If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.īut you know what? We change lives. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.” My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. “Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. Grade: B (Rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action and violence.)Ībout a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
Let’s us not forget that, for all the hardware and hoo-ha, this franchise is essentially a soap opera in space, with cliffhangers as neatly timed as anything in “The Perils of Pauline.” Fanatics will love it for the rest of us, it’s a tolerably good time. As returning action-hero Resistance fighters, Oscar Isaac and John Boyega are less introspective.
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(Has Driver ever played Hamlet?) Daisy Ridley’s Rey, in attempting to lure the equally brooding Luke out of retirement, is pretty broody herself.
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I have no wish to turn this review into a minefield of spoiler alerts, so suffice to say “The Last Jedi” pits the weakened Resistance against the First Order meanies it’s darker in tone than any of the films since “Empire,” which it occasionally references and there are two welcome new additions to the series – a spunky rebel fighter named Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) and a bevy of cute critters called porgs, who resemble benign, big-eyed gremlins and no doubt will be doing double duty as stocking stuffers.Īdam Driver’s Kylo Ren is in full brood here.
(Technically, “The Last Jedi” is the second in a projected trilogy that began with “The Force Awakens.”) As for the rest of the cast, they are spirited and youngish enough to bode well for future installments, which will no doubt stretch unto eternity. As Leia Organa, the late Carrie Fisher, like Hamill, appears to be drawing on a deep fund of nostalgic rue. I can’t get overly nostalgic about the return of Luke Skywalker, even if Mark Hamill does by far the best acting of his career here. At about 2-1/2 hours, it’s a long sit – at least it was for this non-fanatic of the series. Writer-director Rian Johnson steps into the franchise fray and does a creditable, if uninspired, job. I’d rank it behind “The Empire Strikes Back” (still by far the best) and the first film, but it’s about on par with the enjoyable last episode, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which also awakened the long-moribund franchise. “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” is the eighth movie in the series and one of the better ones.