Film: OK, it’s not a great weekend for film releases, but if you are still going through withdrawal after the football season, you can get a fictional look at the Cleveland Browns’ front office in Draft Day, opening wide this weekend. Kevin Costner gets his best role in years as the team’s general manager, Sonny Weaver Jr., wheeling and dealing in preparation for the crucial day when he can improve the roster and maneuver towards playoffs potential. While the movie clearly wants to be another Moneyball, it weighs Costner’s character down with personal challenges like the death of his father and a prickly relationship with staff statistician Jennifer Garner. (Yeah, she’s way too young for him, but just go with it.) Directed by Ivan Reitman, Draft Day is a worthy addition to Costner’s long string of sports films.
Theater: Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Evita first arrived on Broadway in 1979 amid a cloud of controversy, but has since been seen as arguably their finest collaboration. Harold Prince’s original, pageant-like staging was so closely associated with the story of an ambitious woman from the Argentine boonies, who rose to prominence and earned the affection of the people, even though she was bankrupting the country that the show never had a major new look revival until 2012. That production, directed by Britain’s Michael Grandage, plays the Kravis Center this week, headed by a powerhouse performance by Caroline Bowman in the title role. Through Sunday. Call (561) 832-7469 for tickets.
Art: Last night, the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County gave a preview of its Art Outside the Walls: En Plein Air exhibit, which opens today at the council headquarters in Lake Worth and runs through June 7. Painting outside en plein air, as the French Impressionists were fond of doing, has become more popular with the rise of social media, as curator Nichole Hickey notes. The council and the Plein Air Palm Beach painters’ group sent out artists to paint at 10 county locations such as the Society of the Four Arts and the results are on display now in the council’s art gallery. It’s a free exhibit; call 472-3341 for more information; there are two artists lectures scheduled at 3 p.m. April 29 and 3 p.m. May 6.
Music: The end of season corresponds with major religious observances, and for Christians, Easter is fast approaching. Franz Joseph Haydn’s The Seven Last Words, composed for a Spanish church in 1785, was a hugely popular meditation on Christ’s agony on the cross, and later he added voices to the original orchestral score. Last night in Boca Raton, the Seraphic Fire choir and the Spektral Quartet of Chicago joined forces for a chorus-plus-string quartet version of this work, but you can hear it three more times if you missed it at St. Gregory’s. Performances are at 7:30 tonight at First United Methodist in Coral Gables, at 8 p.m. Saturday at All Saints Espicopal in Fort Lauderdale, and at 4 p.m. Sunday at All Souls Episcopal in Miami Beach. The two groups take it on the road right after that, heading to the University of Chicago on April 16 and Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis., on April 18. Call 305-285-9060 for tickets, or visit www.seraphicfire.org.