched). It begins with the dying request of a mother to her twin grown children to travel from Montreal to the Middle East to discover their roots -- to find their real father and to meet the brother they never knew they had. Written and directed by Denis Villeneuve, it is a tale of identity, a story of the ongoing conflict over there and a saga of love and hatred, exquisitely and painfully rendered. At area theaters beginning today.

Music: On Sunday, PBS will broadcast its annual Memorial Day concert from the National Mall in Washington, D.C., with the National Symphony, the various armed forces musical groups and big TV stars such as Gary Sinise (CSI: New York) and Joe Mantegna (Criminal Minds). But the tradition of concerts on Memorial Day weekend continues here with the New Gardens Band on Saturday. Owen Seward leads his community band in a patriotic program called Remembering America’s Fallen at the Eissey Campus Theatre at Palm Beach State College in Palm Beach Gardens. Tickets are $15 for the 3 p.m. concert, and $20 at 8 p.m. It’s a tribute to the men and women in the U.S. military, who truth be told have one of the toughest, most important jobs anyone could have, and it’s worth noting that on this long weekend. For more information, call 207-5900.

Dance: Florida Classical Ballet Theatre heads to Cuba this August for four performances of its ballet For Such a Time as This: The Queen Esther Story. This ballet, choreographed by FCBT founder Colleen Smith to music by Grieg, tells the Purim story of the queen who saved the Jews from the evil Persian Empire. But you can see the ballet twice today in Palm Beach Gardens, as the company presents this ballet and two others including Fish Tales, a retitling of a charming seaside ballet set by Smith to incidental music by Mozart. Performances are set for 1 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. today at the Eissey Campus Theatre in Palm Beach Gardens. Tickets range from $22-$32. Call 207-5900 or visit www.fcbt.org.

Film: If you crave a good, character-driven Southern coming-of-age, family reunion, eccentricity excess yarn, check out this weekend’s indie release, Bloodworth, fresh from the festival circuit and into a local Palm Beach Gardens theater on a market test basis. Having survived a medical scare, patriarch E.F. Bloodworth (craggy Kris Kristofferson, strumming his guitar) returns to his family after 40 years away, to find his three sons -- most notably a tubby, womanizing Val Kilmer -- each on his own path of aimless drifting. The film, based on William Gay’s Southern Gothic novel Provinces of Night, has a tendency to drift as well, but at its center is a sweet, if hardly original tale of school dropout, writer wannabe Fleming Bloodworth (newcomer Reece Thompson) who falls hard for an alluring little tramp (Hilary Duff, convincingly playing against type). Go for the performances, which manage to trump the clichés. At PGA Gardens Cinamax beginning today.

Theater: We will see next season how well the new Caldwell Theatre Company can fully produce a musical when it tackles the split personality jazz musical City of Angels, but this weekend is the latest Broadway concert presentation, which the Boca troupe has proven time and again that it can handle. Artistic director Clive Cholerton take a breather from his go-to composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim for the female-centric creative team of Lucy Simon and Marsha Norman, spotlighting their 1991 ethereal adaptation of the beloved children’s book, The Secret Garden. Heading the cast are concert mainstays Wayne Legette and Melissa Minyard, but the concert’s secret weapon is Catherine Minyard -- yes, Melissa’s daughter -- as orphaned Mary Lennox, shipped off to live with her emotionally distant Uncle Archie. Opens this evening for four performances only through Sunday afternoon. Call (561) 241-7432.

Music: The fifth iteration of the Festival of the Arts Boca has come and gone, but organizers are planning to celebrate the March concert series in Mizner Park with a fund-raising concert this weekend.

The concert will feature Quartetto Gelato, the celebrated Canadian salon-classical ensemble of accordion, oboe, violin and cello. The group – its current lineup is violinist Peter DeSotto, accordionist Alexander Sevastian, cellist Liza McLellan and oboist Colin Maier -- has been a steady feature of pledge drives on PBS, and does a wide variety of music in special arrangements, such as the “Gypsy” finale from the Brahms G minor Piano Quartet and Danny Boy (violinist DeSotto doubles as a tenor).

Quartetto Gelato will perform at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at the Mizner Park Cultural Arts Center. Tickets for the benefit are $250, with $200 of that acknowledged as a charitable donation. Spokeswoman Hillary Reynolds also said, however, that some event sponsors will be not using some of their tickets, and these are now available to the public on a first-come, first-served basis by contacting the Festival of the Arts at www.festivaloftheartsboca.org. – G. Stepanich

Down in Miami Beach this weekend, it’s the Miami International Piano Festival, which this year stays at the Colony Theatre rather than coming north to the Broward Center in Fort Lauderdale.

Swiss pianist Cedric Pescia opened the series last night with music by Couperin, Schumann, Liszt and Messiaen, and tonight it’s the turn of Walter Ponce, Bolivian-born and currently the chief of the keyboard studies department at UCLA.

Ponce will play music by Liszt and Schubert, including the B minor Sonata of the former and the valedictory B-flat Sonata (D. 960) of the latter. He’ll also play an early Schubert Scherzo (in B-flat, D. 593), and Liszt’s Hymne a l’Enfant a son Reveil (Song to the Waking Child).

He’s followed Saturday by two concerts, the first at 2 p.m. featuring teenage stars including American George Li (who’s 15) in music of Haydn (Sonata in C, Hob. XVI: 50), two of Ravel’s Miroirs (Oiseaux Tristes and Alborada del Gracioso), and two by Liszt: The familiar Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 and the well-known Consolation No. 3 (in D-flat). The 17-year-old American cellist Oliver Altdort joins the 19-year-old Venezuelan pianist Luis Urbina for the second half, which features two pieces by Chopin (the Cello Sonata, Op. 65, and the Introduction and Polonaise Brillante, Op. 3). Also on the program is the Schumann Fantasy Pieces (Op. 73).

Saturday night, the Israeli pianist Amir Katz plays all 21 of Chopin’s known Nocturnes, a cycle he recorded last year for a German label called Oehms Classics. And on Sunday night, it’s something completely different, with the Franco-Algerian violinist Gilles Apap and his Translvania Boys (guitarist Chris Judge and bassist Brendon Statom) in a program of Gypsy folk and light classics (i.e., Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance). All concerts are held at the Colony Theatre on Miami Beach. Tickets range from $15-$40. Call Ticketmaster at 1-800-745-3000 or call the Colony at 305-674-1040, ext. 1.

Music: The instruments most musicians work with today are survivors or variations of the sonic armaments they had in other eras. Gone, for the most part, are the ophicleide, the serpent, the sarrusophone. Most of the viol family, with the exception of the double bass (and its modern derivative the bass guitar), also is gone, heard today only in specialist concerts.

But then there are the instruments that have been around for a long time but don’t get used that often. One of the most distinctive is the viola d’amore, a version of the viola with no less than 14 strings – seven of them played, and seven “sympathetic” strings underneath that vibrate along with the others.

“’Special’ is the perfect word for it,” said Richard Fleischman, the violist of the Delray String Quartet and a frequent performer in area orchestral ensembles. “The low strings are very mellow, and the high strings have a silvery, ravishing kind of sound.” It’s a soft sound, and the kind of sound that doesn’t do well up against today’s high-powered instruments, Fleischman said. It’s more suited for the intimate rooms of the 18^th-century salon, and this weekend, a whole program of music for the instrument will be heard in Delray Beach.

Fleischman will play the instrument on Sunday afternoon with members of the Camerata del Re, a Baroque performance ensemble based at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. Music on the concert, called The Art of the Viola d’Amore, includes a concerto by Vivaldi, a sonata by the Baroque viola d’amore specialist Attilio Ariosti, and a short piece (Reverie) by the French Romantic composer Rene de Boisdeffre.

Also on the program are trio sonatas by Telemann and Milandre, chamber works by Frederik Rung and Francesco Giuliani featuring soprano Karen Neal, and quartets by Ottorino Respighi and the contemporary American composer Elaine Fine. Fleischman is particularly excited about the Boisdeffre Reverie, which he will play in its original chamber music version. The music, which dates from about 1890, is reminiscent of Massenet, he said, and was dedicated to Louis van Waefelghem, the greatest viola d’amore player of his day. “It’s a lovely little piece, so I’m kind of excited about playing it,” Fleischman said.

The concert is set for 4 p.m. Sunday at St. Paul’s, 181 N. Swinton Ave., Delray Beach. Tickets are $15-$18. Call 278-6003 for more information.

Russell Thomas is making a great name for himself in the world of the tenor, appearing just a couple weeks ago as Andres in the Metropolitan Opera’s mounting of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, and having been the man who created the role of The Prince in John Adams’ A Flowering Tree. Saturday, he returns to his hometown of Miami for a concert with pianist Elaine Rinaldi. Thomas will sing Vaughan Williams’ Songs of Travel, Britten’s Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, the Three Songs of Fiona MacLeod by American composer Charles Griffes, and Beethoven’s beautiful Adelaide (Op. 46). Mentored by James Levine and other luminaries, this is a voice on the way up. Thomas sings at 8 p.m. Saturday at the First Presbyterian Church of Miami, 609 Brickell Ave. Call 305-274-2103 or visit www.orchestramiami.org.

Film: I know this sounds like an oxymoron, but the recommendation this week is a Will Ferrell drama. In Everything Must Go, he plays an alcoholic sales executive who receives a one-two punch of being fired from his job, then comes home to find that his wife has left him, locking him out and dumping his clothes and possessions on the front lawn of their Phoenix home. Oh, and his company car gets repossessed. So to the dismay of his neighbors, he starts living on the lawn, swilling beers and trying to start over. In contrast to all his juvenile comedies, Ferrell gives a very credible performance, surely his best since Stranger Than Fiction, with nice support from Rebecca Hall and Laura Dern. Yes, this is a Ferrell move for those who would not be caught dead going to a Ferrell movie. Opening at area theaters today. – H. Erstein

Theater: St. Louis playwright Carter W. Lewis has been supplying Florida Stage with quirky comic dramas on diverse subjects for the past two decades. Currently receiving its world premiere at the Kravis Center is the enigmatically named Cha-Cha of a Camel Spider, his wide-ranging and occasionally surreal synthesis of our government’s reliance on private mercenary armies, the transporting power of art, and the lyrical nature of slam poetry. Yes, it is a lot to take in and moment-to-moment what is happening isn’t always clear, but the production is never less than entertaining. That is particularly due to Antonio Amadeo as a wisecracking Muslim cabbie and Elizabeth Birkenmeier as the poetry-spouting daughter of a Blackwater-like operative. Continuing through June 5. Call (561) 832-7469 for tickets. – H. Erstein