Priyanka Chopra, Varanasi and the question of a Telugu debut; was the Ram Charan starrer Thoofan forgotten?

The Varanasi team’s widely circulated interview with Screen Rant features a rather awkward moment. When the interviewer asks Priyanka Chopra about her Telugu debut in Varanasi, the actor says she cannot remember when she last did a Telugu film. Mahesh Babu quickly steps in to add, “This is her first Telugu film.” But that is not entirely accurate. Priyanka Chopra had, in fact, featured in the Telugu version of the Amitabh Bachchan classic Zanjeer in 2013. Titled Thoofan, the Ram Charan starrer had Priyanka playing his love interest in what was admittedly a small role. At the time, Chopra had expressed considerable gratitude to the makers of Thoofan, as opportunities in Bollywood were scarce for her then. A senior member of the Thoofan team views her current statement as a case of selective amnesia. “When we signed her for Thoofan, nobody in the Hindi film industry was willing to sign her. We ourselves felt the role was not substantial enough for a future global star like her. But s...

It Lives Inside review – standard-issue schlock horror has its moments

This Indian American monster movie has interesting touches of cultural specificity but it’s a mostly familiar formula

There’s a swirl of the old and the new in the hokey pre-Halloween horror It Lives Inside, a balance that could have benefited from a lot more of the latter because when the first-time director Bishal Dutta does try to add freshness to the familiarity of formula, he manages to carve his film its own place within two overstuffed subgenres, flashes of intrigue as he veers between schlocky curse and even schlockier monster movie.

A wide-releasing horror film centered on an Indian American teenager already gives the film a certain distinction. Dutta, also acting as writer, tries to thread themes of assimilation and identity through a predictable procession of mostly ineffective jump scares and slightly more effective set pieces, the film working better when it’s trying to chill rather than shock. Never Have I Ever and Missing’s Megan Suri plays Samidha, or Sam as she prefers to be called, a girl trying to fit in at a predominantly white high school despite her mother keenly trying to keep traditions an integral part of her life. It’s led to a distance from her other Indian American friend, Tamira and, like Heathers and Fright Night before it, explores that interesting fracture of leaving one friend behind to climb higher socially.

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