remembered

Certain movies have such an impact on people that years, and even decades later, they continue to be celebrated. Cruel Intentions and Logan are certainly two movies with little in common, but one thing they share is that they were released during the same calendar week, nearly two decades apart. Cruel Intentions celebrated its 25th anniversary while Logan celebrated its seventh, and the stars of both took the opportunity to look back.Both Hugh Jackman and co-star Dafne Keen referred to their time filming Logan this week,…

Sadhu Meher (1940-2024), who died on 2 February, made his debut in Shyam Benegal’s Ankur (1974) with Shabana Azmi and won the National Film Award for Best Actor that year. He went on to work for a host of eminent directors including Mrinal Sen for Mrigayaa (1976), RN Sippy for Inkaar(1977), Bhim Sain in Gharaonda (1977) and Tapan Sinha in Safed Haathi (1977). He also appeared in a few episodes of Basu Chattarjee’s serial Byomkesh Bakshi (1993-97). Despite appearing only in a small number of films, his magnificent acting…

If you knew Laurie Frank — and who didn’t? — you know her great heart burst skyward on Nov. 30. Hours earlier, a technicolor rainbow appeared over the Hollywood Hills, Laurie’s Promised Land. You likely knew she was in the first class at Yale that matriculated women — class of 1973 — and went on to be an accomplished screenwriter, journalist and acclaimed gallerist. In the late ‘70s, she worked at ABC News and directed short films for Saturday Night Live, famously Prose and Cons featuring Eddie Murphy…

I first met Shane in 1989 when the music paper NME thought it would be a good idea to bring us two together alongside Mark E Smith from the Fall for a so-called “summit meeting”. I was excited because I was a fan, completely in awe of Shane’s songwriting. Unfortunately, it was my first day out of rehab, and it probably wasn’t the greatest idea to spend the day with two people who were not known for their moderation. It was pure mayhem from the outset. Not the most auspicious start to a friendship, but Shane and I did…

A few weeks before I met Tina Turner in 1982, I saw her playing in London. I was a big fan. Even though I was known for making electronic music, I loved all kinds and River Deep, Mountain High was my favourite song. But back then, she didn’t have a recording contract. The only way she could earn money independently was by doing what they used to call the chicken-in-a-basket circuit in America, touring her old hits. It was staggering really. She could earn good money doing that, but didn’t want to for the rest of her…

I’m Just A Lucky So And So – that’s a lyric Mack David wrote in 1945 for Duke Ellington, the same Mack David who co-wrote Baby It’s You with Burt Bacharach, a song I first heard performed by the Beatles.Yet despite these links back to its very beginnings, Burt Bacharach isn’t part of the dull orthodoxy of rock music. When a dogmatic journalist faulted his absence from the rock’n’roll revolution in the 1950s, Bacharach responded, “I was studying with the French modernist composer Darius Milhaud and listening to Dizzy…

For me, growing up in the 1970s in inner-city London, in Tottenham, there were a few black American global figures that entered your life and just brought so much colour and vibrancy. And I only really now understand this as an adult, of course, but my parents came alive, too. Our whole parochial existence suddenly became so much bigger at these moments. And there were only a handful of people who could do that. Sidney Poitier was one; the Jackson Five and Diana Ross were others. And then there was the singer and actor…

Jane and I were contemporaries. Born the same year in 1946. Me in February, she in December. We had the same kind of upbringing too – her mother was an actress, mine an artist, and we both had military fathers. And we were just pretty girls living in London in the 60s with all those 60s changes flooding in, the 60s dream, being spotted and brought into films, enjoying free love and all the new ideas for our creative expression. We were suddenly so much freer than our parents who were just bemused by it all. But there was…

I first crossed paths with Sinéad at some point in 1985, when she had just collaborated with The Edge from U2 on a song called Heroine. She came to a party at his house and when she walked into the room, wearing this long cape, it was like a beautiful apparition. Everything stopped. She had a presence that was not just about her beauty. It was deeper than that. And then I heard her sing and it was like: “Wow!”I didn’t see her for a good while after that. Then, in 1993, I was working with the director Jim Sheridan on the…

Michael Rosen. Photograph: Karen Robinson/The ObserverMichael Rosen: ‘He nudged people into seeing the world through the eyes of the oppressed’British author and poetBenjamin was a hero to millions of people all over the world. His mix of poetry, novels, wisdom, humour and sheer presence grabbed us and delighted us. I first saw him when he was starting out in the poetry clubs, dancing a poem about his mother, voicing his poetry in a voice I hadn’t heard before: Brummie-Caribbean. It was an honour and treat to work with…