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. There’s even a long sequence in the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, which fills out the woe to mythic proportions.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”: And within those limits, it succeeds all too well. “The Fault in Our Stars” is the ultimate feel-good movie about feeling bad. I might have joined them if I did not sense that, on some level, all this anguish was intended to be therapeutic. The sniffling legions at the screening I attended needn’t have felt like fools. The film is highly manipulative, all right, but in ways that allow the audience a modicum of self-respect.

To their credit, director Josh Boone and screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber don’t pile on the mush. (It cried out to be filmed.) Now that it’s on the big screen, translated fairly intact, are there enough handkerchiefs in the world to staunch the flow? John Green’s 2012 young adult mega-bestseller about two teens from a cancer support group, was, in effect, already a movie. “Me, too,” said her friend, looking even happier.įor those friends, and millions more, I’m sure, the movie will no doubt be a cryfest for the ages. “I’m going to cry,” said one, looking very happy.

Weber ('500 Days of Summer', 'The Pink Panther 2', 'The Spectacular Now') and the movie is set to hit theatres on June 20th 2014.I recently overheard two teenage girls chatting up the movie version of “The Fault in Our Stars” after viewing its trailer. The screenplay is a collaboration between writing partners Scott Neustadter and Michael H. 'The Fault In Our Stars' is a romantic drama based on the 2012 novel of the same name by John Green, and has been directed by Josh Boone ('Stuck in Love'). But Gus is determined that he loves her, and will stay by her side until the very end. However, she soon begins to realise that her feelings for him are becoming stronger and stronger and she attempts to distance herself from him to avoid hurting him in the future.

She meets a charming former cancer sufferer and amputee named Gus who is immediately taken by Hazel and the pair become inseparable he sees past her tragic illness and is the only person who makes her feel as if she has a lifetime ahead of her. Her mother forces her to attend a nearby cancer support group in a bid to help her come to terms with her illness and make friends who understand her situation. Hazel Lancaster is a bright 16-year-old girl suffering from terminal cancer who is forced to carry an oxygen and breathing tubes with her wherever she goes.

The fault in our stars movie trailers