Art: No matter what its other attractions, the basic fact of the state of Florida is the water: Most of it is a sandbar in the sea, so it’s only fitting that so many artists of the state have turned or aqueous reality for inspiration. At the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County’s art gallery in its converted movie theater on Lake Street in Lake Worth, The Deep and the Shallow features pictures by 12 different photographers interested in marine life, including Jim Abernethy, philanthropist Alex Dreyfoos, JD Duff, Jennifer Podis of The Palm Beach Post, and her onetime boss, former Post deputy photo editor John J. Lopinot. The free exhibition runs through Jan. 18. For more information, call 561-471-2901 or visit www.palmbeachculture.com. Gallery hours are from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
Film: It hardly fits the holiday spirit, but anytime Martin Scorsese releases a new film, it is a gift to moviegoers. His career preoccupation has been cutthroat mobsters, so it was not much of a shift to turn his focus on the world of wheeler-dealer stockbrokers, as he does in The Wolf of Wall Street. His real-life subject is Jordan Belfort, a larcenous natty dresser who built an empire on penny stocks and high-pressure telemarketing schemes. Quickly rich, Belfort lived a life of excess and the film is similarly excessive, stuffed with drugs, sex and profanity — Scorsese’s wheelhouse. As Belfort, the director again goes to Leonardo DiCaprio, whose innate charm goes a long way towards getting us on Belfort’s side. The Wolf of Wall Street seems like familiar territory for Scorsese, who serves up excess with cinematic style. Now open in area theaters.
Theater: Most area theaters have taken the last week of the year off, but Palm Beach Dramaworks is having such success with its production of James Goldman’s The Lion in Winter that it has extended the run through Jan. 12. It takes place at Christmastime, 1183, as King Henry II has let his powerful, conniving wife Eleanor out of prison and gathered his three surviving sons to the royal palace at Chinon to decide who will succeed him on England’s throne. The play is a battle of words and wits, a medieval Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and director William Hayes’s production delivers all the tension and the dark humor, thanks largely to C. David Johnson and Tod Randolph as the battling Plantagenets. Call (561) 514-4042 for tickets.
Music: It seems that South Florida has an unusually large number of pianists from the Russian orbit who have made their way to these shores. A case in point is the Russian pianist Asiya Korepanova, a 29-year-old native of Izhevsk who studied at the University of Miami with Santiago Rodriguez. A fine, technically accomplished player, she’s opening this season of Abram Kreeger’s Piano Lovers series with a program of French music: Franck’s Prelude, Chorale and Fugue, some unspecified pieces by Debussy, and Ravel’s great finger-twister, Gaspard de la Nuit. The concert at the Boca Steinway Gallery begins at 4 p.m. Sunday; tickets are $20 in advance, and $30 at the door. Call 561-573-0644 or send an email to BocaConcerts@gmail.com.