From going bespectacled to wearing a lungi and shirt, Deepika Padukone will be seen in varied looks in the movies that are expected to hit the silver screen this year.

If the 27-year-old was appreciated for her hot avatar in Cocktail last year, she will soon be seen wearing spectacles in Ayan Mukherji's Ye Jawani Hai Deewani.

The movie is also creating a lot of buzz as Deepika has teamed up with her ex-boyfriend Ranbir Kapoor in the film set to release May 31.

Then there is Sanjay Leela Bhansali's magnum opus Ram Leela. For the film, Deepika has donned a desi avatar and will be seen mostly in Indian outfits. In the drama, said to be inspired by Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, she has teamed up with Ranveer Singh.

In Rohit Shetty directed Chennai Express, she will sport a south Indian look and will also be seen dressed in a shirt and lungi. Her leading man in the romantic comedy is Shah Rukh Khan, with whom she made her debut with 2007 hit Om Shanti Om.

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Aamir Khan on the cover of Women’s Day Special edition of Femina India !!

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Megastar Amitabh Bachchan feels sad with the increasing number of atrocities against women and says that such acts need immediate attention as women are born to live free.

"Stop this disrespect! Measure the presence of women in our existence with required dignity! Protect them that fall unfortunate victims to savage inhuman intent and stand tough against them who raise their hands to defile them," the 70-year-old posted on his blog srbachchan.tumblr.com.

"Despite great awareness ideals that have taken space and demonstration among the society, the atrocities continue with abandon. Great introspection needs to be done to fathom the reason and the continuous disregard for all that should be looked upon as an evil.

"I will not agree with the reasoning that such incidents happen all over the world or whether the statistics favour another region or not. I am interested in why it is happening at all," he further added.

With International Women's Day falling on Friday, Big B also supports Breakthrough's latest campaign.

"8 March, I will be doing my bit to make the world a safer place for women. What's your promise? Ring the bell," he posted.

"Supporting Breakthrough's latest campaign. Will ring the bell for a world where women feel safe, free, and secure. One million men make one million promises to end violence against women this year. What's yours? There is a cause that needs support. There is a call that needs attention. And there is a heart that needs to be heard," he further posted.

An international campaign launched in 2008, Breakthrough calls on men and boys to take a stand against domestic violence. The campaign seeks to reduce domestic violence and to highlight the role male fraternity can play in reducing violence.

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According to social media statistics, Twitter has over 500 million users with a growth rate of 11 accounts per second. Going by these figures, it doesn't take a scientist to see that Twitter is one of the most sought after networking platforms. This intellectual digital networking medium is being used by a diverse set of people such as, social media professionals, celebrities, fans, politicians and even his holiness Dalai Lama. 

It wasn't until 2009 when well known Hollywood celebrities joined Twitter, where celebrity-muddled fans thought that it should be obligatory for their pin-up-poster stars, to share tad-bits about their prolific lives. Soon 'Twitterati' was coined, a term used for celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, Oprah Winfrey for joining Twitter. 

It was not long before Bollywood celebrities and filmmakers made their presence felt on Twitter either. However, with Twitter being a rage with well known celebrities as well as the common man, there is also a parallel opinion which runs against the medium. Could it be self absorbing and a liability? Could it breach one's security? Bollywood Hungama delves in a little deeper to weed out the probable causes and why despite being extremely beneficial, celebrities are becoming Twitter quitters. 

While a few celebrities think that sharing too much information could boomerang with haters spitting fire and thwarting their lives, there are some who pay no heed to such paranoia… such as superstar Amitabh Bachchan who pours his thoughts out like a daily journal. The megastar took to Twitter like a fish takes to water. With social media being a diverse and dynamic space, it is implicit going by the frequency of tweets being made by the likes of Sonam Kapoor, Nargis Fakhri, Karan Johar and rest of Twitterati clan, that it benefits from effective communication with an audience. 

"The pros of social media platforms such as Twitter, is that it could do a lot of good for you when it works. The flipside is that, if you loose out on the pace it could work against you," says Prabhat Choudhary of Spice, a leading public relations agency, which handles many of the top Bollywood celebrities and films. 

There are some who reap the benefits of social networking such as Priyanka Chopra, who has a massive fan base of over 3,545,925 followers. She keeps all her fans engaged with a frequency of tweeting every four to five hours. And with the young actress also taking off with her international singing career, Twitter surely helps her keeping in touch with her global fans. 

While Twitter works out for stars to endorse their work, there are some celebrities such as Aamir Khan and Ajay Devgn who take to Twitter mostly during their film promotions. 

In contrast to all the reverence and affection that stars are accustomed to, the derisive nature of the platform makes it a new experience for a star. "Along with all the adulation and love Twitter stars get, they get a lot of frankness from the audience which can sometimes lead to plain hostility. The virtual space differs from the real space, where the interaction is amid two individuals rather than between a star and a fan", says Prabhat on the liabilities imposed on a Twitter star. Going by another outlook, the inability to adapt to social sites could also be cited as a reason for pulling the plug. 

Imran Khan is probably the first Bollywood actor, to have consciously quit Twitter. The actor in an interview had stated that he joined the medium for film promotions and also to interact with his fans directly. However, the medium put him off when the questions started getting really personal and his fans expected him to tweet constantly. 

But Imran is not the only one. The latest big celebrity who has stopped tweeting completely is Shah Rukh Khan. This happened earlier in the month of January this year after a controversy broke over his article in a prominent magazine about 'Being a Khan' in India. "Sad, I read so much judgments, jingoism, religious intolerance on the net and I use to think, this platform will change narrow mindedness, but no!" SRK tweeted last and decided to hang up his social networking boots for being targeted for his views on being a Muslim luminary in the country. 

Prabhat also believes that one should be given enough space to breathe. He says, "I believe that there should be a healthy distance between a star and a fan, for the aura of the stardom to last long. Some stars and celebrities do subscribe to this theory and refuse to join Twitter, or withdraw from it after joining Twitter." 

With this erratic social networking behavior, we observe that despite being advantageous, stars tend to suspend the platform for garnering too much negativity, and receiving a lot of unwanted attention and not to mentioning a slew of bad language. On the other hand, we have Arjun Rampal, Farhan Akhtar who remain resilient in their stand and claim to pay no heed to such negativity or spitfires and choose to benefit from Twitter. 

Irrespective of its cons, Twitter is growing stronger as a marketing tool for film promotions in Bollywood. Comments noted trade analyst and film critic Taran Adarsh, "This is a fantastic way of promoting films. I often get calls from producers and filmmakers to 'Tweet' a poster or a trailer link of their upcoming films. It establishes a good connection with the fans." 

With the power of social networking growing each day, Twitter will surely continue to impact Bollywood… whether in a good or bad way, remains to be seen.

Celebrity	Last Tweeted On
Shah Rukh Khan	January 9
Salman Khan	February 26
Aamir Khan	February 19
Hrithik Roshan	February 24
Parineeti Chopra	February 23
Sanjay Dutt	January 17
Deepika Padukone	February 19

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In the times when any and every actor in the world of glamour ensures that there are right amount of touch ups being done before every single take for a shot, Bipasha Basu has turned out to be an exception. For her upcoming film Aatma where is playing a harrowed mother of a child who is being threatened by the 'aatma' of her dead father, Bipasha has gone for a no makeup look.

"It was a conscious call", informs a close associate of the actress, "As a worried woman, she can't be looking ultra glam. Also, quite a few scenes are shot in the night. It would have looked amusing had she been carrying dollops of make up on her. She has to be as natural as possible." 

This was a mutual call taken between her and director Suparn Verma who was in agreement as well. For someone who had ensured in the past that his leading ladies (Koena Mitra in Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena and Dia Mirza in Acid Factory) were presented in as stylish a manner as possible, it was a departure for him as well. 

"However it isn't as if Aatma has suddenly got into a realistic zone. The film is as commercial as it gets", a source attached to the film adds, "At the end of the day a film is a visual medium. Still, Aatma is not catering to fashion police here. Bipasha is seen in the film as she does in real life. 

"Thankfully I pretty much look good in real life as well without any make up on", smiles Bipasha, "In fact my friends tell me that I look much better without make up so it is time for me to show that side of mine. On a serious note, we wanted to keep things as natural as possible. This is one of those films where there was no requirement for me to put any makeup. Also, since a good part of the film unfolds in the night, it all looks natural as well. At the end of it all, I look the way I look and that has nothing to do with make up or the lack of it." 

We agree Bipasha and like you either ways! 

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