Skip to footer

Top Picks: The Plantsnap app, 'The Good Cop' on Netflix

The Broadway show 'Wicked' is celebrating its 15th anniversary on Broadway with 'A Very Wicked Halloween' on NBC, the movie 'First Reformed' stars Ethan Hawke as a pastor who struggles with what to do after hearing about a radical environmentalist and his views, and more top picks.

|
AP
  • By Staff

Planting knowledge

If you can’t tell a daisy from a tulip or if you’re a plant lover who is baffled by one particular blossom, the PlantSnap app can give you some insight into botanical matters. Take a photo of the plant and the app will identify it. (At the moment, it recognizes 90 percent of all known species of plants and trees.) PlantSnap is $3.99 for iOS and free for Android.

Good cop, bad cop

The 10-episode first season of the TV show The Good Cop, which stars Josh Groban and Tony Danza, is streaming on Netflix. Groban plays Tony Caruso Jr., a police detective whose rigid view of rules and morality contrasts with the attitude of his father (Danza), a former police detective who was convicted of corruption. Despite their differences and frequent clashes, the show makes clear how much the two care for each other.

Courtesy of Providence Pictures

Insight into ‘native america’

A new series, Native America, debuts on PBS on Oct. 23 at 9 p.m. and presents a view of the Americas before and after Europeans arrived that may be vastly different from what viewers know. It was filmed on location from Canada to Peru. In addition, animators created art for the program that is used to depict Native legends. 

'Wicked’ celebration

The Broadway show “Wicked,” which is based on the novel by Gregory Maguire about what happened between the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch before a young girl from Kansas arrived, is celebrating its 15th anniversary on Broadway with A Very Wicked Halloween. The NBC special airs Oct. 29 at 10 p.m. Original “Wicked” stars Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth will host the program, and singer Ariana Grande, the current cast of “Wicked” on Broadway, and the
a cappella group Pentatonix will perform. 

Courtesy of Mac Simonson/A24

Environment views

The movie First Reformed is available on DVD and Blu-ray. It stars Ethan Hawke as Ernst Toller, a pastor who sees man-made climate change as the “end of days” and struggles with what to do after hearing about a radical environmentalist and his views. Monitor film critic Peter Rainer writes that Hawke gives a “strong, spooked performance.”  

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About 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”:

“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. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. 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.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. 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 have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Top Picks: The Plantsnap app, 'The Good Cop' on Netflix
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Arts/2018/1019/Top-Picks-The-Plantsnap-app-The-Good-Cop-on-Netflix
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe