The Most Downloaded Bollywood Celebrities

Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif may have parted ways after being together for six years but their fans don't seem to get tired of them.

According to reports in the media, Sallu and Kat have won the top spot in the list of the most downloaded celebrities for the year 2010. This means that the Indians love downloading pictures of Katrina Kaif and Salman Khan on their mobile phones and through internet services.

The survey was conducted in the recent past taking into consideration 25 million wallpapers and images of various Bollywood celebrities that were downloaded throughout the running year. And it was Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif pictures that formed the maximum part of the 25 million downloaded images.

The strange thing is that Salman Khan has surpassed even Shah Rukh Khan in the most downloaded celebrity list. Following Salman Khan and SRK are younger actors like Ranbir Kapoor, Akshay Kumar and Shahid Kapoor. On the other hand, Katrina Kaif's pretty face was preferred to other Bollywood actresses like Kareena Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, Priyanka Chopra and even Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. The list makes clear the fact that it is not only their box office ratings that affect the people's choice when it comes to downloading their favorite celebrity's pictures.

Candice Boucher plays a sand artist in upcoming spy flick

Candice Boucher, a South African Playboy hottie who features in Percept's untitled next, essays the role of a sand artist in the espionage drama.

Directed by Prashant Chaddha (Aap Ka Surror), the film stars Sachin Joshi (the Managing Director of an energy drink endorsed by Shah Rukh Khan) and Arya Babbar.

The beauty had to train from a professional artiste for the role. She says, "Learning from a sand artiste from Belarus was an amazing experience.

It's an intricate art more difficult than oils and watercolours on canvas as sand keeps shifting all the time. One's concentration has to be sharper and more focussed."

As reported 'Playmate on board' (Hitlist, June 11), Candice was the nude centrespread attraction of Playboy magazine for April 2010 and is also the brand ambassador for an international jeans brand.

She was signed for the film during the FIFA World Cup in June (it was held in her home country) to up the project's glam quotient.

The movie is about an informant who has to go undercover to save his brother and the nation from the effects of a biological war.

German mag ' the face of global Bollywood'

A German-language magazine has been described as 'the face of global Bollywood'.

Ishq magazine, which is published in Berlin, is said to have a circulation of over 30,000, reports the Economic Times.

Chief Editor Julia Wessel commented: "No doubt Bollywood is a niche market in Germany but it has a loyal fanbase. And interestingly it is not just the non-resident Indians who read it."

Wessel said that Shah Rukh Khan, who has held premieres of some of his most recent releases in Berlin, is the country's most popular Hindi cinema star.

London correspondent Sunny Malik told "I think German fans have been very loyal to Bollywood. The Om Shanti Om premiere tickets in Berlin sold out within the first minute. Some were sold illegally for up to 600 Euros."

Shah Rukh Khan is currently filming Don 2 in the German capital.

Bollywood now on your shoes!

Fashion and Bollywood go hand in hand. Taking a cue from this, shoe designer Rohan Arora will present at the ongoing Lakme Fashion Week a unique footwear collection that has hand paintings of Bollywood actors and film posters.

Kolkata-based Arora, who will showcase his Bollywood inspired collection on Tuesday at LFW, has designed 16 pairs for the event and says his collection is a tribute to old Hindi songs and films.

"It is a Bollywood inspired collection. Through this I’m trying to revive the art of old Bollywood hand painted posters. All these paintings on the shoes are actually done by people who used to paint the posters," Arora told IANS.

"Right now, most of them are out of work. Some of them are pulling rickshaws in Kolkata, some of them are working as waiters at small time restaurants. So somehow I got in touch with few of them to revive the art," he added.

The footwear, mostly boots and flat shoes, was produced in two weeks and the price ranges from Rs.4,000 to Rs.10,000.

"We have concentrated on boots because it is a winter collection. We have flat shoes as well. The colours we have used are many but all of them are subdued. They are all earthy tones of bright colours," said Arora, who used to design shoes for leading designers like Sabyasachi Mukherjee.

"The leather we have used is chicken legs leather which is a new discovery. It’s been invented about a month back. Earlier, I was planning to use inter-tweed leather, but when I got to know about this, I thought why not use something new."

Another interesting fact about the collection is that it’s majorly hand done. "Everything on the shoes is hand done. The only machine that we have used is the sewing machine, otherwise everything else is done by hands. Even the heels, made of wood, have been hand carved," said the designer.

Are these shoes, for which one would really have to loosen the purse strings, comfortable enough? "The shoes are very comfortable. When I was doing my fittings, I had the models literally running around, they had no problems at all. They are atleast better than stilettos," said Arora.

He has his workshop in Kolkata and has been customising shoes for two years now. For this collection, he employed five artists.

"I was already doing a lot of hand painted stuff since the past six-seven months, so when I came across this painter who used to paint Bollywood posters, I thought why not do something quirky and Bollywood related? I have already got a few individual orders and some stores have also ordered a few pieces," he said.