All posts in the ‘ Media ’ Category

Halloween is almost here! Pumpkins are proliferating on front porches and ghosts and skeletons are swaying from trees. I can’t wait to see the kids in their costumes coming to the door. I’m sure there will be lots of Annas and Elsas, the princess sisters from Walt Disney’s 2013 animated blockbuster, Frozen. Clara, however, has decided to be Winnie the Pooh. Last year, she insisted weeks in advance of Halloween that she’d be a pig. Many years ago, …Read More

One of my favorite Hindi movies is the 2011 blockbuster Zindagi na Milegi Dobara (Life Doesn’t Come Twice.) It’s the story of three bachelors taking a road trip through Spain, just before one of them is supposed to get married. Each picks a dangerous sport and the others are honor-bound to try it out with him, and they’re all pushed to their limits. The film explodes with energy. It’s also highly authentic in its details–it was shot on …Read More

Elephants in kids’ books and movies. Aren’t they irresistible? Walt Disney’s 1941 creation, Dumbo, is still flying around, powered by his enormous ears. Jean de Brunhoff published the first of his Babar books in France in 1931, and the series soon crossed the Atlantic and never left. My son, at age two, was inseparable from his stuffed Babar. Recently I watched the Hindi film Haathi, Mere Saathi (“Elephants, My Companions.”) A smash hit in India in 1971, it …Read More

Satyamev Jayate—“Truth Alone Prevails.” This is the official motto of India—and the title of a new Indian TV talk show created and hosted by Bollywood superstar and producer Aamir Khan. The show is being hailed as nothing less than revolutionary for its frank discussion of social problems sometimes swept under the rug. It debuted May 6. The first four topics were selective abortions of females and the resulting gender imbalance in India, sexual abuse of children, the dowry …Read More