Film: The vote totals for the Academy Awards are never released, but it is safe to say that Michael Haneke’s Amour from Austria won the foreign language film category by a landslide, nominated as it was for best picture as well. And the movie is now out in area theaters, a rare opportunity to see the winner on a big screen. It is a tough film to sit through, especially for those who go to movies for escapist entertaining, for Amour is anything but that. It is the story of a Parisian couple (Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant) facing the challenges of old age. She suffers a stroke, he cares for her as best he can, and soon she faces the ravages of dementia. Of course there is much content about the wife’s medical downturns, but ultimately Amour is a love story, an unflinching one that deserves to be seen.
Theater: When it premiered on Broadway in 1975, Chicago won no Tony Awards and ran a mere two years, largely because it was ahead of its time and overshadowed by a little show called A Chorus Line. Revived in 1996 in concert form, this collaboration of Bob Fosse, John Kander and Fred Ebb easily eclipsed the original production and it’s still running in New York after 6,757 performances. Still, it is a difficult musical to pull off, and while the Boca Raton Theatre Guild may not have the resources to give it much of a physical production, it certainly has attracted a first-rate cast. Patti Gardner and Krishna Marcano play the two competitive murderesses awaiting trial in the Cook County Jail, Avi Hoffman is Gardner’s razzle-dazzle attorney, Sally Bondi is the jail matron and Ken Clement is Gardner’s not-too-bright, cellophane- transparent hubby. So who needs production values? Opening today and running through Sunday, March 17. Call (561) 347-3948 for tickets.
Music: Ludwig van Beethoven put everything he had into his new-music concert on Dec. 22, 1808, but it turned out to be too much for the audience, which sat through four hours of music in an unheated theater in severe cold. But all the works on the program survived their difficult debut, and the two symphonies he presented that night, Nos. 5 and 6 (known as the Pastoral), are iconic monuments of Western civilization. Ramon Tebar conducts these thrice-familiar pieces in the 1808 order (the Sixth used to be the Fifth, and vice versa) at Mar-a-Lago tonight for the Palm Beach Symphony. Tickets are $50, and the concert starts at 7:30 p.m. Call 655-2657 or visit www.palmbeachsymphony.org.