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. It also won the Best Picture Oscar, the first fantasy film ever to get that distinction.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”:
When the movie adaptations of what are often called the best fantasy books of all time, the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, were released in the early 2000s, they were called a risky bet by many in Hollywood, but the first two “Lord of the Rings” movies were the second-highest-grossing movies of the years in which they were released and the final movie, “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” became the highest-grossing movie domestically of 2003. While it involves the Big Apple, “Hunter” features fantasy elements, and according to “Hunter” director Breck Eisner, Diesel’s performance in the movie was influenced by his affection for the fantasy Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.Ĭritics aren’t loving the movie so far – Washington Post writer Michael O’Sullivan called the film “dully derivative,” while Los Angeles Times reporter Robert Abele found it to be “loud, convoluted… artlessly restless, exposition-dialogue fantasy-action slog” and New York Times writer Andy Webster called it “a smorgasboard of empty calories.”īut the mere fact that it’s being made shows how big fantasy has gotten in pop culture over the past decades.
Michael Caine, Elijah Wood, and Rose Leslie co-star. “Hunter” tells the story of Kaulder (Diesel), an immortal "witch hunter" who must stop his enemies from going after the population of New York City. The movie was a good fantasy/action movie with some clever plot elements and creative representations of traditional magical elements.Following the success of the 2014 comic book movie “Guardians of the Galaxy” and this spring’s “Fast and the Furious” installment “Furious 7,” actor Vin Diesel stars in the fantasy movie “The Last Witch Hunter,” which is now in theaters. Frankly, I don't think most of these people would have been happy with a 20 min monologue by Alan Rickman. He isn't portrayed as a scholar or wizard: just a good man who happens to be cursed.
That experience might make some people very quiet, and I found Vin Diesel's interpretation believable and appropriate. Why do people expect someone to be Shakespeare, simply because they lived 800 years. The Character is written tersely for a reason. Most of the criticism seemed to revolve around expectations of Vin Diesels performance. I felt like the scene changes and juxtaposing modern/mythical images did a good job of sliding the viewer into the otherworldliness of the script. Some parts of the movie felt really similar to The Exorcist II (Boorman), and I appreciated the lucidity and metaphysics embedded in the plot.
This movie has garnered a lot of criticism, and to be honest, I'm a little surprised.