Nick Tattersall

Watching a movie like “De Dana Dan” in a single screen theatre where people are hooting and clapping at crass humour on screen may give you an insight into Indian audiences.

This audience doesn’t really mind that Archana Puran Singh uses foul language or that people randomly slap their husbands and wives or that there is really no logic to speak of. They found all of the above hilarious.

I am not judging that audience. After all, we all have our own tastes. I guess this is what they mean about Hindi movies that you have to “leave your brain behind and then watch”.

Akshay Kumar plays Nitin, a down and out young man who works as a servant with a rich woman in order to pay off his father’s debt to her. He is in love with Anjali (Katrina Kaif) but doesn’t have the money to marry her. He meets Ram (Suniel Shetty), a courier deliveryman who also needs money to marry his rich girlfriend (Sameera Reddy).

They decide to kidnap Nitin’s mistress’s dog, which she holds very dear. However, the plan goes awry and that is the start of the “confusion” in the film. One mistaken identity leads to the other and yet another, until the plot becomes so convoluted that you lose track.

I am writing this an hour after watching the film and if you ask me for the rest of the plot, I will be unable to tell you. It baffles me as to how the scriptwriter remembered all the twists and turns.

For all the confusion however, the end is so lame you feel the entire team was so tired of the film they just put their hands up at one point and said, “That’s it, this is where we end it”.

There are no performances to speak of -- in fact none are required. The “Hera Pheri” team of Akshay Kumar, Suniel Shetty, Paresh Rawal and Priyadarshan don’t reproduce even half of the magic on screen.

This is entertainment at its lowest level. Take your chance though. To each his own.

The banking index dropped 1.4 pct on Friday, dragged down by heavyweights ICICI Bank and SBI after Dubai said two of its flagship firms planned to delay repayment on billions of dollar of debt.

The move raised investor fears that debt defaults could hit other parts of the globe, and rattled global markets sending banking shares down.

Sensex heavyweight ICICI Bank tumbled over 4 percent in intra-day trade before closing 1.6 percent lower at 851.25 rupees.

Bank of Baroda, which has a total exposure in the UAE of around 100 billion rupees ($2.1 billion), saw its shares plunge about 7 percent before closing 4.6 percent lower at 521.40 rupees.

Other stocks in the banking index which felt the heat were Axis Bank (down 3 percent), Kotak Mahidra Bank (down 2.9 percent), Bank of India (down 3.6 percent) and SBI (down 0.4 percent)

Do you think this sector will see more erosion over the Dubai debt repayment crisis?

(Photo: Haj pilgrims stone pillars symbolising the devil in Mena outside Mecca, 27 Nov 2009/Caren Firouz)

Around two million Muslim pilgrims stoned pillars symbolising the devil in a narrow valley in Saudi Arabia on Friday at what has traditionally been the most dangerous stage of the haj pilgrimage. The pillars stand at Mena, where Muslims believe the devil appeared to the Prophet Abraham.

The Jamarat Bridge in the valley of Mena outside the holy city of Mecca, where pilgrims stone the walls three times over three to four days, has been the scene of a number of stampedes, including one which killed 362 in 2006. But Saudi Arabia has erected a massive four-level building with several platforms for throwing stones to ease congestion and prevent stampedes at the Jamarat stoning areas.

(Photo: Haj pilgrims walk from camp to Jamarat to throw stones at pillars in Mena 27 Nov 2009/Caren Firouz)

Throngs of predominantly white-clad pilgrims filled the road that leads them to and from the Jamarat Bridge. Some stopped to buy fried chicken nuggets while groups from different countries formed human chains with their fellow countrymen to move more quickly through the crowds.

"Fighting evil temptations is a daily chore for every Muslim," said Mohammad Haq Shahinaz from Pakistan, holding hands with his wife as they struggled to push ahead in the crowded road to the Jamarat bridge.  "But by stoning these concrete pillars here we indicate that we only worship Allah and we will not follow Satan's path." 

Fathi Ahmed Mohammed from Egypt  Egyptian threw seven stones at the pillar, calling out "Allahu akbar" after each throw. "We thanked Allah for His grace and ... prayed for the unity of Muslims to glorify Islam and help us prevail over the infidels and the Jews," he said.

Mohamed al-Yami, a Saudi from southern Najran province, pushed his way among the crowds after he finished the ritual.  "I have a sheep to slaughter," he said, referring to the sacrifice for Eid al-Adha (feast of sacrifice).

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Cadbury hits new high as bidders circle

Many analysts doubt whether either of these three would bid alone, but possible combinations of them could trump Kraft's current cash and shares bid of 9.9 billion pounds ($16.4 billion) or push the American food giant Kraft to raise its offer.

In my Canadian Oxford Dictionary the definition for "either" is "one or the other of two".

Should I return my dictionary?

R.O.H.

No, your dictionary is fine. We fixed that error in a subsequent update of the story: GBU Editor

A Ferrero Rocher chocolate is seen in Milan, November 20, 2009. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini

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All eyes will be on Denman in Saturday's Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury as the horse affectionately nicknamed "The Tank" returns for his seasonal reappearance looking to recapture the sparkle that made him the leading steeplechaser in 2008.

A good performance in the showpiece handicap will put the nine-year-old, trained by Paul Nicholls, firmly back on track for another mouthwatering rematch with Kauto Star in next March's Cheltenham Gold Cup.

The stablemates have dominated the big race at the Cheltenham festival for the last three years. Kauto Star won in 2007, was dethroned by Denman a year later but then recaptured his crown last March as his rival could only finish second in a lacklustre season hampered by health issues.

"He's in great form," Nicholls said, "twice the horse he was last season and we're looking forward to running."

Denman, whose return last season was delayed until February after being diagnosed with a heart problem, must carry top weight against 20 rivals on Saturday and Nicholls has cautioned against hopes of a winning return.

"When he won the Hennessy (in 2007) he was well-handicapped. He's much higher in the ratings now and my feeling -- and of course I may be wrong -- is that he will run a sound race on Saturday to finish fourth or fifth."

Nicholls is sure to have Denman fit to do himself justice and with Kauto Star making a winning return at Haydock last Saturday, Britain's leading jumps trainer can start to plot another Gold Cup showdown.

PHOTO: Sam Thomas on Denman jumps the last fence to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup, March 14, 2008. REUTERS/Eddie Keogh

Around the world referees are forever criticised by fans, players, managers and the media but an Uzbekistan official has managed to buck the trend, receiving an unusually warm welcome after being named Asian Football Confederation (AFC) referee of the year.

Fans at Tashkent airport blew horns and trumpets to celebrate the return of Ravshan Irmatov, a candidate to referee at next year's World Cup, after he won the award for a second successive year.

"I am overwhelmed by this reception. I am thankful to all those who came to greet me," Irmatov said. “I have seen this kind of reception only for the players and this is unprecedented in Uzbekistan. I hope I will fulfill their expectations."

In bizarre scenes, fans were jostling through crowds to try to shake hands with Irmatov, who was returning from Kuala Lumpur where he collected his award on Tuesday.

"He made Uzbekistan proud for the second consecutive year and I hope he will continue to fly our flag in the years to come,” excited fan Ulugbek Salimov said

Whatever next? Manchester United boss and frequent referee critic Alex Ferguson treating match officials to fine glasses of wine after games or Serena Williams praising line judges for good calls?

It is an interesting change and maybe Irish and Egyptian supporters should forget their gripes about missing out on South Africa and get behind their officials at the World Cup. Oh wait, they didn’t make that cut either!

PHOTO: Referee Ravshan Irmatov from Uzbekistan gestures during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games qualifying round soccer match between Qatar and Japan in Doha October 17, 2007. REUTERS/Fadi Al-Assaad

If Lou Dobbs decides to make an independent bid for president in 2012, he will probably find the political climate as hospitable for an insurgent run -- if not more so -- as it was in 1992, when Ross Perot captured a fifth of the popular vote.

The dreary economic New Normal that is the aftermath of the Great Recession has created a huge political opening for Dobbs or Michael Bloomberg or Sarah Palin, or some other American with high visibility or deep pockets or both.

It was a slow-recovering economy and concern about big deficits that drove the Perot phenomenon. There's a high probability both factors will be at play three years from now.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities forecasts annual budget deficits to average $1.2 trillion over the next three years. And the Federal Reserve is forecasting a so-so economic expansion that will leave unemployment over 7 percent in 2012.

Then you have a populist, anti-Wall Street sentiment that neither Democrats nor Republicans have been able to capture successfully.

The result is that party loyalties are frayed, with the tea party movement one manifestation. According to the Pew Research Center, 36 percent of Americans identify themselves as independents, the highest number since 1992. And they seem to be up for grabs.

Barack Obama won 52 percent of the independent vote in 2008. But a recent poll by Rasmussen Reports shows Obama with a 61 percent disapproval rating among the group.

None of this means an independent would actually win. Rasmussen has Dobbs at 14 percent in a race with President Obama (42 percent) and Mitt Romney (34 percent.) With the more populist Palin replacing Romney, Dobbs gets 12 percent versus 44 percent for Obama and 37 percent for Palin.

Yet without Dobbs in the race, Romney is tied with Obama and Palin trails by just three. So an independent could, at the very least, radically alter the political landscape.

And if the New Normal turns out to be worse than expected, with the GOP blamed for the original collapse and Democrats for a bungled remedy, an independent might accomplish much more than that.

It's almost quaint that there are still people out there who believe that all market participants are always rational actors making decisions in their own economic best interest. Take Daniel Indiviglio, who even stands up for IndyMac and its "inequitable, unconscionable, vexatious and opprobrious" regional manager, Karen Dickinson:

I'm a little confused about how Salmon proposes that the bank here wasn't acting in its own best interest. If he means that its actions led to a judge awarding the home to the borrower, and that screws the bank, well that's true. But I seriously doubt that the bank believed that its actions would lead to that outcome...

Had the mortgage contract been upheld, then Indymac would have repossessed the home, as planned. Clearly, that's the outcome it expected its actions to bring. If Salmon means to speculate that the bank would have been better off if it had accepted one of Ms. Yaho-Horoski's modification alternatives than force her to foreclose, then I'm not sure I can agree...

For whatever reason, it didn't like the modification options Ms. Yaho-Horoski presented. Maybe it believed that they all had far more risk than just foreclosing and settling for whatever price it could obtain in the battered housing market. So the bank deemed foreclosure its best option.

On the one hand, this is trivially false, since IndyMac rejected a bid at full market price from Yaho-Horoski's daughter: it's inconceivable that after going through the expense of foreclosing on and selling the house, IndyMac would net more money than that. After reading judge Jeffrey Spinner's decision, it's pretty clear that Dickinson was a malicious liar who was acting not in the best interests of IndyMac but much more simply in the worst interests of the Yaho-Horoskis. If they suggested anything at all -- even a desperate offer of simply giving IndyMac the deed to the house, in lieu of foreclosure -- Dickinson was predisposed to reject it.

It's also inconceivable that IndyMac thought it could get a significant amount of money out of Yaho-Horoski over and above the proceeds from a foreclosure sale. Yes, New York is a recourse state. But we're not talking here about the only kind of situation in which lenders ever go after borrowers after they've foreclosed -- a case where the borrower is wealthy, clearly has the money to repay the debt, and is simply refusing to do so because the value of the house has fallen. The borrower in this case was Diana Yano-Horoski individually, and all of the proposals she made involved using the combined income of herself, her husband, and her daughter. But Dickinson evinced no interest in maximizing the amount of money being put towards repaying the mortgage: she even "summarily rejected" the offer from Yano-Horoski's husband and daughter to be added to the loan as obligors.

More generally, it seems that Indiviglio's fundamentalist beliefs about what banks do are utterly unfalsifiable. This case isn't a cut-and-dried example of a bank acting against its own best interest, yet he still refuses to accept that's what was happening. It's almost as if he doesn't understand that banks are run by humans, and that humans are fallible, especially in emotionally-fraught circumstances: they get caught up in an us-versus-them mindset which confuses the best outcome for themselves with the worst outcome for their opponents, or they just panic and do something stupid, like lying to a judge or pulling an emergency brake cord on a subway train.

I'm not saying that "Indymac is just pure evil" -- the straw man that Indiviglio sets up as the only possible alternative to his sunny world where everybody always acts in their own best interest. I'm saying that certain corporate officers, in certain situations, make mistakes -- and often make very large mistakes. In the case of the housing market in general, and foreclosure proceedings in particular, those mistakes happen quite often, if not always as egregiously as in this case. Loan servicers are simply overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of mortgages in default, and frequently rush to foreclosure even when there are much better options available.

It's both in the national interest and in the best interest of the loan servicers collectively to put a brake on such actions: if everybody's rushing to foreclose at the same time, that just creates a glut of distressed property sales which in turn drives down property prices further and perpetuates the vicious cycle. On the other hand, if everybody else is slowing down, then immoral banks like IndyMac can try to act as free riders and grab all the collateral they can, free-riding on rest of the banking community. Such actions should be opposed by all three branches of government, including the judicial branch. Which is one reason why Jeffrey Spinner is such a hero.

Today's a serious shopping day for serious shoppers.

Black Friday is no longer a sport for the leisurely shopper. From our late-night rounds, it became clear that people were lining up all over in the dead of night (and some earlier than that!) not just for the fun of it but out of necessity.

While many of the stoutest shoppers were grimly determined to get their deals and get out, there was some fun and holiday cheer.

At a Best Buy in Springfield, Pennsylvania at midnight, the 50 people in line created an atmosphere part football tailgate and part Department of Motor Vehicle tension. A card table was set up near the end of the line, but the reception on that end was quite frosty, possibly "enhanced" by the consumption of cheap beer.

But for the most part, the deals were the thing.

Take Nate Bryan of Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, who arrived at 2:30 am EST this year to get a laptop for his daughter.

"It's normally $1,000 and now cut in half. That $500 can go to other things," he said.

Laptops and big ticket items are favorites of this day, but they are not the only items.

Debbie Techac, who works as a cashier at a supermarket, had waited for more than 12 hours outside a Best Buy in central Phoenix to buy a heavily discounted Dyson vacuum cleaner reduced to $329 from $549, two laptops -- one of them a Sony -- and some DVDs. She expected to buy the laptops for $200-$300.

While many shoppers are looking to scale back spending, some of our early risers had other plans.

Techac said she was spending about the same as last year, and felt fairly optimistic both about her own job security, and the outlook for the wider economy.

"I have job security. I work at Fry's. It's a grocery store, everybody has to eat ... I think (the economy) is going to get better, I hope."

Lou McAnany, a college student in Phoenix, was playing Monopoly on the sidewalk with his girlfriend to pass the time waiting for Best Buy to open. "I'm playing with fake money, wishing it were real," he said with a chuckle.

McAnany was lining up to buy a 40-inch LCD television, although he was not yet sure what brand or model, paying around $300, with savings of around $400, as well as an iPod and a Nintendo Wii.

"I'm happy with the discounts, I wouldn't be standing out all night if I weren't. It seems like they are better than last year."

So, with all this buying, everyone will get something, right?

Well...

"Anybody old enough to get a job," is being cut off this year's Christmas list said Ayanna Brown, a 34-year-old Brooklyn resident who worked as a bookkeeper at a legal firm but lost her job last year, is now back in school and will graduate in June.

"Around Christmas you have to splurge on the kids, so the grown-ups understand."

How has your Black Friday been? Any fantastic deals you want to share? What's Number One on your wish list?

Also in the basket:

* What wine goes with pumpkin pie?

* No Thanksgiving rest for retailers in sales race

(Additional reporting by Phil Wahba, Tom Hals and Tim Gaynor)

(Reuters photos)

Blog Guy, I saw a photo of a ballerina smoking, which really disturbed me. I think of everything having to do with ballet as being healthy and squeaky-clean.

You couldn't be more wrong. As an art form, classic ballet makes rap look like gospel singing. At least this ballerina is smoking backstage. Until fairly recently, dancers smoked and took swigs from vodka bottles while dancing onstage.

Are you sure about this, Blog Guy?

Oh, grow up. Have you seen "The Sleeping Beauty," one of the most popular ballets? The subtext here is that the princess is too hammered to stand up.

No!

And THE most endearing ballet, "The Nutcracker." Oh please, giant dancing mice battle a walnut-cracking soldier? That's an absinthe and acid flashback if ever there was one!

Wait a second, Blog Guy. Surely my very favorite, "Swan Lake," is a wholesome tale?

Oh, you mean "Those Swans are So Beautiful, Hand me my Crossbow?"

Blog Guy, do you really know anything about the ballet?

About as much as any other subject. Why do you ask?

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Above: A Croatian ballet dancer smokes in a theater cafe during a break in rehearsals for a new ballet show, in Zagreb, November 26, 2009. REUTERS/Nikola Solic

Right: A general view during the dress rehearsal for The Nutcracker ballet at the Sadlers Wells Theatre in London, in a 2007 file photo. REUTERS/Eddie Keogh

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