Movie Review: Yamla Pagla Deewana 2 will give you a headache

Yamla Pagla Deewana 2 

(source) One of the most worrying things in Mumbai this week is the billboard cluster of six (or is it eight?)Yamla Pagla Deewana 2 posters on Bandra’s Turner Road. Double the madness, it insists. Double the hotness, double the action, double the fun.

Considering they’re drawing comparisons with the first Yamla Pagla Deewana (2011), this is not saying very much. To say I don’t remember YPD would be misleading. The truth is that I walked out seven minutes into the film. It was unbearable. Almost equally unbearable was having to later discover that it was something of a hit at the box office.

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But I’d barely given the first film a chance. Maybe I’d missed something? So I forced myself to keep an open mind as I eenie-meenie-mynie-moh’ed myself into a seat at the empty cinema hall for the sequel to the “Deol funfest”.

Blade and wrist? Brain and hammer? Fire and skin? Pen and eyeball? Rat poison and aaloo samosa? Whichever combination seems to your mind the quickest and least painful way to go, take it. And go. Not to the cinema, but out of it.

Directed by Sangeeth Sivan, YPD2 brings back all the Deols — Dharam (Dharmendra), Paramveer (Sunny Deol) and Gajodhar (Bobby Deol). Why is anybody’s guess.

This time the money-hungry Dharam and his conman son Gajodhar leave Benares for the UK, to visit their straight-as-an-arrow son and brother Paramveer, who is a highly annoying, turbaned do-gooder. He is so earnest and try-hard that it makes your brain bleed out of your nose.

There is another agenda, of course. For Gajodhar – of the fictitious Oberoi Oberoi and Oberoi Industries fame – to marry Suman (Neha Sharma), daughter of assumed billionaire Sir Yograj (Annu Kapoor) for money. Except, it turns out she’s not his daughter, but *like* his daughter. Semantics, semantics. His real daughter is Reet (Kristina Akheeva), who very quickly becomes the apple of Param’s needy eyes.

Trying very hard (but mostly failing) to add comedy to the film is good old Johnny Lever, first talking like Shah Rukh K-k-k-Khan, then ‘disguised’ as a sardar (Bunty Singh), then a Chinese man named Bunty Chong, then a Japanese fellow named Bunty Hiroshima. One scene has him introducing himself as Bunty Hiroshima and his partner Babli Nagasaki, and they’ve come “to report ke plan bomb ho gaya”.

Oh wait. The movie also stars Anupam Kher in a long-haired blond wig and astronaut costume. His name is Joginder Armstrong (if I didn’t hear it wrong, people call him Dude-ji). At one point he declares that his life’s mission is to erect the eighth wonder of the world: a gravity-defying mall. But I have no idea what he’s doing in the film in the first place. This could be because I walked out at the interval, though I seriously doubt he finds any defining purpose in the second half of the film.

Actually, this is one of the major flaws of YPD2: too many unnecessary characters. They don’t add to the comedy, just your migraine. What is the need to force-fit a woman who talks like a cat, or a flatulent Sumo wrestler, or an orang-utan who gets as much screen time as the three Deols? Ok, the orang-utan makes sense: he fits so seamlessly into the Deol family. But whoever thought it would be hilarious if Bobby Deol’s character mistook MF Husain for Zakir Hussain, and Leonardo da Vinci for Leonardo DiCaprio, go back to whence you came.

Through the 140-minute runtime, not one character is allowed to miss their chance to spoof another Bollywood film or actor. From Salman Khan’s most famous dialogues, to the world famous Shah Rukh K-k-k-Khan stammer (WHY ARE WE NOT DONE WITH THIS ALREADY?), to the ’70s formula of saving a girl from goons and winning her heart.

They’ve got 100 tricks up their sleeves, but not one works. In fact, all they do is distract you from an already-messy storyline, so by the end of it, you have absolutely no idea what’s going on. My suggestion is that if you’re at the movies and YPD2 is one of the options, take it off the list. Head straight to the next theatre. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

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Mandela in ‘serious but stable condition’

A file image of former South African president Nelson Mandela. Photograph: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters

(source) Nelson Mandela has been readmitted to hospital because of a lung infection, according to the office of South Africa’s president.
A statement from President Jacob Zuma’s office said Mandela had a recurrence of the illness in the last few days, and that he was transferred to a Pretoria hospital after his condition deteriorated at about 1:30am this morning.
The statement said Mr Mandela, who is 94 years old, is in “serious but stable” condition and is receiving expert medical care..

The anti-apartheid leader became president in South Africa’s all-race elections in 1994. His health has been failing in recent years.
Mr Mandela’s medical condition was “serious this time”, a government spokesman told local television this morning.
“The situation is serious this time but doctors have assured us he is comfortable,” presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj told television station eNCA.
The African National Congress, the ruling party that has dominated politics in South Africa since the end of apartheid, said it hoped Mr Mandela, known affectionately by his clan name Madiba, would get better soon.
“We will keep president Mandela and his family in our thoughts and prayers at this time and call upon South Africans and the peoples of the globe to do the same for our beloved statesman and icon, Madiba,” the party said in a statement.
On April 29th, state television broadcast footage of a visit by Mr Zuma and other ANC leaders to Mr Mandela at his Johannesburg home. Mr Zuma said at the time that Mandela was in good shape, but the footage — the first public images of Mandela in nearly a year — showed him silent and unresponsive, even when Mr Zuma tried to hold his hand.
South Africans expressed hope that Mr Mandela would recover from his latest setback.
“He is going to survive,” said Willie Mokoena, a gardener in Johannesburg. “He’s a strong man.”
Another city resident, Martha Mawela, said she thought the former president would recover because: “Everybody loves Mandela.”
Mr Mandela was robust during his decades as a public figure, endowed with charisma, a powerful memory and an extraordinary talent for articulating the aspirations of his people and winning over many of those who opposed him.
In recent years, however, he has become more frail and last made a public appearance at the 2010 World Cup soccer tournament, where he didn’t deliver an address and was bundled against the cold.
In another recent illness, Mr Mandela was treated for a lung infection and had a procedure to remove gallstones in December. In March, he spent a night in a hospital for what authorities said was a scheduled medical test.

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FBI and Microsoft Corp in joint assault on £500m fraud botnet

(Source) Microsoft's digital crimes unit takes down at least 1,000 Citadel botnets in attempt to curb £500m theft from bank accounts

Microsoft Corp and the FBI, aided by authorities in more than 80 countries, have launched a major assault on one of the world's biggest cybercrime rings, believed to have stolen more than $500m (£323m) from bank accounts over the past 18 months.

Microsoft said its digital crimes unit had successfully taken down at least 1,000 of an estimated 1,400 malicious computer networks known as the Citadel botnets.

Citadel infected as many as 5m PCs around the world and, according to Microsoft, was used to steal from dozens of financial institutions, including American Express, Bank of America, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, PayPal, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Canada and Wells Fargo.

While the criminals remain at large and the authorities do not know the identities of any ringleaders, the internationally co-ordinated take-down dealt a significant blow to their capabilities.

"The bad guys will feel the punch in the gut," said Richard Domingues Boscovich, assistant general counsel with Microsoft's digital crimes unit.

Botnets are armies of infected personal computers, or bots, which run software forcing them to regularly check in with and obey "command and control" servers operated by hackers. Botnets are typically used to commit financial crimes, send spam, distribute computer viruses and attack computer networks. Citadel is one of the biggest botnets in operation today. Microsoft said its creator bundled the software with pirated versions of the Windows operating system and used it to control PCs in the US, western Europe, Hong Kong, India and Australia.

The FBI said it is working closely with Europol and other overseas authorities to try to capture the unknown criminals. It has obtained search warrants as part of what it characterised as a "fairly advanced" criminal probe.

"We are upping the game in our level of commitment in going after botnet creators and distributors," the FBI's assistant executive director, Richard McFeely, said.

"This is a more concerted effort to engage our foreign partners to assist us in identifying, locating and, if we can, get US criminal process on these botnet creators and distributors."

Microsoft has filed a civil lawsuit in the US district court in Charlotte, North Carolina against the unknown hackers and obtained a court order to shut down the botnets. The complaint, unsealed on Wednesday, identifies the ringleader as John Doe No 1, who goes by the alias Aquabox and is accused of creating and maintaining the botnet.

Boscovich said investigators are trying to determine Aquabox's identity and suspect he lives in eastern Europe and works with at least 81 "herders", who run the bots from anywhere in the world.

The Citadel software is programmed so it will not attack PCs or financial institutions in Ukraine or Russia, likely because the creators operate in those countries and want to avoid provoking law enforcement officials there, Microsoft said.

According to Microsoft, Citadel was used to steal more than $500m from banks in the US and abroad, but the company did not specify losses at individual accounts or firms.

The American Bankers Association (ABA), one of three financial industry groups that worked with Microsoft, said any success in reducing the number of active Citadel botnets will reduce future losses incurred by banks and their customers.

"I am hopeful we have a model that will allow us to get closer and closer to those who are the ultimate perpetrators of these crimes," said ABA's vice-president, Doug Johnson.

In the US, banks typically reimburse consumers when they are victims of cybercrime, but they may require business customers to absorb those losses, the ABA said.

Microsoft's team of digital detectives, who are based at its corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington, have been involved in seven efforts to attack botnets since 2010. The latest marks its first collaboration with the FBI.

The software maker sought help from the FBI about 10 days ago. At that time the agency told Microsoft that it had already done significant work on a criminal investigation into the Citadel botnets, McFeely said.

Microsoft said it and the FBI were working with law enforcement and other organisations in countries including Australia, Brazil, Ecuador, Germany, Holland, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Spain and the UK.

Of the more than 1,000 botnets that were shut down on Wednesday, Microsoft said 455 were hosted in 40 data centres in the US. The rest were located in dozens of countries overseas.

Technicians from Microsoft, accompanied by US marshals, visited two data centres in Scranton, Pennsylvania and Absecon, New Jersey to collect forensic evidence.

Boscovich said the data centre operators typically were not aware that their servers were being used to run botnets. "There is no responsibility on their part to see what is in the pipes," he said.

It is the second time Microsoft's digital crimes unit has sought to bring down a large number of botnets at once. In March 2012 it targeted hundreds of Zeus botnets, which use similar software and infrastructure to Citadel, though they were not as sophisticated.

That effort succeeded in shutting just a quarter of the approximately 800 targeted Zeus command and control servers, according to Microsoft. Zeus is not controlled by a single developer like Citadel, which made it harder for investigators to track and knock out herders.

Cybercriminals typically infect machines by sending spam emails containing malicious links and attachments, and by infecting legitimate websites with computer viruses that attack unsuspecting visitors. Some bot herders rent or sell infected machines on underground markets to other cybercriminals looking to engage in a wide variety of activities.

The Citadel software disables anti-virus programs on infected PCs so they cannot detect malicious software. It surfaced in early 2012 and is sold over the internet in kits that cost $2,400 or more.

Boscovich said he believes that Aquabox also gets a percentage of money stolen by his customers using Citadel.

The kits allow herders to easily set up and run botnets on pirated versions of Microsoft's Windows XP operating system, according to court documents. The kits include modules for infecting PCs, as well as stealing from online banking sites, sending spam and engaging in other types of cybercrime.

Some Citadel botnet operators have used infected machines to disrupt bank websites in so-called distributed denial of service attacks, hoping to distract those firms from thefts that are occurring or have occurred, according to the complaint.


Aquabox provided herders a secret forum where they could suggest new features for the Citadel kits, as well as exchange ideas on best practices in botnet herding, Microsoft said.

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