Like everything else I hold sacred, movies are increasingly grist for our national Division and Discord mill. Movies, that is, and the people who create them.

Once again the legions of the Midwest and northeast will longingly look to the Lowcountry with envy. The chilblains of winter are gone and spring is in the air. The annual rite of unfolding into warm breezes and scanning colorful flora will be celebrated in sound at the Sunday, March 1, 5:00 pm concert of USCB Chamber Music. 

Do you remember the Mantovani Orchestra playing “Some Enchanted Evening”? Magical, don’t you agree? Well, pianist Marco Mantovani may as well be related to the conductor Annunzio Mantovani. He shares that captivating name, and he plays the piano with that magical Mantovani touch. Ask Marco when you come to Fripp on February 23 for his concert whether Annunzio and he are family members. In any case, it will be an enchanting evening.

The 14^th Beaufort International Film Festival Heats Up February

By Mark Shaffer, Editor At Large

Much has changed since we first started covering the Beaufort International Film Festival back in 2009. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (the MCU) had just laid the foundation for the next decade’s campaign of worldwide cinematic domination with Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark. James Cameron’s Avatar was about to shatter box office records on its way to becoming the top grossing film of all time with box office numbers so huge they were thought to be untouchable. Heath Ledger posthumously becomes the first actor to win an Oscar for the role of a comic book villain as Joker in The Dark Knight. And Ridley Scott’s acid rain-soaked dystopian world of Blade Runnerstill lurked somewhere in the future.