The Woman at the Heart of Hamnet

March 14, 2026 Laura Grey

Oscar-winning Chinese filmmaker Chloé Zhao’s stunning 2025 film Hamnet and two other introspective and intimate Best Picture Oscar nominees this year feature stories of familial tension and loss. Zhao’s intense and beautiful contender for the award joins Sentimental Value and Train Dreams, all of which often convey a great deal in few words.

The film is named for the son of William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes (who was also known as Anne Hathaway). As the film tells us at its outset, the name Hamnet was often used interchangeably with the name Hamlet during Shakespeare’s time. Hamlet is, of course, also the name given to Shakespeare’s most famous character, as well as to Prince Hamlet’s father (the late King Hamlet), and to the play that bears their shared name.

Hamnet is frequently, and accurately, described as a film about how Will and Agnes handle their grief over the loss of their son. However, that spoiler (which every film reviewer and plot description I’ve seen has broadcast to the world) does not express how unusual Will and Agnes’s relationship is. A short blurb can’t convey how much the loss of a child affects a family’s world, and in this case, the world at large. Nor does it make clear that neither Will nor his son Hamnet stands at the heart of the film, as one might expect.

It is the earthy and somewhat mystical Agnes who carries the film on her strong shoulders. She immediately impresses us with her forthright nature. The film introduces Will—surprisingly and intriguingly—as her awkward, less self-assured, more inwardly focused partner. This is not the confident and winning playwright whom Joseph Fiennes portrayed in the light and comic Oscar-winner Shakespeare in Love (released in 1998 and written by the late playwright Tom Stoppard). Hamnet shows us a fragile, often melancholic version of Will, a man who loves his family deeply, but is driven by his own intense need to create, and must leave the family’s rural home to pursue his dramatic gifts in London.

A close-up photo showing the faces of Jessie Buckley as Agnes and Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare in the movie Hamnet. Both actors are shown with their faces in closeup and their faces and eyes cast down. — Jessie Buckley as Agnes and Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare in Hamnet

Having read much about the impact that grief over the death of a child has on the story, I put off seeing the film. I feared it would leave me devastated, like William Styron‘s Sophie’s Choice and Thomas Hardy‘s Jude the Obscure did. But I didn’t anticipate how co-writers Chloé Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell (whose screenplay is based on O’Farrell’s novel) would bring their characters and audience to a point of catharsis as moving as any I’ve seen this year.

It would be misleading to say that it is a feel-good movie. It deals with grief in heartbreaking and believable ways. The cause of characters’ pain doesn’t evaporate when they glean insights or find ways to connect to others through their grief. But Hamnet helps us see how understanding and empathy can create not only essential human connection, but also great works of art. The story examines how grief can help people discover deeper love and greater purpose in their lives and relationships. It does not argue that grief is good, nor that suffering is worthwhile. But it does help us see how even something dreadful can lead us to understand others more deeply or clearly, or impart knowledge that lets us create things we couldn’t otherwise achieve.

The magic at the center of the production is the transcendent performance by Best Actress Oscar nominee Jessie Buckley. She plays Agnes with profound passion, honesty, and heart as the counterpart to Paul Mescal‘s moving performance as Will. In playing a woman who engages with others and the world in an open, direct way, Buckley could have come across as brash. But Agnes’s inability to play the coquette or defer to her family’s desires isn’t selfish or brazen. She simply cannot be untrue to those whom she loves, or to the things she holds dear and believes to be true.

Agnes is bold, stubborn, grounded, and sometimes wary. But there is a purity and sincerity to her that moves her family, and us. In Hamnet, Jessie Buckley delivers an astonishing and luminous performance.

Film & Television

The Things We Say Without Words: Train Dreams, Sentimental Value & Past Lives

March 12, 2026 Laura Grey

Oscars are often awarded to big, talky American movies full of rapid-fire dialog and insistent energy. But this year’s Best Picture nominees include powerful but quiet films that inspire deep emotion thanks to strong but subtle performances. Both Train Dreams, directed and co-written by U.S.-born director Clint Bentley, and Sentimental Value, a Norwegian film directed and co-written by Joachim Trier, create their magic using surprisingly few words. The same was true of Past Lives, Korean-born director Celine Song’s moving 2023 Best Picture Oscar nominee.

Train Dreams

Train Dreams is rich with lush and imposing scenes of rural Washington State, which stands in for Idaho ably thanks to Adolpho Veloso’s Oscar-nominated cinematography. Indeed, beautiful but often-dangerous nature plays such an important element in the story, one could almost say that the landscape is one of the film’s main characters.

Joel Edgerton’s understated performance as logger and railway worker Robert Granier is at the heart of the story. He uses few words but conveys deep feeling through gesture, tone, and his heartbreakingly expressive face. Edgerton was well cast in this role, since he’s especially gifted at expressing sadness, loss, or pain in a compelling way, without making a big, bold fuss of it. His isn’t a flashy kind of charisma, but he draws us in for exactly that reason. It’s his quiet quality that draws us closer, since we don’t want to miss a word.

The arc of the film, which is based on Dennis Johnson’s novella, includes a good deal of difficulty and lost opportunity. The story—full of love, loss, and longing—is episodic. It moves through a series of Granier’s introductions to people who connect, deeply but often briefly, to the introspective, quiet, often lonely man. Most are themselves introverted and comfortable being on their own for vast stretches of time.

Yet Granier and those who move through his life connect to each other quietly but profoundly, without a lot of talk or explanation. They bond over shared kindness, sincerity, and modesty. We don’t need to be told that these are good people; we can see and feel who they are through their actions. The film does include narration, but it’s not overly intrusive. The writers trust the audience to be able to read into the characters’ words and actions without a lot of wordy exposition. The script doesn’t explain the characters’ motivations or backstory more than necessary.

Sentimental Value

Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård brings his own quiet intensity to Sentimental Value, which has earned him his first Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination. He portrays a famous and much-admired film director who has always had difficulty connecting emotionally with the people he loves most.

Sentimental Value begins by introducing us to the house at the center of the story. Just as the landscape of rural Idaho plays an important role in Train Dreams, the Borg house in Sentimental Value is an essential character from beginning to end. The film begins by introducing us to the house in the many forms it’s taken over the previous century, easing us into the story through soft humor and just enough back story. Then the players take over, speaking to each other naturally in Norwegian, Swedish, English, and Danish by turns.

The film is very Nordic in tone, not only because of the location and primary languages spoken, but because of how much of the story is unspoken. The feelings are clearly there, but expressed over time, and through movements—the slow spread of emotions across a face, the silent exchange of looks between people, the mounting realization of what is about to happen based on seemingly simple, everyday movements that all add up to something shocking.

Skarsgård is a master of discomfort. In so many of his best roles, we understand how he’s feeling not because of the words he says, or even the way he says them, but by the way he shifts in his chair and diverts his attention away from things he doesn’t want to deal with. He looks silently into his lap, unable and unwilling to say the one thing that most needs to be said. Here, as in his masterful performance as Detective John River in the excellent 2015 British TV miniseries River (not to be confused with the 2012 horror series The River) Skarsgård is comfortable inhabiting discomfort. In each role, he plays a highly skilled and insightful professional. As both Gustav Borg and John River, his characters’ most intense pain comes from the emotional reticence that they must face before solving their greatest professional challenges.

Past Lives

South Korean-born Canadian director Celine Song’s debut film, Past Lives, has much in common tonally with the films mentioned above. Nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay Oscars two years ago, this film shows similar restraint. Its dialog, which is mostly in Korean, is spare. Its most important feelings are often left unexpressed, but made clear to the audience in the spaces between words.

Past Lives focuses on two characters, Nora and Hae Sung, close childhood friends in South Korea who lost track of each other when Nora’s family moved to the U.S. We first see them together in childhood, clearly enjoying being in each other’s company, but often doing so silently, or while sharing few words. We next meet up with them some two decades later, when they reconnect online, then decide to meet in person. Though some important dialog is spoken aloud, much of what passes between them is expressed through silences—eloquent and beautiful ones.

I saw Sentimental Value shortly before Past Lives. While watching actors Greta Lee and Teo Yoo give such moving performances in the latter, I was struck by the similarity between Nordic films (such as those by Joachim Trier and Ingmar Bergman) and Celine Song’s film. Though outwardly quite different in style and subject matter, they share a great deal in their characters’ comfort with silences, and in the stories’ ability to express deep feelings with few words. Both Trier and Song were born into cultures that prize emotional restraint, comfort with silence, and the belief that scenes built on tacit understanding often convey more than a page of emotionally heated dialog can.

When expressed by talented and thoughtful writers, directors, and actors, a spare script with limited dialog can allow actors to shine if they have the restraint and comfort with nuance that makes these three films so special.

At top:

Felicity Jones and Joel Edgerton in the 2025 film Train Dreams

Music

An Extraordinary Evening with Jessica Williams

March 11, 2026 Laura Grey

Jessica

[The vastly talented Jessica Williams died on March 12, 2022. I originally published the following essay about her in July 2005. Jessica became my friend the night I first heard her in concert back then, and I was honored that our friendship deepened, and we stayed in touch until just a few months before her passing.

Jessica was a remarkable musician and a fragile and beautiful human being. Her website is sadly no longer online, but you can still find examples of her exquisite music. In memory of Jessica, who was born on St. Patrick’s Day in 1948, I share below the piece I wrote about the first time I heard her in person. Jessica enjoyed it enough to share it on her own website for many years. Oh, how I miss my lovely friend.—LG ]

Two nights ago I was invited to share in a magical, memorable evening of of music. Jessica Williams, the extraordinary jazz pianist, played an intimate and elegant concert at the home of my friend Richard. He had spoken to her after her concerts in Seattle over the years, and had the good fortune to be seated next to her on a flight from San Jose to Seattle some months back, which gave them time to share a friendly conversation. Richard is a jazz pianist himself and the owner of a fine piano, and he and Jessica spoke about the idea of her performing at his home for a small group of local jazz aficionados after she finished her bigger Seattle gigs.

Happily, the idea became a reality. Seattle is a great town for jazz; the jazz community is avid, active, and friendly, and small enough that everyone gets to know everyone else before too long. This little group knew Jessica’s music well, and the buzz of delight and amazement that we could all get so close to a jazz master had us all feeling a little tipsy before anyone had a drop to drink.

Jessica is well-known and loved among jazz fans and players; the frequently repeated question is, why isn’t she better known to the rest of the world? She’s noted for her improvisational brilliance, has played with jazz greats such as Dexter Gordon and Leroy Vinnegar, and has received lavish praise from the likes of Dave Brubeck, McCoy Tyner, and Marian McPartland, on whose NPR radio show, Piano Jazz, Jessica has performed.

Her pieces have often been played between interviews on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross; Terry is a great fan of hers and Jessica was interviewed on Fresh Air and performed an in-studio concert for Terry’s listeners in 1997. I highly recommend listening to the 2002 rebroadcast, available free online, which includes pieces by Monk and Gershwin and some of Jessica’s own beautiful compositions.

What makes her playing unique and exciting is a combination of dazzling technical skill and warm, melodic, lyrical feeling. Her touch is sure, she plays with conviction, and she has the chops to knock any other player out of his socks if she wants to. Yet at the same time, she breathes warmth and life into pieces that can feel cold in other hands. She can take an atonal, dissonant piece that others might treat as an exercise to show off virtuosity and find the spirit at its core, the life force behind the string of impressive notes, the hush in the middle of the chord that a show-off performer would miss.

Jessica finds great inspiration and pleasure in playing compositions by Thelonious Monk, who’s notorious for being tricky to follow or hard to get. Despite having written the accessible but wonderful ballad “‘Round Midnight,” Monk can sometimes be rough, bouncy and dissonant. When Jessica plays him, however, she isn’t afraid to lighten him up, play up the humor behind the notes, to show the subtlety in his compositions so one can feel the thought behind the dissonances, and understand why they’re right and not random.

Jessica was classically trained, so early on she still believed that there were rules that couldn’t be broken and techniques that must be followed when playing piano. She told Terry Gross the first time she heard a record of Monk playing, she thought he sounded like he was wearing boxing gloves at the piano. But with continued listening, she grew to love his openness to new techniques. She incorporated some of them into her own playing and has developed other innovative techniques that amplify the feeling in her music without ever getting lost in tricks for the sake of tricks.

Sometimes Jessica reaches into the piano to strum the strings while playing keys, incorporating a sound like an autoharp into her playing, as she did at the beginning and end of “Getting Sentimental Over You” when she played it during her Fresh Air concert. She’s careful not to overuse it, however; she doesn’t want to become gimmicky but likes to explore the variety of sounds that a piano can make and integrate these devices into the tunes to add color.

During this week’s concert, she reached into the piano to strum it at several points, and she occasionally shuffled the soles of her shoes across the wood floor to create a sound like a drummer would with a brush, or like a softshoe dancer might. She also likes to quote other jazz compositions when she plays, a common tip of the hat from one jazz musician to another, throwing a few measures of a well-known jazz standard into a piece for humor and as an homage. She improvises these surprises and tosses them as little treats for the audience, each one a lagniappe to lighten the heart when listeners get too earnest and caught up in the piece.

On Monday night, she began with a piece by John Coltrane, “Wise One,” followed by “The Very Thought of You” by Ray Noble, “Paul’s Pal” by Sonny Rollins, and two pieces by Monk, “Ugly Beauty” and “Nutty.” I’ve never enjoyed Monk as much as I did that evening. She has said that record producers have often pushed her to show off more of her impressive technique, focusing on speed and flash, and playing Monk certainly allows her that, but she plays him with more subtlety and insight. There’s intelligence in her playing without cold intellectualism, an awareness of exactly what note, what chord, what sense of space is necessary to make a phrase work while still holding the meaning of the song, its essence, the point of it all, in her heart.

For Jessica, the most satisfying playing involves a spiritual element. As she told me, she can emphasize flash and technique when she’s playing in a wild or distracted venue or on a bad piano that can’t hold up to subtlety; she can adapt and please the audience when that’s what’s called for. But when she is in the right space with a good instrument and a receptive audience, this nuanced and spiritual essence of her playing emerges, and a thrilling pleasure in being right there, right then, with her, in the palm of her hand, fills the audience, or, in the case of someone lucky enough to own her CDs, fills the listener sitting alone at home if she or he gives her pieces the attention they deserve.

Jessica’s playing is so lovely and lyrical that it’s more accessible than many jazz pianists without ever crossing over into that scary “lite jazz” territory. She began her second set with Irving Berlin’s “They Say It’s Wonderful” from the musical Annie Get Your Gun—songs don’t come much more accessible than that. And yet in her hands it was anything but trite; it was fresh again, and as pure as it was when Berlin wrote it.

One of my favorite moments in the evening came when she played Dexter Gordon’s “Don’t Explain.” I’ve always loved Billie Holiday’s version, so it’s hard for me to give other artists due credit when they play it, it’s so associated with Lady Day in my mind. But I was right there with Jessica, note for note. Her love for Dexter Gordon the man, as well as for his music, was evident in her playing, and it was an emotionally rich piece.

She followed it with her own eloquent ode to her friend, “I Remember Dexter,” and two more of her elegant compositions, “Poem in G minor” and “Sheikh.” She ended with a gorgeous rendition of Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo” that left me so touched I had to compose myself before I could shake her hand and tell her what a wonderful evening it had been. Ellington himself would have pronounced her performance “beyond category.”

At the end of that second set, I realized I’d been staring rapt at her hands the whole time and hadn’t even looked up once to see the faces of the other people sitting around me. At the end of the concert I saw the same grateful wonder in their eyes that I felt, that we could be sitting 10 feet from greatness and share in this experience.

Before the concert, I had the pleasure of talking with Jessica in the kitchen. For all her skill and mastery, and despite all the swooning and kudos afforded her by fans and fellow artists, she is anything but a diva. She was humble and gracious, and she spoke of the pleasure she takes in her art and in sharing life with friends, of the places around the world in which she’s lived, of the kindnesses shown her by several jazz artists, like Dexter Gordon and his wife.

She’d never met me before, but asked me about myself as well, and listened and cared about what I had to say. She was there, standing in a kitchen with a stranger and eating deviled eggs, present in the moment and open to the experience. She showed a respectful, commonsense kindness with me and everyone present which I wish was shared by all people of such accomplishment and fame.

Jessica’s lived courageously and taken risks, turned corners when she was told what a mistake it was and been true to her heart, her music, and her passions. She’s been open to new techniques, to new styles, to resurrecting older ideas or creating new sounds that resonate with her heart. The result is a lovely, gracious, multifaceted woman who creates beauty and cares about the world around her and the people in it.

Andrew Gilbert wrote beautifully of Jessica and her art for the San Jose Mercury News: “A tremendously assured musician, Williams marks her style with ravishing lyricism and daring improvisational flights. But what really sets her solo performances apart is her gift for seamlessly weaving together various jazz keyboard styles, encompassing the highly syncopated stride school of the ’20s and ’30s, the light, effortlessly dancing approach of the swing era, the jagged single-note runs of bebop and the rhythmically diffuse sound perfected by Bill Evans in the ’60s, all integrated into an organic whole by her compelling sense of narrative flow.”

Postscript: When I first met Jessica, her website’s homepage quoted one of her favorite musicians and people, John Coltrane. It said: “I want to be a force for good. I know there are bad forces here that bring suffering to others and misery to the world, but I want to be the force which is truly good.” This quotation was so apt for Jessica; she lived her life in a way that brought pleasure to others, and she shared her remarkable talents and hopes with others through her musical gifts. She lived her values and spoke through her art. Jessica was an extraordinary person; she will always be my cherished friend.

Oddments

Cat Tonics, Chakra Unblockers & Blonde Highlights for Dogs

March 4, 2026 Laura Grey

A decade ago, I created Your Search Within, a parody website inspired by a certain prominent health-and-wellness influencer who took herself rather too seriously. This famous woman sold clothing, body care products, sex toys, candles that she said smelled like her body parts, and woo-woo “lifestyle” goods for anywhere from two to ten times their normal retail value.

I could hardly wait to satirize it. I wanted to create a faux-spiritual guide to overpriced and essentially useless products aimed at vulnerable people who sought to attain greater spiritual awakening and purity of body, mind, and soul—but without effort. I asked my daughter, graphic designer Lily Rodseth, if she’d build a website for me if I wrote the copy. She said “Sure!” So we started meeting in coffee houses to brainstorm, design, sketch, plan, and build it.

The head of a woman with short and vibrant blue hair is shown wearing a mask over her eyes with the images of owl eyes superimposed over her own eyes — The Innervyzion™ Spirit Animal Mask protects you from bad juju during your most vulnerable moments

The Circumflex Cranial Expansion System , the Innervyzion™ Spirit Animal Mask, and the Golden Grrl Highlighting Kit for Blonde Dogs were among the first nonsensical items my we decided to “sell” on the site (though they’re all somehow out of stock at any particular moment).

We agreed that using fame and influence to push merchandise of dubious value at extreme prices was tacky. But it struck us that what the smug celebrity was really selling on her site was the idea that one could attain greater physical, mental, and spiritual purity by simply buying it. Her tacit message was that purchasing just the right kind of colon-cleansing elixir, crystal vaginal egg, or $800 pair of white pants didn’t just make you look cooler or richer or trendier—it made you a better person.

Wearing or using the objects she sold was a way to not only to display wealth but signal virtue. The barely veiled message behind each product description and story of personal growth was that these products made one more focused, disciplined, healthy, attuned, and spiritually elevated.

Pushing overpriced objects at people who assign them glamour and magical properties based on brand or source is nothing new. But the implication that buying these products actually made one a better person of greater inherent value—that really rubbed me the wrong way. So Your Search Within was the obvious response.

The head of a woman whose eyes are closed is covered in dripping gold paint — Why not detoxify with Gilding the Lily Beeswax and Gold Balancing Body Elixir?

Our parody website promises “ethically sourced, pure, wholesome, authentic, small-batch crafted, raw products,” of course. But it also states that “our vision, our mission and our dream all combine synergistically to provide you, our beloved customers, with products that change lives and alter history, all while leaving you refreshed, renewed, supple and glowing.” I mean, why not promise everything, all at once?

The heart of the site is the retail product section offering opportunities to achieve inner harmony, improve bodily attunement, keep a more holistic home, or help animal friends to live more fully and joyfully in the moment. Facial sorbet, an urban aromatherapy system, and the Cat-a-Tonic Feline Deconfusifying Kit will help you align, affirm, and awaken body, soul, and even pets to the wonders without and within.

Namaste, baby.

A red rubber ball is shown on a white backgrond. It's surrounded by gold and silver jacks (old fashioned children's toys), all of them bearing sharp points — Unblock and reinvigorate your sacral chakra with the Womyn’s Internal Toning Kit

The website’s blog offers chances to “enhance and deepen your connection to the universe and learn to go with the spiritual flow.” The section on our team of five womyn who form the “Your Search Within collective” includes Natural Products Guru Yonia Cuervo, New Technologies Revelator Nagine Xavier-Woo, and Insight Channeler Starryn Fairchylde. They guide each spirit toward their cosmic energy source. (Funny how each influencer’s photo looks just like me, isn’t it?)

Lily and I have never monetized the site. But then, it doesn’t exist to gather income. We made it to poke fun at the idea that one can buy virtue and become a more pure person by imbibing, inhaling, or adorning oneself in a certain way. We hope it’ll make people laugh, of course. But after that, maybe they’ll notice how influencers manipulate us into feeling so insecure or inadequate that we spend time and money on obvious nonsense that we hope will shine up our tarnished halos.

Film & Television, Literature, Oddments

Nihilism and Nightlights

March 3, 2026 Laura Grey

The following is one of a series of six film review parodies I wrote for the Sunday Punch section of the San Francisco Chronicle in the 1980s. Each piece featured imaginary foreign films that I reviewed in the voice of a dry and humorless foreign film critic.

• • • • • • •

Among the new foreign film releases this season are two films by female directors: Bebe Francobolli’s ode to Dada, Ciao Chow Chow, and Christiane de Geronimo’s children’s thriller, Nightlight.

Francobolli is the daughter of the Suprematist painter Mazlow Molotov (“The Black Russian”) and Constructivist painter Kiri de Kulpe Kloonig (a former courtesan known as “The Dutch Treat”). Bebe’s parents met in Rome at an international stamp-collecting convention and became Italian citizens before their only child was born.

Named Bebe Francobolli (literally Baby Postage Stamps) after her parents’ avocation, she refused to become a philatelist and rejected the art of her ancestors. She turned to Dada, the nihilistic movement that created “non-art,” laughed at overly serious artists and spawned Surrealism.

Close-up of a very fluffy chow dog's face. It's two front feet are draped over the end of a platform just below its head. — *Dadaist director Bebe Francobolli’s beloved Chow Chow, Antipasto, star of her ridiculous early films*

These influences can be seen clearly in Ciao Chow Chow, in which Bebe herself stars. Translated from Italian into English, and then back into Italian again, with no subtitles, the film begins and ends with Bebe waving goodbye to her beloved Chow dog, Antipasto, symbol of her lost youth and of her ridiculous early films.

Ciao is a parody of a self-parody, masterful in its simplicity and in its bold statement that life is to be laughed at, and that nothing is serious or sacred.

Basically nihilistic, with Dadaist subject matter and camera angles, this film is convoluted and uneven, personalized and stylized, and will make no sense to anyone who has not seen Bebe’s early travelogue films. Yet, Bebe promises that it will be her last film work, and that alone has prompted critical acclaim.

Avant-garde director Christiane de Geronimo’s Nightlight tells the terrifying story of the night the Mickey Mouse nightlight burned out in the Turner household. Little Bobby Turner is forced to face The Clown Puppet, The Vicious Animal Slippers and The Dreaded Man from Under the Bed.

A brightly painted wooden or papier-mache clown with a painted face and huge bowtie stands outside, his right arm chained to a fence — *In Christiane de Geronimo’s* Nightlight, *the terrifyingly blank-eyed Clown Puppet is finally subdued with a chain around his upraised arm—or is he?*

Filmed in black and white, Nightlight captures the shadowy horror of every child’s bedroom, and forces even the adult viewer to come to grips with The Thing in the Closet. Not for the squeamish.

De Geronimo’s earlier attempts at children’s thrillers include The Teddy Bear with No Face, Scream, Barbie, Scream and Revenge of the Katzenjammer Kids, in which comic-strip characters from the past are set loose on an unwitting Nebraska farm town.

Nightlight, the third of her bedtime stories series, features the late French film star Estella de Lumiere in her final role before the dreadful accident on the set of Murder on the Trampoline.

A hand-colored antique sepia-toned photo of two Japanese sumo wrestlers — *Coming Soon: Professor Haro Hiru instructs one of his students in Fujiko Shiatsu’s sumo wrestling remake of* The Music Man

Next month, two recent remakes: Canadian filmmaker and ice-hockey champion Pete Steed’s sport-oriented version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Fujiko Shiatsu’s sumo wrestling remake of The Music Man.