TV Guide: Peter Medak

Listing: The Socratic Method

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 14:00:00 +0000

Sat Sep 6 02:00 PM USA A 38-year-old mentally ill woman (Stacy Edwards) has a pulmonary embolism, something a 38-year-old shouldn't have. This intrigues House, so much that he actually wants to meet her (not just treat her condition): “You won't talk to patients because they lie, but give you somebody who doesn't know what reality is...,” Wilson tells him, his voice trailing off. Knowing the woman's reality all too well is her teen son (Aaron Himelstein), who supports her much more than she supports him.

Video: Krays, The

Video Detective — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 07:19:55 +0000

Peter Medak directed this fact-based drama, chronicling the lives of the infamous Kray Brothers, notorious celebrities in 60s London. The Krays were twin gangsters who ruled London's stylish East End club scene, staking out their territory by committing the most violent crimes imaginable, preferring to perform the most torturous acts themselves. The film stars Gary Kemp and Martin Kemp, founding members of the pop group Spandau Ballet, as Ronald and Reginald Kray. The film opens as their mother Violet Kray (Billie Whitelaw) recalls a dream in which she is a swan from which two beautiful babies have hatched. She can't tell if the swans are angels or demons, but the film soon answers that question for her. Brought up in London's East End in the 1930s, Ronald and Reginald Kray are raised in the resentful world of Violet, who is hateful of her lot in life and bitter at the control men have in running the world (Housework is a lethal business, she says). The twins react to each other almost telepathically and they

Video: Let Him Have It

Video Detective — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 07:11:52 +0000

The Derek Bentley Case has been an uneasy blight on the British legal system since the early 1950s. Two young, frightened boys were caught by police trying to break into to a building. One of the boys had a gun. When the policeman reached out to the youth to turn over the gun, his friend shouted Let him have it, and the policeman was killed by a gun blast. Whether the boy understood Let him have it to mean he should turn over the gun or to kill the police officer has been debated ever since. But the result was the 19-year-old boy was executed for the crime -- only to be posthumously exonerated in 1953. In this dark and biting film by Peter Medak, the life of Derek Bentley (Chris Eccleston) that led up to the crime is recreated in pitiful detail, as well as the ensuing trial and execution. The story begins in 1952, when the likable Bentley is released from reform school. Bentley is an impressionable young man who returns home to his loving family -- his parents (Tom Courtenay and Eileen Atkins) and sister (C

Video: Changeling, The

Video Detective — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 23:07:57 +0000

Peter Medak's The Changeling is among a handful of films, including The Haunting (1963), Ghost Story (1981), and Lady in White (1988), that have successfully recreated the intimate, drawing-room atmosphere of supernatural horror fiction. After his wife and daughter are killed in a snowbound car accident, classical composer John Russell (George C. Scott) relocates from New York to Seattle to teach at his alma mater. Looking for a quiet place to rest and continue writing music, he is referred Claire Norman (Trish Van Devere) at the Seattle Historical Preservation Society. Claire shows John a large, sparsely furnished estate in the outlying countryside. He takes the house, appreciating its remoteness and the solitude it might afford, and diverts himself by renovating and settling in. He even starts to compose, putting aside his older work in favor of a new, sentimental piece for the piano. It is not long, however, before he begins having nightmares about the accident that killed his wife and daughter. Possibly b

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TV Guide — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 15:45:54 +0000

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