Although he was less extroverted than his bandmates, his impressive vocals made him a cornerstone of the era’s defining boyband. So why did he struggle to accept his own greatness?

• Liam Payne was just getting started. His death is a heartbreaking end

At One Direction’s first audition together on The X Factor in 2010, Liam Payne – who died yesterday – is given the opening line. Singing Natalie Imbruglia’s Torn to Simon Cowell and Sinitta, Payne is only 16 yet has seemingly absorbed decades of pop stagecraft. It’s a difficult opening verse to sell to the judges – downbeat and low-register – but Payne nails it. Rippling vibrato denotes his trembling heart and matinee-idol acting sells the line “she showed me what it was to cry” as he glances off to one side as if slapped by the painful memory all over again.

As the four other members join Payne, you can almost see Cowell’s eyes whirling like a fruit machine. These lads can harmonise. They can soulfully extemporise. Each of them is handsome in the subtly different ways teen idols need to be handsome, from boyish to smouldering. They seem entirely comfortable wearing the ratty scarves of the era. Here is something British – even global – pop has been sorely missing: a genuinely convincing boyband.

Karla Sofía Gascón is the first openly trans actor to win best actress at Cannes for her role in Jacques Audiard’s audacious musical. She talks about awful corsets, riding motorbikes and suing her critics

When Madonna posted an image of the Spanish actor Karla Sofía Gascón on Instagram recently, the word she scrawled above it in vivid pink letters captured what most viewers will think after seeing her in the award-winning noir-musical Emilia Pérez: “WOW”. The 52-year-old Gascón, who was born and raised near Madrid and has spent the bulk of her career acting in Mexican telenovelas, plays the drugs kingpin Manitas, who fakes his death, transitions from male to female and reinvents herself as Pérez, a socially conscious activist. Emilia Pérez the movie, like Emilia Pérez the character, is a one-off. After all, there can’t be many films that feature brutal Mexican drug cartels and a singalong about vaginoplasties.

As befits a project that began life as a libretto, the movie is operatic in its emotions. “Madonna was crying so much after the screening in New York,” says Gascón, perched demurely on the edge of a chaise longue in a London hotel room. Her thick chestnut hair brushes the shoulders of her black dress, which has white collars and white-trimmed short sleeves. “She told me: ‘You’re amazing!’ She was crying and crying. I said: ‘Madonna, please. It’s only a film. Be happy!’”

Packed with sex, excess and fabulous awfulness, this adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s 80s bonkbuster starts as gloriously as it means to go on. Champagne all round!

‘Welcome to Rutshire!” announces Lizzie (Katherine Parkinson), one of its calmer denizens and the only one with enough time between champagne-quaffing and nethers-slapping to ease a new family’s passage into the bonkers, bonking Cotswolds set with conventional niceties. And what a welcome it’s been!

Disney+’s adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s infamous 1980s bonkbuster starts as gloriously as it means to go on. Within the first 15 minutes we have the ne plus ultra of cads and bounders (also cabinet minister and former super-duper show jumper) Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell) banging a journalist (“the first not-quite-a-lady of Fleet Street”) in Concorde’s loos as it breaks the sound barrier and corks pop. We also have star broadcast journalist Declan O’Hara (Aidan Turner) breaking a story about the deputy prime minister (Rufus Jones) having a lover, plus David Tennant’s Lord Tony Baddingham – the clue is in the name – poaching him and a ruthless American producer Cameron Cook (Nafessa Williams) to boost his UK TV franchise Corinium. Not to mention croquet, helicopters landing on the lawn, riding to hounds and not a line of dialogue that doesn’t end in an exclamation mark!

With a new Body Count album out next month, the hip-hop superstar turned actor answers your questions on Law & Order, the Cop Killer furore and working with ‘wild man’ Abel Ferrara

Was there ever a moment during the furore over Cop Killer when you were feeling the heat and/or questioning yourself over releasing it? Sophisticles
I never really questioned myself, but the heat came when they started sending bomb threats to Warner Bros. I threw the rock, that’s my heat. But when other people could get hurt, that’s nerve-racking. But I got news for people: anybody that thinks controversy is a way to make money, it’s not. You get a lot of buzz, but now you need lawyers. So don’t just say something stupid and then back-pedal – if you’re going to say something, stand on it.

When you founded Body Count, a Black man performing heavy metal was pretty rare. Have you enjoyed the growing crossover between hip-hop and heavier music in recent years, and the increasing diversity in genres such as hardcore and metal? MrPleebus
I didn’t really care, I was just trying to do me. Of course, yes, it feels good to see the genre merge and change, but that wasn’t my agenda. My agenda was simple: to play in a band with [guitarist] Ernie C. Touring in Europe with Public Enemy, I’d noticed the kids would mosh off of fast rap and that’s what sparked the idea to do Body Count, to do a fast rock band. It wasn’t like, “Let’s get Black people in.” It was just … I’m going to do this shit.

(Atlantic)
This concept album based on Walter Hill’s 1979 film features megastar rappers, Hamilton alumni and styles from metalcore to salsa – it is pulled off with breathtaking brio

The bravura title sequence of the 1979 thriller The Warriors builds up a head of steam by following waves of gangs as they hit the streets of New York. There’s a posse of dandies sporting pink waistcoats, an army in fatigues, even a bunch dressed as mimes. Like Coney Island’s leather vest-wearing Warriors, each leaves their home turf for a midnight meeting in the Bronx to unite every crew in the city through a truce. Within minutes, director Walter Hill has set out his stall: the film’s turnstile-vaulting energy, grimy vistas, jangling tension and puckish comedy are all here.

In their adaptation, a concept album that raises the tantalising prospect of a future staging, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis achieve something similar. The blistering, kaleidoscopic opener is presided over by dancehall dynamo Shenseea as a DJ introducing MCs for each borough. Amid punchy fanfares, they are deftly delineated: Chris Rivers as a raspy Bronx, Nas cranking up intrigue as Queens, Cam’ron smoothly humorous as Manhattan (“when you say New York, we’re actually what you mean”), Busta Rhymes’ explosively gruff Brooklyn and Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah and RZA spinning ethereal suspense for Staten Island, repeating the detail of their arduous route to the Bronx, “taking a train to a boat to another train”.

With Gladiator II thrusting into cinematic arenas next month, we hand out laurels to the greatest sword-and-sandal movies of them all

In this heavy-going British Technicolor adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s play, Claude Rains’s oddly relaxed Julius Caesar plays father figure to Vivien Leigh’s implausibly girlish Cleopatra, schooling her in the art of power with just a hint of May to December flirtation. The two leads are just about charismatic enough to compel interest despite Shaw’s ponderous dialogue.

Studios usually twist themselves into pretzels to avoid confusing movie titles. But this Christmas, unwary fans of the CBBC show should beware

Great news, parents! In just a few short weeks, a new Horrible History DVD will be released. Imagine the look of absolute delight on the faces of your children as they giddily unwrap their present and realise that their favourite CBBC show has created new material.

And then imagine the growing look of horror on their faces as they scan the cover of the DVD case and see that the main image is a clenched fist and some spiked knuckledusters. And then their violent disappointment as they slowly put two and two together and realise that instead of buying them Horrible Histories (a DVD of sophisticated yet child-friendly historical parody sketches from most of the people behind Ghosts), you have actually bought them Horrible History (the new limited edition four-DVD boxset of violent, decades-old kung fu movies by the Chinese director Chang Cheh).

Twenty years after their father died, his children are ready to tell his extraordinary story – from playing Superman to protesting against Pinochet, transforming disability rights and being a beloved parent and friend

It’s eerie being in a room with the Reeve siblings. All three are dead ringers for their father, Christopher. Matthew, 44, resembles Reeve as Clark Kent. Alexandra, 40, shares his angular beauty. The youngest, Will, 32, looks like him as Superman. They are almost as tall as their 6ft 4in father: Will is 6ft 3in, Alexandra 6ft and Matthew 6ft 2in. As for their jobs, Matthew makes films, Alexandra is a legislation lawyer based in Washington DC and Will is a TV sports journalist. Their father was a sport-obsessed actor-turned-director who campaigned to change the law on a number of fronts, most notably regarding disabled people.

“Strong genes!” Alexandra says, smiling at the other two. It’s not just that, I say. Your careers seem to reflect your father’s. Another smile. “It’s so strange,” Alexandra says. “We think about it all the time. We have split his passions between the three of us.”

The American writer is 120 pages into a memoir about her relationship with the New York Trilogy author, entitled Ghost Stories

Siri Hustvedt has revealed that she is working on a memoir about her late husband, Paul Auster, author of the acclaimed New York Trilogy.

The news was first reported in Zeit Online, where Hustvedt said in an interview that “a few days after Paul’s death” she started writing a memoir about him. “It’s called Ghost Stories. I have 120 pages now,” she told the German news website, adding that writing about Auster was her “first impulse” after he died.

Only baby formula, expressed milk and prescription medicines will be allowed with large bags also prohibited under new measures

The National Gallery has announced a raft of increased security measures after protesters attacked paintings including Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers, John Constable’s The Hay Wain and Diego Velázquez’s The Rokeby Venus.

From Friday morning there will be a ban on bringing into the London gallery any liquids except for baby formula, expressed milk or prescription medicines.

The much-loved director gave an unknown Sean Connery his first leading role as well as overseeing some of the biggest TV dramas of the 1970s and 80s

Alvin Rakoff, prolific director and producer of scores of film and TV productions including Requiem for a Heavyweight, Passport to Shame and A Dance to the Music of Time, has died aged 97. His family announced his death in a statement, saying Rakoff “passed away … surrounded by his loving family in the same, beautiful old house in Chiswick he had bought back in 1971”.

Born in Toronto in 1927, Rakoff came from a family of east European Jewish immigrants to Canada, but came to the UK in 1952 after turning his back on the family shop and committing to a career in show business. Having worked as a writer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Rakoff was quickly accepted on the BBC’s directors’ training course and moved swiftly on to make a string of successful TV dramas.

Other plays to feature include a production of Sarah Kane’s final work and a saga involving a British Museum artefact

A new Robert Icke drama about the hunt for Raoul Moat, a revival of Sarah Kane’s final play, and a saga about a Chinese request for the return of a stolen artefact from the British Museum are among the standout pieces that have been announced as part of the latest Royal Court season.

The theatre’s artistic director, David Byrne, said the season was “internationalist” with South African (A Good House) and Palestinian writers (A Knock on the Roof) alongside more established British talent, such as Icke.

With its futuristic panels, airy tunnels and elegantly unified design, the 73-mile addition to the tube is a worthy winner of the prestigious Stirling prize – and puts the rest of the creaking, sooty network to shame

With the longest platforms, the biggest tunnels and the fastest trains on the entire London underground, the Elizabeth line boasts a dizzying list of superlatives, carrying more people a day than any other train line in the country. It is now deemed to have the best design, too – being named as the winner of the 2024 RIBA Stirling prize for the finest architecture in the UK. The competition was stiff: from the National Portrait Gallery in London to the renovation of the Park Hill estate in Sheffield, from a Dorset dairy farm conversion to a street of social housing in Hackney and the 67-acre regeneration of King’s Cross.

The Lizzie line is a worthy winner, providing a dazzling demonstration that, for all chaos surrounding HS2, Britain is still capable of pulling off gargantuan transport infrastructure projects with style and panache. Stepping off the escalators and entering its streamlined white tunnels is like being teleported to a parallel universe, worlds away from the rest of the creaking, sooty tube network.

Due out in January, the book deals with ‘some of the crucial moments of his papacy and some of the most controversial questions of our present times’

Pope Francis has written an autobiography, publisher Penguin Random House (PRH) has announced. Hope, which will be published globally in January next year, is the first such book written by a sitting pope.

The pope and his chosen co-writer, Italian publisher Carlo Musso, have been working on the book for the last six years. The original plan was to publish it after his death, but the opportunity to publish at the time of the 2025 Jubilee – a time dedicated to forgiveness, spiritual renewal and celebration in the Catholic church that happens every 25 years – as well as “the needs of our times”, moved the pope to release it while he is still alive, according to PRH.

Downing Street also says move to grant singer extra security for London concerts will not be referred to ethics adviser

Downing Street has said there was no conflict of interest in Keir Starmer attending a Taylor Swift concert and meeting her, and there would be no referral to the independent ethics adviser over decisions to grant her extra security.

The revelation Starmer and his family had met Swift came amid a row over the additional security granted to the megastar, including a blue-light escort usually reserved for royalty and politicians.

After the music mogul was hit with six new lawsuits alleging rape and sexual assault, he asked for his accusers’ names to be disclosed ahead of 5 May trial

It is an event that has shocked the entertainment world.

Sean “Diddy” Combs is facing charges of sex trafficking and racketeering, according to a federal indictment unsealed in September that reads like a laundry list of criminal behavior including kidnapping, forced labor, bribery and other crimes. He faces even more allegations of sexual misconduct, after a Texas-based attorney revealed he is representing 120 accusers who allege misconduct against Combs over the course of two decades.

Clues in painting suggest Francis Williams successfully managed to compute and witness trajectory of Halley’s comet over Jamaica in 1759

It was painted to celebrate the groundbreaking achievements of a mathematical genius who was Black and had been born into slavery. But for more than 260 years, that great scientific intellect of Francis Williams went unnoticed.

Now, clues exposed by an X-ray and high-resolution scans of the painting have finally revealed the extraordinary secret that 18th-century advocates of slavery sought to keep hidden.

Madison Square Garden, New York

The singer continues a wildly successful year with a major tour that gives fans a fast and furious ride through her biggest hits

How can an artist who’s reached superstar status maintain the intimacy that their career was built on? For Billie Eilish, it’s a tricky dance and a trajectory I’ve seen play out first-hand. Around early 2016 an invite to a performance by an artist a publicist was very excited about popped into my email. “Hi love,” the message said. “Just wondering, did you get a chance to check out 14-year-old Billie Eilish?” With that, I ventured to a basement venue on New York City’s Lower East Side and witnessed one of her earliest sets. It was an impressive display of performance and songwriting. How could this girl be 14 and this good?

In many ways, what Eilish has done in the past eight years makes her a mind-boggling exception in a cutthroat here today, gone today industry, all while inviting people into her mind and home. I don’t need to tell you about her smashes and ubiquity, there’s no need to rehash her string of awards. You’ve probably heard the wispy first lines in the form of “When did it end …” from What Was I Made For?; a culturally defining song from a culturally defining movie, more times than you can count. The talent is apparent, and it’s hammered over our collective heads on a regular basis.

Glossier follow-up to 2022’s hugely successful curse horror is well-made and well-acted but the franchise is struggling to carve out its own identity

When Smile, an original low-budget horror movie, became a surprise smash hit in 2022, it was a success story that was easier to admire than it was a film to rally behind. Originally intended for a streaming premiere, the $17m movie was elevated to a theatrical release after enthused test screenings, going on to make $217m worldwide, a huge win for Paramount and the genre at large. It was a slick, stylishly made attempt to update a familiar supernatural curse formula with the modern addition of a trauma narrative, a parasitic demon acting as a metaphor for the horror of inherited mental illness.

The film’s creator, Parker Finn, showed flair as a director but flaws as a writer, unable to push his tonally awkward film far enough out of the shadow of both The Ring and It Follows and struggling with subtext that required a little more subtlety to cut as deep as his more effectively visceral use of gore. A sequel was inevitable but also hard to imagine how it could be in any way justifiable, trotting out the same hellish endurance test for another unlucky victim.

The electro-pop band’s third album is a playful, energetic trip down memory lane, transporting us to Happy Mondays-era Hacienda, vintage New Order and the KLF

It’s bad form in music journalism to compare an act to others, but rules are made to be broken. Confidence Man’s third album is a joyous journey into gen X-era club music: Saint Etienne, Deee-lite, Underworld, Happy Mondays … There’s no avoiding dropping references: 3AM (La La La) is practically a drinking game.

Front and centre of Confidence Man are hype-squad vocalists Grace Stephenson (AKA Janet Planet) and Aidan Moore (answers to Sugar Bones), beloved for their camp choreo and outrageous outfits. But what’s clearer than ever on 3AM (La La La) is that production team Sam Hales and Lewis Stephenson work up just as much sweat.

Sissy Spacek unforgettably evolves from ugly duckling to swan to something else entirely in the groundbreaking film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel

Brian De Palma’s insouciantly horrible masterpiece from 1976, adapted from the novel by Stephen King, and mixing in tropes and tricks from Hitchcock’s Psycho, is now rereleased. This is the extraordinary exploitation shocker that also conveyed – or anyway fabricated – an impassioned sympathy for a bullied teenage girl with learning disabilities and telekinetic powers. It was a horror classic that didn’t conform to the narrative beats of the genre; it was a scary movie in which the terrifying demon was also the final girl.

Sissy Spacek gives an amazing performance as Carrie, a shy high school student and put-upon daughter of Margaret (Piper Laurie), whose fanatical religious devotion and fear of sex – and fear of Carrie having sex – stems from having been seduced and abandoned by Carrie’s now absent father many years previously. Poor, innocent Carrie still has not started her period, and when this happens in the showers after a volleyball game, she panics uncomprehendingly and the mean girls humiliate her by throwing tampons and chanting: “Plug it up!” Gym teacher Miss Collins (Betty Buckley) is outraged and – angrily smoking a cigarette and still wearing her PE shorts in the principal’s office – decides to hand out exemplary punishments to this crowd of bullies. This takes the form of a mortifying workout session which so enrages the queen-bee bully Chris (Nancy Allen) that she resolves to take a satanically wicked revenge on Carrie at the prom.

A novelist from Brooklyn tries to make it in LA in this artful tale of ambition and identity

Early in Colored Television, 46-year-old Jane Gibson imagines her past self peering through the window of the home she lives in. “Brooklyn Jane” would admire this architecturally interesting house on the hills overlooking Los Angeles, she thinks, and see within it an idyllic scene of family life featuring Jane’s painter husband Lenny – “From a distance, in his horn-rimmed glasses, reading his serious book, he would look like an inspired choice” – and their two children, Ruby and Finn. The vision is warm, sophisticated, “a Black bohemian version of the American dream”.

In this sly novel about dreams, ambition and race as performance, Jane’s fantasy is telling. Because what she carefully edits out are the unlovely truths underneath its gleaming surface: that she and Lenny had been in couples therapy until their money ran out. That Lenny’s paintings don’t sell. That Jane has been toiling over a sprawling novel for 10 years, a “400‑year history of mulatto people in fictional form”, which she must publish in order to get tenure. That her son’s unusual behaviour may merit a doctor’s diagnosis. And, finally, that the beautiful house and its accoutrements don’t belong to them; the family are merely house sitting for Jane’s wealthy screenwriter friend Brett, because the only places they can afford in the greater LA area are “not just overpriced but ugly, smelly, and dark”.

(dh2)
The Welsh producer’s latest handbrake turn takes her from dark-hued ambience to hypnotic euphoria on her poppiest record to date

In a world where artists are often cautioned to stay in their lane – to maintain a recognisable brand so you don’t get lost in a crowded, confusing market – there’s something impressive about Kelly Lee Owens. For the last seven years, her career has constituted a series of handbrake turns, fuelled by a disinclination to make the same record twice. Her debut album situated her at the nexus of ambient techno, shoegazing’s dreamy textures and the warm lo-fi fuzz of bedroom pop: for all its reliance on electronics, it was possible to detect that Owens had previously spent time as the bassist in an indie band, the History of Apple Pie. Inner Song, from 2020, was both more straightforwardly melodic and – with its four-to-the-floor beats – more dancefloor-focused; 2022’s LP.8 offered dark-hued ambience punctuated by punishingly distorted rhythms and almost nothing in the way of hooks: Owens spent more time incanting spoken word than she did singing.

After its release, Owens found herself supporting Depeche Mode on tour around the kind of immense US venues the band have been filling since time immemorial. Previously an alumnus of left-field Norwegian label Smalltown Supersound, she signed a new record deal, with dh2, a new electronic wing of Dirty Hit, helmed by George Daniel of the 1975. She also entered the orbit of Daniel’s fiancee, Charli xcx, appearing at her Partygirl event in Ibiza at the start of the summer.

Empress Museum, London
While there is strength and skill on display, this circus show lacks a knockout performance and the film’s enduring anthems don’t always fit the action

A stage adaptation of The Greatest Showman has been a cinch since the 2017 film became one of the all-time biggest musical hits at the box office. Disney has one in development but in the meantime, pitched up between an office block and a padel club in Earl’s Court, this “circus spectacular” repurposes Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s imperishable anthems – several more than once – for a series of acrobatic routines.

The gossamer-thin narrative and the museum-styled venue both have tangential relevance to the film in which Hugh Jackman’s PT Barnum opens a house of curiosities before hitting the jackpot by replacing waxworks with live acts. En route to the big top for the show, theatregoers pass through a gallery where top hats are suspended from the ceiling, canes are framed on the wall and lurid posters promote a snake charmer, strongmen and other acts.

‘The men submerge themselves up to their chins, mimicking birds in order to attract waterfowl – which they then grab by hand. This technique is 5,000 years old’

In my 30 years at National Geographic, a recurring theme in my work was the impact of extractive industries on pristine ecosystems and indigenous communities. The bird-hunters in this shot are near a Harappan archaeological site in the Indus River Valley. Many of the traditions still surviving in this region of Pakistan can be traced back 5,000 years to the Indus civilisation. Mohana fishermen still use flat-bottomed boats similar to those from that time, and carve the same terracotta figures to offer at their modern-day temples. Bird-hunters in the area employ techniques depicted on ancient terracotta pots from the same period.

During my time in Pakistan, the region around Mohenjo-daro was notorious for kidnappings of Americans. It was a lawless area where groups of bandits operated. I ventured beyond the protected area of the archaeological site because I had heard about men who hunted birds by hand, a practice I had never seen documented. I spotted them from a distance carrying carefully wrapped bird-head hats, and arranged to join them the following day.

‘I was living in flat with a bed, a record-player, a desk and a fridge for beer. I thought, “If I just sit and play three chords for eight hours, hopefully a good song will come”’

I was working at Stamford Bridge, doing match-day security in the players’ tunnel, and walking the players to their cars after the game. I’d stand between the dressing room and the press area, so I got to hear the half-time talks and watch most of the Chelsea games. It was once every 10 days and still the greatest job I ever had. So when Mercury offered me half a million quid, I was kind of like: “Well, I mean, I dunno …”

The Chvrches singer grew up on the Spice Girls and has a complicated relationship with the Smiths. But how come she knows so much about 90s country?

The first song I remember hearing
I grew up in a house that played the Top 40. I have vivid memories of the saxophone in Careless Whisper by George Michael. Nobody talks about how great and instinctive a singer he was. Maybe they do, but not in my universe.

The first single I bought
Say You’ll Be There by Spice Girls on cassette single from Woolworths in Stirling, that had the pick and mix section and the chart on the wall. If I close my eyes, I can still see the music video with Geri in her red boots and Emma in her blue gloves.

The Lemonheads musician on crazy websites, cosy restaurants and a bar where it’s always Christmas

Evan Dando was born in Essex, Massachusetts, in 1967 and moved to Boston aged nine. In 1986 he co-founded alt-rock band the Lemonheads (initially known as the Whelps), putting out four albums before their 1992 breakthrough It’s a Shame About Ray and hit cover of Mrs Robinson. The band has since released another five albums and Dando a solo 2003 record entitled Baby I’m Bored. Dando now lives in Brazil with his partner, video-maker Antonia Teixeira. He plays La Belle Angele in Edinburgh on 16 October, touring the UK until the end of the month.

The star of Full Metal Jacket and Stranger Things takes your questions on working with Stanley Kubrick and Christopher Nolan, channelling his war hero uncle – and saving Michelle Pfeiffer’s life

Has there ever been a moment on set that you just can’t shake, that even now leaves you thinking: did that really just happen? NomadPoetics
Yes. At the very very end of Married to the Mob, during the credits, the director, Jonathan Demme, chose to include the harrowing moment that happened on set. I’m sambaing with Michelle Pfeiffer, she leans back over a metal railing, falls backwards head first and I manage to catch her by the feet. Luckily, I was young, strong and fast, else it could have been a disaster.

How did you train physically to play a high school wrestler in one of your first films, Vision Quest? Did you get to hang out with Madonna? Nash437 and Hooplehead1967
I trained! There’s no way around training when you’re doing a film about wrestling or boxing. I spent two months before filming doing “three a day”, meaning a workout of cardio in the morning, wrestling midday and weights in the evening. And yes, it was incredibly difficult. As for Madonna – I wish I could say yes. At that time, it was very clear that Madonna was incredibly focused on her career and work. As I recall, she came and left after maybe six hours on set. She plays a club singer, who sings Crazy for You, written especially for the film. I’m so glad she gave that song to us. It’s so sweet and so 1980s.

A gobsmacking documentary about the mysterious man who bought MGM studios in 1990. Plus: is the Vinted app too good to be true? Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, BBC Two
“One of the most enigmatic deals in Hollywood.” Insiders tell film-maker John Dower the scandalous story of Giancarlo Parretti, one that has all the makings of a juicy movie script. Parretti was a former waiter with a “murky past” who bought the MGM studios for $1.3bn in 1990 – but he couldn’t account for the mysterious money he handed over. He helps tell the full tale himself in a lively documentary. Hollie Richardson

Anna Kendrick directs and stars in the chilling true-life tale of a woman who goes on a dating show with a bachelor who is also a serial killer. Plus: Damian Lewis’s very bloody vampire horror

Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut is not, as you might expect from her past roles, a bubbly musical or romantic comedy. It’s a deadly serious fact-based tale about a serial killer in the US in the 1970s, which is careful to give his female victims equal billing. Kendrick plays Sheryl, an aspiring actor who is hired for TV show The Dating Game – the same episode on which, bizarrely, multiple murderer Rodney Alcala (an alternately charming and creepy Daniel Zovatto) has been picked as one of the eligible bachelors. Skilfully woven into that are the stories of other women who crossed Alcala’s path, in a tense, chilling tale of personal tragedy and damning police failure.
Friday 18 October, Netflix

Billy Crystal is a child psychologist in a creepy thriller indebted to The Sixth Sense, plus Joshua Jackson plays a doctor on a luxury cruise ship in Ryan Murphy’s daft medical drama

Billy Crystal plays (reasonably convincingly) against type in this thriller, as child psychologist Eli, a man reeling from the suicide of his wife Lynn. When a mysterious, mute child appears on his doorstep with bloodied hands and an unblinking stare, Eli assumes he has dreamed him. But Noah (a creepy turn from Jacobi Jupe) is very real: he is equally drawn to Eli but is unable to explain the roots of his obvious trauma, which manifests in incredibly detailed drawings and episodes of jarring violence. The dialogue is clunky and feels indebted to horror totems The Exorcist and The Sixth Sense. But the intriguing central premise keeps it watchable.
Apple TV+, from Friday 25 October

Japanese photographer Toshiya Watanabe plumbed the depths of his consciousness to produce these images of dead crows, cherry blossom trees and blooming cosmos

As Oasis prepare to tour, photographer Sharon Latham unveils previously unseen photos of Noel Gallagher and his band High Flying Birds and talks us through life on the road with one of the world’s most successful artists

• A New World Blazing is at the Gibson Garage London, until 6 April, with prints available for purchase

As he travels along the Iranian coast, Khashayar Javanmardi photographs rusting ships, blazing wetland fires – and humans struggling to stay alive

From drag queens without costumes to wrestlers touching each other tenderly, these monochrome images wowed the judges

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

Frustrated by the often laddish atmosphere in skateparks, skate enthusiast Milo Turnley set about organising a night for trans skateboarders, roller skaters and wheelchair users. Founded in August 2023, Transkaters takes place on the second Friday of each month at Baysixty6 in west London, where photographer Eliza Hatch took these portraits of those in attendance. “As a skater myself, it immediately caught my attention – skate nights that cater to women, queer people or any marginalised group are few and far between,” says Hatch. “Trans people are a minority who experience an overwhelming amount of harassment and abuse, and who deserve to be able to participate in sports without fear or risk to personal safety. At Transkaters, the atmosphere is incredibly warm, supportive and joyful, and I wanted to highlight that.”

• See more at instagram.com/elizahatch

German artist Vera Lutter’s photographs are made with large camera obscuras, often the size of an entire room, and using long exposure times ranging from a few minutes to months, depending on light conditions and the size of the pinhole. An exhibition in Italy brings together for the first time a large selection of her photographs focusing on industry, work and infrastructures that facilitate the movement of goods and people.

Vera Lutter: Spectacular, An Exploration of Light is at Fondazione MAST, Bologna from 11 October to 6 January 2025

The documentary photographer Owen Harvey visited Jurupa Valley, California, to speak to young Americans training for the highly skilled and intricate all-female sport inspired by the Mexican revolution. There he discovered escaramuza’s importance in instilling discipline and pride in Mexico’s heritage and family traditions.

It is National Hispanic Heritage Month, which recognises the contributions and influence of Hispanic Americans to the achievements, culture, and history of the US

Escaramuza in English means “skirmish” and is an all-female sport within charrería – the Mexican equivalent of rodeo.

It consists of highly choreographed equestrian dances and is inspired by las adelitas of the Mexican revolution, female soldiers who would ride with the men acting as decoys on the battlefield, performing intricate skills on horseback.

Before rehearsals young escaramuzas have fun, performing choreographed hand-clapping. Jurupa Valley, California, 2024.

‘This iceberg in Antarctica was so vast, I had to dive down and take 147 photos in sub-zero water, then get a computer to join them up. Ten years on, my toes are still damaged’

As a kid, I was fascinated by the documentaries of Jacques Cousteau. There was nothing else quite like them – they were a weekly TV appointment. My family lived not too far from the sea and, although that coast wasn’t great for diving, my brother and I used to pretend we were exploring beneath the waves, like Cousteau. My parents would tell us not to go in the water straight after lunch, and warn us to stay away from crabs and jellyfish. When I got into my teens, I used to complain that they were only interested in going to the beach to take in the sun. I thought if my dad was a diver, or if we’d grown up in somewhere like French Polynesia, I could have learned so much more.

But now I realise that would probably have killed the sense of adventure that still drives me to this day. In my photography, I try to focus on the mysterious – creatures we know little or nothing about. The oceans are full of animals and places that have never been photographed, but reaching them often poses a challenge, sometimes a dangerous one. I think mysterious things inspire more respect than those that are merely beautiful, though. The urge to be in front of something bigger than me, something weird, strange or scary, something I don’t understand, is what pushes me to explore.