Ideal Holiday Movies

This list may be a little late for Diwali (Hindu New Year), but they will be wonderful share with family and friends during the coming holiday season. If you get a chance to watch a few, let me know what you though in the Comments section. Cheers!
The Holiday (Jack Black, Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet)
Last Holiday (Queen Latifa, LL Cool J)
While You Were Sleeping (Sandra Bulluck)
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (Judy Dench)
Sabrina (Harrison Ford)
Eat Pray Love (Julia Roberts, Javier Bardem)
Return to Me (David Duchovny, Minnie Driver)
Letters to Juliet (Amanda Seyfried, Gael Garcia Bernal)
The Big Wedding (Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon)
Keeping the Faith (Ben Stiller, Edward Norton, Jenna Elfman)

Movie Review: THOR: THE DARK WORLD

Thank you for checking back from time to time. I have been busy writing about Hinduism for a website my sister, Monica, set up to raise money for the completion of a school building at an ashram in South India. But I am here now and I want to share my thoughts on the new THOR movie.For those of you who do not know this by now, the second installation of the THOR franchise just came out last weekend. The title of the movie is Thor: The Dark World. It stars Chris Hemsworth (hubba hubba) as the main character, Natalie Portman (as his lady love), Tom Hiddleston (as the evil brother who still has an element of goodness in him), Anthony Hopkins (the daddy of them all), and Rene Russo (the glue that holds them altogether).I have gone to see many of the movies that have come out this year that are in the same genre as Thor. But a lot of them fell short. That is why I didn’t know what to expect when I entered the theater for this movie.  Well, I shouldn’t have worried.  The movie blew my reservations right out of the water!The movie opened at a scene two years after Thor bid farewell to Jane Foster. During that time, the Asgardians were busy in battle, restoring peace to the Nine Realms.  Now, during a moment of triumph and celebration, Thor found himself pining for that one girl that got away.Well, Jane Foster is no ordinary female. She is an astrophysicist who is still trying to figure out how to connect to Asgard, a world she knows almost nothing about. But that soon changes when she accidentally releases a mighty energy that can control the universe! Learning that this power has transmutated into Foster’s body, Thor brings her home to Asgard to figure out how to extract energy before it kills her.As the planets of the Nine Realms grow hungry for that very power, Asgard prepares for war. But Thor knows that the people of Asgard cannot withstand the onslaught of one regime after another. So he defies his father’s dictates and enlists the help of his wayward brother. How these two princes forge a truce and work together to keep the battle from coming to Asgard is what you must find out when you see the movie. But let me tell you, what I expected to be a fairy-tale ending was anything but. 

Scary with a Pinch of Humor

The following is a list of movies that will get a start out of you:

Hook,  Slither,  Caroline,  Jumanji,  Gremlins,  Ghost Rider,   Black Swan,   White Nights,   The Fugitive,   The Mummy,   Original Sin,  Sweeney Todd,   Basic Instinct   Fatal Attraction
Donnie Darko,  Monster House,  The Sixth Sense,  Minority Report,  Love at First Bite,  Eyes Wide Shut,  Now You See Me,  War of the Worlds,  Catch Me If You Can,  The Addam’s Family,  Edward Scissorhands,   Bram Stoker’s Dracula,  The Phantom of the Opera,   Dark Shadow (Johnny Depp),   Star Trek Into Darkness,   Interview with the Vampire,   Journey to the Center of the Earth,   Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows,   Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride,   The Nightmare Before Christmas,   Hotel Transylvania

Miley WHO?

I watched a video last night about Miley Cyrus that looked like a home video taken without the participants knowing…. It was raunchy and downright offensive. But again, I just thought it was a home video, and you know how bad those can get!

But then I watched the number she pulled on live TV at the MTV VGAs, and man……… I can’t even come up with the right words! I was AGHAST! Here was the TALENTED singer who can obviously dance, but she is using everything she’s got to…what…send a message? To whom??? And for what? Nobody sees her as a staunch supporter of anything HOLY or WISE, and now most of us don’t see her as a worthwhile “act” to watch! She’s… simply OFFENSIVE!

In generations past, we had Madonna, who also crossed the line as to what should be seen on public broadcasts. But she got away with it, because she did it with a STYLE that we, the American public, could accept. And I believe she suffered way more at the hands of the opposite sex than Miley ever did.

And then there was the lead singer of The Doors. If you want illicit and seductive, he wrote the book! And the very things that made him so…..illicit, took his life way before his time!

Then you have Whitney Houston. Her music shaped pop music as a genre! She can honestly be labeled as the Queen of Pop! But she too succumbed to recreational drugs and ended up DEAD before her time.

But Miley? Who is she? We know of a teen actress who engaged us in movies like Nick Spark’s Last Song. She was fabulous there! Her acting even trumped her hunky costar, Liam Hemsworth. But whereas Hemsworth went on to IMPROVE on his game, Miley deteriorated. And she is STILL falling. Won’t someone put us all out of our misery and stop putting her on stage???

HAF NEXTGEN Essay Contest Winner for 2012

The Hindu American Foundation has held an annual essay contest in its ongoing efforts to build Hindu solidarity. In 2012, Suneeta Israni won First Place. Below you will find and excerpt from her winning essay. She wrote to the following prompt: If I were elected President of the United States, my Hindu principles would inspire me to... 

                 If I were President of the United States, my Hindu principles would inspire me to plant a lotus in the White House Garden. For if I planted a Lotus, I would have the privilege of seeing that even though its petals close each night and sink to reside within the murky darkness at the bottom of the pond, it nonetheless will rise each dawn to display its beauty.

                I would have the privilege of learning that no matter how hard I tried to bend its stalk, the stem of the Lotus flower will never break.

                I would have the privilege of remembering that the distance between the Lotus flower and the water, instituted by the stem, represents what the Honorable Siddhartha Gautama’s once said, “the [spotless] spirit of the best of men, like the new lotus in the [murky] water which does not adhere to it.”

                I would have the privilege of appreciating that at every stage for any purpose, whether raw or cooked, roasted or boiled, roots or leaves, it would be safe and beneficial to consume. These privileges, however, do not come alone. They bestow upon me the responsibility to extract the lessons from the Lotus flower and apply them to the world we live in today.

Whose History Is It Anyways?

I was scanning the headlines on the HAF (Hindu American Foundation) website this evening when I came across an article about India's history. I found it interesting because I have been doing my own research on the topic over the past year or so. Instead of trying to summarize the key points of the article for you, I have chosen a portion of it to share with you, below. If it sparks a reaction in you, please leave feedback in the comments section.

There are winners and losers when history is assessed, and there are protagonists and antagonists. Historians recognize the onerous burden of their profession in these times when a spare use of the word "genocide" in the House of Representatives to describe events in Armenia decades ago led Turkey to recall its ambassador. And politics infuses the narratives of history. Anti-Semitism, Marxism, white supremacy, all are known to prejudice renditions of peoples, cultures and religions. Historian Wendy Doniger, professor of the History of Religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School, finds herself in the midst of a history book kerfuffle of her own. Doniger, long enjoying exalted status as the doyen of Hindu studies in the American academy, faces scrutiny now in an unfolding drama involving her latest book, "The Hindus: An Alternative History". An online petition asking Penguin Press, the publishers of the book, to hold publication and demand revisions is approaching 10,000 signatures. And when the book was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, Hindu activists staged a rare protest outside the award ceremony last week (the book did not win).
Hindus know that Doniger was derailed before. In 2003,Microsoft retracted a chapter on Hinduism written by Doniger for its online encyclopedia after a heavily publicized internet campaign protested factual and interpretive errors in her essay. In the end, a Hindu writer, providing the insider's perspective, wrote an entry that depicted Hinduism in the light that practitioners would actually recognize.

Olympus Has Fallen Movie Review

When the White House (Secret Service Code: "Olympus") is captured by a terrorist mastermind and the President is kidnapped, disgraced former Presidential guard Mike Banning finds himself trapped within the building. As our national security team scrambles to respond, they are forced to rely on Banning's inside knowledge to help retake the White House, save the President and avert an even bigger disaster. (Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman)

Gerard Butler….ahhh…whatta hunka burnin’ luv….  Okay, well… that’s enough of that (as I blink and shake my head furtively)…  I guess it is safe to say that Gerard Butler has proven himself in the romantic comedy arena, what with P.S. I Love You, Bounty Hunter, and the Ugly Truth. But I didn’t see this new side of him – the hunky action hero – until I was watching him ride the massive waves off Hawaiin shores. That’s right, folks, I am referring to the action flick, Chasing Mavericks. And then there was Joel Schumacher’s Phantom of the Opera. His role as the main character (the Phantom) brought his versatility to light in this period horror movie.

He started picking up momentum in the action hero role in movies like 300 and Boewulf and Grendel. But his role in this movie seemed to be the most engaging yet. I mean, who can resist a single father who has fallen from grace and  just wants to reconnect with his only daughter?