EXCLUSIVE: After OMG Oh My God and 102 Not Out, Umesh Shukla's acclaimed play Madhuri vs Dixit to be made into a film

Umesh Shukla has been a popular name among Gujarati audiences for several years and since 2012, he has also enjoyed nationwide popularity. That was the year when OMG Oh My God, an adaptation of his cult Gujarati play Kanji Viruddh Kanji, was made as a Bollywood film. Starring Paresh Rawal and Akshay Kumar, the devotional courtroom drama emerged as a sleeper super-hit. Six years later, he made 102 Not Out (2018), an adaptation of the Gujarati play of the same name. The film adaptation, starring Amitabh Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor, was also a success. And now, Umesh Shukla is all set to adapt yet another of his acclaimed plays for the big screen – Madhuri vs Dixit. Madhuri vs Dixit is a Hindi play and its premiere took place on April 26 in Mumbai. Interestingly, it was earlier staged in Gujarati, with the title Madhuri Dixit. It stars Riddhi Shukla and Jaideep Shah in leading roles. Interestingly, the former is also the wife of Umesh Shukla. Unnati Gala and Harshad Patel feature in suppor...

Shirley review – Regina King rises above dutiful, by-the-numbers biopic

The life and achievements of Shirley Chisholm, the groundbreaking Black politician, are told in a formulaic drama that boasts a winning central performance

For all its broad strokes, Shirley, the new Netflix biopic on trailblazing politician and erstwhile presidential candidate Shirley Chisholm, has a point. Some things are not subtle. The film opens with a visualizer of the House of Representatives in 1968: of the 435 members, only 11 were women, only five Black, and no Black women. Or to put it more starkly: in the official congressional class portrait on the steps of the Capitol, Chisholm (Regina King) is the only Black female face in a sea of grizzled white male visages. The Capitol dome in the background may look obviously CGI-ed, but the image is effective: Chisholm’s mere appearance in the halls of power was radical, her fight steeply uphill.

Said image is also fitting for Shirley, written and directed by John Ridley, which is insightful on Chisholm’s underappreciated significance as the first Black woman to run for president, even if it spells out the story of her groundbreaking 1972 campaign in block letters. For shortly after that portrait, King’s Shirley, speaking with what I have to assume is an accurately light West Indian lilt, proves her mettle in obvious terms by telling off an old white senator who mocks her equal paycheck and demanding a better committee assignment from the speaker of the House, after the freshman rep from Brooklyn gets stuck with agriculture. (Chisholm, neé St Hill, was raised between Bed-Stuy and Barbados, though her pre-politics background is so sparingly and choppily conveyed that you’ll have to consult Wikipedia.)

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