Wisconsin Death Trip (James Marsh 1999)

A rich study of the lives and the presence of death in 19th century America, James Marsh's documentary Wisconsin Death Trip established the British director as a considerable talent almost a decade before the award-winning Man on Wire. Co-financed by HBO (via Cinemax Reel Life) and the BBC, and distributed to limited theatres in 1999 and 2000, I came to the film without knowing (or remembering) its origins. Although crossing over with HBO's documentary work in the late 1990s, as a self-contained film Wisconsin has a lasting effect. Adapted from a book of photographs and stories of the Wisconsin town of Black River Falls in the 1890s, Marsh engages with a culture of death, madness, and its overlaps with the contemporary town.

Narrated by Ian Holm, Marsh builds a historical survey of the town through newspaper extracts, archive photographs and stark, black and white reconstructions and elaborations on accounts. Segmented into seasonal changes, the early promise of the town as a mix of European immigrants and industry gives way to extended poverty, harsh weather conditions and escalating madness and violence. Character vignettes then pick up on several recurring cases, from a woman obsessed with smashing windows, to a child murderer, a former opera star reduced to insanity, and multiple suicides. With Eigil Bryld's black and white reconstructed sequences playing off the stark snow-covered landscape, assisted by low-key interiors and tracking shots, the association between the archive photographs and their careful imitation prefigures the energy later brought by Marsh to Man on Wire. In addition, a soundtrack by DJ Shadow draws on contemporary classical music, including Bach and Schumann, for multiple refrains.

Some criticism can be made though of Marsh's decision to juxtapose the starkly effective 19th century sequences with contemporary material, often shifting to video-tape footage and news reports. The narrative effect works best in producing a tonal comparison between the saturation of death and the present, finding echoes of generational violence, economic hardship and insanity. In stylistic terms though, maintaining the hold of the 19th century fact/fiction blurring might have been more effective, without making connections explicit.

In a broader context Wisconsin reflected the always diverse but consistent quality of HBO's documentary production by the late 1990s under executive producer Sheila Nevins, with the project overseen by James Marsh. Cinemax Reel Life was set up in 1995 to complement HBO's more sensationalistic human interest and occasional prestige specals with more independent, international and occasionally politically challenging work. Connections with the BBC going back to the 1980s were then developed, while HBO maintained a good working relationship with Channel Four during the period and into the 2000s.

Wisconsin is thus both a niche, festival circuit and art-house documentary, but also a contemporary and relevant exploration of extreme human behaviour and pathos, foundational elements of documentary work and by extension HBO's programming trends for character-led, provocative material. Without digressing too far, the success of Wisconsin helped consolidate the documentary division's growing stake in theatrical distribution by the early 2000s, and the intermediary role it would play in both producing and co-financing a wave of multiple award-winning work.

News Round Up

Just a few quick links:

The Guardian's love affair with The Wire continues, as they produce a Wire Re-Up guide covering the series.

HBO continue to dominate the Golden Globes, with 17 television nominations for the 2010 awards. Big Love, True Blood, Hung and Entourage all received nominations, while HBO Films' domination of the Best Film/Miniseries category is maintained by Grey Gardens, Taking Chance and Into the Storm - all films mind you, that I haven't got around to seeing. HBO Films' release slate has been sporadic since the collapse of Picturehouse in 2008, and it seems that a lot of funding has been diverted into 2010's The Pacific, which should premiere in March. HBO are also rerunning Band of Brothers in its entirety as a catch up on the main service. Mad Men and Dexter also filled out Best Drama, with House MD the sole broadcast choice. The nets fared better in Comedy, where 30 Rock and The Office received nominations, while Glee's impact in 2009 was also rewarded. Still haven't seen Modern Family, the final nomination.

And finally, check out Adam Curtis' blog for a singing Aghan hound. It's great - the full video of It Felt Like a Kiss has also been re-uploaded.

Big Night (Stanley Tucci, Campbell Scott 1996)

Another Filmspotting recommendation, 1996's Big Night is a low-budget, simply executed drama that richly connects to its subject material. Directed by actors Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci (who also co-stars), Big Night developed through independent financing and distribution by Rysher Entertainment. Not to bring everything back around to HBO, but Rysher, formerly a syndicator and later international distributor, played an important role in the network's programming in the 1990s. When not exporting many HBO Films around the world, Rysher were notable for boosting international syndication for a package of original series in the mid to late 1990s, including Oz and Sex and the City, and were eventually swallowed up by Paramount.

Back to Big Night though, which focuses on the relationship between Italian immigrant brothers Primo (Tony Shalhoub) and Secondo (Tucci) and their struggling restaurant in 1950s New Jersey. A passionate if somewhat business-resistant chef, the older Primo clashes with Secondo's juggling of bank loans and commercial demands - a customer request for risotto served with spaghetti is met with outrage. Complicating matters is the wild success of a restaurant in the same street run by the charismatic Pascal, which has fully embraced the Americanized version of Italian cuisine that Primo hates.

Both brothers are also engaged in romantic plotlines - Secondo with bank teller Phyllis, and Primo in a nervous romance of flower shop owner Ann. When Pascal promises Secondo a visit from a celebrity singer, the brothers work to prepare a meal that will secure their reputation of the restaurant, and prevent Pascal's offer for them to join him at the club. Presented in meticulous detail, the night itself is a success, despite the non-arrival of the singer, romantic disputes and a dawn fight between the brothers.

Tucci and Joseph Tropiano's screenplay builds a winning narrative structure out of the dynamic between the two brothers, with a focus on Secondo's struggle to reconcile Old World values with commercial demands - ultimately though the film resists moralizing its leads, and instead revels in the spectacle and the bonding of the 'big night' itself. The crisis of the business, followed by the deadline of the 'night', and the parallel romantic/professional plotlines are thus separated into a concluding night that adopts title cards to divide the meal, and shifts from goal-oriented to reflective, with an ambiguous conclusion.

This balance of classical plotting is also helped by regular Abel Ferrara cinematographer Ken Kelsch in maintaining the primary colour palette, extended takes, master shots and minimal tracking. As befitting a film directed by two actors (Scott pops up as a used car salesman), most scenes take place in single shot masters, with minimal cutting and in long shot. A lack of visual unobtrusiveness then enhances single take shots of cooking and preparation, as well as pans through a table dining sequence, and one flourish of Steadicam movement. Relying on its simple but effective structure and style, Big Night is a compact film dominated by great performances, and a labour of independent love for its filmmakers.

Again to return to HBO, Keslch's presence, and the crossover roles of Tucci - who starred for HBO in 1997's Winchell, grew out of a thriving New York independent film scene in the mid 1990s - HBO particularly benefited through NYC Productions, with Ferrrara and Kelsch shooting a segment of Subway Stories in 1997. The circle of filmmakers like Spike Lee, Ferrara and a community of documentary producers around Manhattan and the theatre district had a major influence on HBO's programming in the late 1990s, and probably deserves more attention in itself as a collection of great, independently New York flms and television crossovers,

The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke 2009)

Michael Haneke's Palme D'Or winning The White Ribbon sees the director sustain both his stylistic virtuosity and control of tone following 2005's Cache and remake experiment Funny Games (2007). Set within a small German village several months before the outbreak of WWI, The White Ribbon enters into, but restrains the tensions below the surface of the community, producing another exercise in mixing rigorous style and ambiguous interpretation.

Haneke opens with an accident for the village doctor, thrown from his horse by a trip wire. With retrospective voiceover narration provided by the local schoolteacher, the rest of the film then deals with the consequences of a set of further, increasingly violent events that centre on the family of 'The Baron' (most of the lead cast are unnamed). Although disputes over the death of a farmer's wife seem to prove the catalyst, responsibility gradually shifts onto a group of schoolchildren. While the schoolteacher's suspicions over their guilt expands into the climax, the violence is offset by his tentative romance with the 17 year old Eva, a former nanny to the Baron's family.

Although the film is layered with violent attacks and undercurrents of abuse throughout the village, for the most part they remain on the borders of the frame, either literally behind closed doors or focused through the aftermath. What stays behind is a a blank surface of village rituals and hierarchies, and the almost incestuous edge of interior families. Like the attacks, Haneke provides snapshots of sex scenes, more often framed from a distance. The organisation of village life, segmented into autumn and winter, then provides a backdrop that is somewhat detached from time, more Victorian in its gas-lit homes and carriages than the late-Edwardian setting. Christian Berger's cinematography is key here to imposing a classical balance and pacing to the town. Colour photography was apparently converted to black and white, creating a sharp monochrome of back-lit figures, gas-lit interiors and highly defined wide shots, with extended takes and a carefully staged concluding tableaux shot. With graceful tracking shots and minimal scoring, Haneke and Berger create a compelling, hypnotic style.

Within this Haneke is arguably then able to incorporate his thematic interests in both contextualizing and detaching the psychology and impact of violence. Like Cache's struggle to resolve both a personal and historical heritage of violence and exploitation, The White Ribbon explores how these are absorbed into the rituals of village life. Crisis points are created, but resolution is deferred - the attacks themselves draw less radical change than a young farmer's vandalism of the Baron's crops, which leads to the suicide of his father - the potential identification of guilt by the schoolteacher is anticlimactic, and quickly de-prioritized by the announcement of the war. The systematic engagement with crime and punishment is instead replaced by smaller moments of character emotion, whether a sister explaining the inevitability of death to her younger brother, or the pastor's daugher murdering his pet bird.

On a blunter psychological level The White Ribbon becomes a study in the inarticulation of sex and violence, framed through its compressed world. However, it's also occasionally humorous and sweet, particularly around the school teacher's romance with Eva, from dances through to country carriage rides, and awkward meetings with her parents. His voiceover narration, covering the interaction between his time in the village, the romance and the mysterious attacks, remains observational, anchoring major shifts in time without committing to deeper contextualization.

Here the pre-WWI setting, with its potential for turning the village tale into a loss of personal and communal innocence, is too abstracted, and rooted in the historical rituals of the town to become straightforward allegory. As a result The White Ribbon is neither a metaphor for the underlying corruption in the build-up to the war, or a more confrontational glimpse into abuse - in keeping with the detachment of Funny Games, the lasting effect of the film is to offer its subject as both logical in interpretation- violence emerging from repression and historical abuse - and environmental in a way that plays off deferred plotting and meticulous stylization to resist a clear statement either way.

All the Pieces Matter: The Wire and the HBO Crisis Documentary

This paper was originally intended for a conference on The Wire in November - however, as I was unable to attend, it never developed beyond a roughish draft. Seeing that I haven't blogged about HBO for a while, I thought I'd put it up in an expanded format. It's not completely polished, or footnoted, but touches on some of the key ideas of my thesis (which is always good practice).

All the Pieces Matter: The Wire and the HBO Crisis Documentary

"I think you need context to seriously examine anything" - Augustus "Gus" Haynes, The Wire

From 2002 to 2008 pay cable network HBO saw drama The Wire achieve widespread critical success, helping to reinforce the brand slogan 'It's Not TV: It's HBO'. Variously discussed for its socio-political precision, dense ensemble-serial narrative and its distinctive commitment to tackling urban America, the African-American underclass and the war on drugs, The Wire has rightly been hailed as one of the best, if not the best American drama of the 2000s.

In this paper I would like to both recognize but also re-contextualize The Wire within a longer history of HBO's original programming, demonstrating some key continuities that suggest some consequences for reading it within a specific zeitgeist for the network and television history in general. While the show connects to a range of HBO programs, particularly series, miniseries, films and documentaries, here I will focus on a network cycle of 'urban crisis' documentaries from approximately the 1980s dealing with many of the same themes in an alternative context. How then can we propose reasons for why The Wire was a suitable commissioning choice for HBO, and how can we view social commentary as a thematic over an extended period of history?

'We Are a Blockbuster Movie Channel': HBO in the 1970s and 1980s

From its launch in 1972 as a pioneering pay cable service delivering Hollywood films, sports and other events, first by microwave and then satellite from 1975, HBO's original programming developed slowly. Without a clear reason for diversifying, much of the network's early originals as a prototypical, uncertain service relied on extensions of its 'box office' formula - stand-up comedians, variety shows, and other 'live' events that provided adult entertainment in a luxury setting. From 1979, HBO began to investigate original programming as a more standardized part of the network schedule, particularly in the context of increased competition from other networks and video, as well as a move to 24 hour programming in 1982.

Documentaries formed the first major experimental genre for the network, with young producer Sheila Nevins working on a high quantity of mostly 'filler' material from 1979, producing up to 40 low-budget projects a year by 1982. These were initially wide-ranging and driven by an uncertainty over how to define a particular form or style, and often worked as magazine collaborations with HBO's parent publisher Time Inc. In 1979 HBO achieved a breakthrough with Time Was, a more heavily promoted historical review of the 20th century.

During the early 1980s the annual quantity of documentaries began to encourage movements towards a greater philosophy, mode of production and style. HBO head programmer and later CEO (1984-1995) Michael Fuchs argued here that 'we are not the public airwaves. There's no mandate to do public service. I think we have an obligation to do interesting, different, provocative programming - original programming. We are a blockbuster movie channel, top movies like Jaws without commercials' (1981). In this way, HBO documentaries set out primarily to entertain through classical, character-driven storytelling, rather than educate or advance a consistent political attitude. Nevins suggested here that 'our basic job is to entertain...people are paying for these documentaries, so we've got to make them entertaining' (1982).

By 1984 ambitions for original programming had spread to films, series and anthologies, with mixed success, but the high quantity of relatively low-cost documentaries allowed for more refined projects, and that year Bridget Potter, who succeeded Nevins as head of documentaries (Nevins left between 1982-1985, and returned in 1986 to re-take over documentaries), developed banner series America Undercover. Tackling controversial themes, but through personal politics, and a stylistic mix of verite shooting, reconstruction and talking heads, America Undercover set what Potter described as an 'entertaining' format capable of working as both social commentary and universal, character and psychologically-driven 'point of view' narratives.

The first of these, Murder: No Apparent Motive (Imre Horvath) established conventions for one hour instalments, treating crime as both a topical concern and an opportunity to explore the depths of psychology, effects on characters and communities, while necessarily leaving political debates open as observation, rather than commentary. This approach was influenced by Potter and her documentary team picking up stories from newspapers and magazines, and using an increasingly stable repertory of East Coast filmmakers to produce them, leading to a consistent monthly format.

Although early efforts were mixed, with projects like What Sex Am I? (Lee Grant 1984) rubbing against studies of toxic waste disposal, drug use and teenage sex, the format had gained a steady audience by 1985. Various critics have since discussed the potency of America Undercover as taking lurid material and contextualizing it as social commentary, providing a balance of pleasure and quality television. In 1984 though, the main concern was finding a low-cost solution to regular programming, responding to scheduling demands for R-rated entertainment material within the wider context of slowing cable subscriptions and competition.

Similarly important by the mid 1980s was the consolidation of a small team of programmers at HBO, who, with a much more limited mandate for production than broadcast networks, but more than rival cable, worked together to develop programs and forms as flexibly encompassing different genres and formats - Bridget Potter in particular crossed between documentaries, films and series, while Fuchs oversaw originals as CEO. This rare consistency, aided by the self-contained reliability of the pay cable schedule, would last into the next decade and beyond, and allowed HBO to steadily refine programming strategies and forms over time, particularly as the network became more centralized by the end of the decade.

This strategy proved popular during a time of institutional uncertainty for HBO, but by 1986 had begun to spin-off more prestige-driven projects following the same format, but tailored to broader award potential. A landmark here was 1986's Down and Out in America, an America Undercover special reconfigured as a theatrical release that went on to win HBO's first Oscar that year. Produced by Lee Grant and Joseph Feury, it explores urban decline and poverty under Reaganomics - pointedly critical and topical in its use of censorship freedoms to attack American poverty and the city, it would however retain the mix of controversial content and character point of view driven, ensemble structuring, as well as an open-ended conclusion. The New York Times commented here that 'statistics don't matter here; it's the passion the counts'.

'Another Kind of War Going on in America'

By 1989 HBO were beginning to further expand and get a grip on their original programming strategies, and aside from documentaries, had established norms and key formal and stylistic conventions that spread certain themes across multiple programming - the socially motivated character and psychological study was one of the most important of these for winning over critics and attracting quality audiences, and through the early 1990s documentaries would continue to underpin experimentation and refinement of this trend. Significant here was 1989's A Life of Crime, a Jon Alpert verite study of inner-city gang warfare in New Jersey - driven by continued concerns with the under-belly, or Undercover of American life, it was also informed by Potter's belief that 'we have an enormous interest in the underclass, where there's another kind of war going on in America' (1989).

This 'war on America', tied to the style of America Undercover, and embodied through the urban crisis documentary, thus provided a potent mixture for recycling and updating programming. Essentially here topical, most often liberal material could be used to brand HBO as a socially responsible, 'quality' network, while containing redundancies of point of view, psychology and ambiguous endings, effectively allowing for continued variation and re-adaptation, reflecting television production's demand for delaying closure and reproducing story problematics into familiar areas. Speaking several years later, Nevins provides a useful snapshot of this thinking, arguing that '....we are interested in the depths of the human psyche...not social issues, but personal experiences or suffering...' (1996). In this way, social and political institutions could change and possibly even improve, but alienation and personal crises provided universal themes that were consistently applicable.

In the early 1990s the 'urban crisis' documentary thus proved one of HBO's most durable genre cycles, and would indeed underpin a key move by the network into appealing to African-American demographics, a result of synergy with owner Time Warner, and co-productions for niche-themed black programming on Fox and other networks. Between 1992 and 1994 this saw a wave of programs that aimed to take the 'crisis' form and apply it to inner-city African-American life, from 'live' material in stand-up comedy Def Comedy Jam, into more avant-garde anthologies like science-fiction themed Cosmic Slop, crossing back and forth with non-network efforts like Roc for Fox, a working-class sitcom set in Baltimore. Other examples included Laurel Avenue, a 1993 miniseries exploring the lives of a family in decaying inner-city Minneapolis, as well as Strapped, a film debating gun crime in Brooklyn.

Through the mid 1990s documentaries continued their key role in making urban crisis a winning program strategy for HBO, including Gang War: Bangin' in Little Rock, a pessimistic 1994 project observing the failure of police-work to control the drug war in the Kansas City of Little Rock. Similar projects, including High on Crack St: Lost Lives in Lowell and Memphis PD: War on the Streets in 1995 and 1996 continued these trends, finding both human emotion and topical content within clear formal constructions.

'It's Not TV: It's HBO'

Which brings us up to the period in HBO's history that has been viewed as a key moment in questions of American television's maturity, beginning from roughly 1996 with the re-branding of the network as the home for quality television, and an innovative force providing creator-led, formally and generically significant drama and comedy. Through the late 1990s though many of the formal and thematic traits made by earlier programming, as well as scheduling and distribution strategies, arguably underpinned this success.

To take the urban crisis documentary, conventions for institutional study, ensemble casting and verite styles clearly influenced, and in some cases overlapped on the level of personnel with prison series Oz from 1997, regularly cited as HBO's first major success under their new slogan. Similarly, the success of crime-driven, but also psychologically and family-oriented material overlapped with the development of The Sopranos, with specials on gangsters, New Jersey crime and psychological crises preceding and following the series.

By 2000 the urban crisis documentary was still a regular part of the schedule, from 1998's Thug Life in DC to 1999's inner-city set community drama City at Peace. In 2000 The Corner, The Wire's ancestor in terms of its David Simon production, West Baltimore setting and extended sociological study of addiction, helped ground many of these elements in what was becoming a new set of conventions for HBO's programs, particularly around more extended serial narratives, the thematically rich use of family melodrama and greater psychological focus (see elsewhere on this blog for posts on The Corner).

The Wire's premiere in June 2002 can therefore be viewed both as part of a period of financial investment and aggressive marketing by HBO of 'quality' drama, and part of a much longer tradition and set of formal and generic strategies taken by the network for developing a consistent body of original work within a consistent set of problems - producing distinctive quality adult programming outside of censorship and commercials, but also re-using that material repeatedly within both the network schedule and new forms of distribution. However, The Wire was also a development from these approaches, in line with historical turns towards enhanced relevance in the wake of 9/11 for HBO.

Using an ensemble cast, a mix of verite and more classical work - handheld to telephoto lens shooting, rack focuses and extended takes for interiors, et al, The Wire arguably takes the urban crisis documentary's key conventions, and complicates them for HBO within the individual vision of the show. Here then the pessimism and the open-ended approach to social crisis is expanded onto a much larger institutional scale within Baltimore but still with an underlying mistrust of change in favour of character experience, point of view and the cyclical failure of change and reform. Indeed, The Wire might be viewed as a thematic hybrid of multiple historical documentary cycles for HBO, including addiction, the educational system, the drug war and police-work.

Conclusions

Although changes and continuities would continue from 2002 in various ways (there's not enough space here to discuss the broad impact of 9/11 on HBO), The Wire's success can more broadly be understood within a cyclical, frequently straightforward approach to network strategies - the urban crisis documentary evolved out of specific historical problems, and offered a productive solution for HBO during the 1980s that underpinned award success and the development of consistent programming. Its formal continuity then allowed the network to expand and target new African-American audiences in a consistent way through the 1990s, before anchoring quality original branding in prime-time from the late 1990s to the present. This is not to say that The Wire is derivative in any way, but rather that its autonomous success was hedged by HBO against 20 odd years of successful forms and themes that had offered both innovation and extended continuity.

Moreover, throughout this time the original programming team remained remarkably consistent from the 1980s, with Sheila Nevins in particular having been involved in HBO's documentaries on and off for 30 years as of 2009 - other programmers at HBO in 2002, including Chris Albrecht, Carolyn Strauss and Colin Callender, had also been at the network for close to 20 years when The Wire was commissioned. It is perhaps fair to say than that this experience helped motivate The Wire as a highly marketable show displaying HBO's support of creative talent, but also negotiated risk against tried and trusted methods. The documentary connection here is also just one, albeit major, influence on The Wire, with multiple other strands connecting to and then from the series.

Here then a closer level of historical context and formal analysis of HBO's programming history arguably provides continuities sustained beyond the multiple industrial changes experienced by the network from the 1980s to the 2000s. In this way it is also possible to add some caution to the notion of radical media change that has accompanied the 1990s and 2000s - things change, but in many ways also stay the same, and will probably continue to do so into the future.

Reflectionist studies of HBO's engagement with contemporary culture might then consider how HBO's approach to politics has always been a contributing factor to dominant forms of classically-oriented, economic storytelling forms that adapt, rather than revise trusted methods of social crisis structured as point of view. That these came to be particularly significant in the late 1990s and early 2000s for defining HBO's innovative programming might then suggest how a confluence of historical and industrial circumstance enhanced their impact, but not their underlying structure. The documentary ties also suggest how formal construction of television drama for HBO has always been based in an exchange of internal forms, blurring and emphasizing the importance to contextualize the network's major successes within a larger inter-generic system.

Some recent HBO documentaries reflect this, from Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags, a study of a declining inner-city garment community, to The Last Truck: The Closing of a GM Plant, a further examination of community and personal effects of widespread institutional change. To follow Gus Haynes, frustrated reporter at The Baltimore Sun in The Wire's fifth season, sometimes context is a good thing for thinking about television history and innovation.

Paranormal Activity (Oren Peli 2007)

Paranormal Activity has been arguably the marketing success of 2009, converting its ultra-low $15,000 (approx) budget into a current box office of $100 million plus. A sequel is in the works, and director/writer Oren Peli has a deal for feature Area 51. So far, so Blair Witch Project, and Paranormal has indeed followed the 1999 film's template for viral marketing, internet buzz and a limited to wide release strategy. Despite the considerable word of mouth, and positive reviews from top critics (including Peter Bradshaw and Roger Ebert), I still found it a disappointing experience.

Maybe it was something to do with seeing it in a multiplex on a Thursday afternoon with a tiny audience, but despite some inventive moments, Paranormal fell flat. Billed as true events 'found' and replayed, it focuses on Katie and Micah, a young San Diego couple investigating a possible haunting of their suburban home. With the film digitally by Micah, an early introduction of the couple, Katie's worries and general fooling around with the camera leads to an escalating series of nighttime events. Bracketed by a visit from a psychic, the fixed bedroom camera records doors opening, crashes and a worsening realization of Katie's targeting by a demon. The mixed disbeleif of the opening half then gives way to claustrophobic terror for the couple, building to an abruptly cut climax.

The 'found' element of Paranormal provides an economically structured, unfussy narration and style, establishing through Micah the scope of shooting, from mirror shots to handheld carrying around the home. Peli thus does well to frame the space of the house, as well as setting up a structure of nights and a bottom of screen timecode that accelerates and fixes on particular moments. Unlike Blair Witch's immediacy, other sequences allow Micah to review and isolate visitations on his laptop. With the entire film shot within the home and its swimming pool, the repetition and variation of camera positions carries the tension. Simple effects such as doors opening and closing and lights switching on and off, use the mounted camera to direct the viewer's gaze to under-lit backgrounds and events while the couple sleep. In addition, Micah's handheld work allows for point of view scanning of dark corners and underlit rooms.

Taken together, Paranormal is simply and effectively structured, with chemistry between its leads and a mostly well-thought out range of potential scares from its restricted location. However, too often it feels like a well-made student film, offering the most obvious solutions to its premise and deferring plot and character development to economy. Similarly, while its verite style implies a loose, unstructured filter on the haunting, Peli's form is fairly conventional, using the nighttime recordings to balance daytime reactions. Where this falls down though is in the set-up and resolution of plotting - the initial problem and solution of discovering the haunting gives way to a middle third reacting to escalating events and complications, but stops short of convincingly contextualizing and offering resolution to the building tension.

Of course, like Blair Witch, the substitution of a comprehensive final act for an open-ended climax fulfills the marketing promise of the framing narration of the found footage. In practice though the progression of events, and the contrivances that prevent the couple from leaving the house, reduces any tension to some familiar scares - the noises coming from above the ceiling, a sudden burst of unexplainable horror at the climax. Paranormal is a weaker film than Blair Witch though, partly because it substitutes the atmosphere of its woodland shooting for the home. The shift from domestic comfort into horror, the lynchpin of suburbia haunted house films from The Amityville Horror to Poltergeist, doesn't necessarily translate to the immediacy of the digital format. So much of Paranormal's success here depends on building and sustaining the mood of the interior with limited practical effects, and without engaging this at an early stage, becomes straightforward and predictable.

A better use of confined space and 'found' digital footage was the Spanish picture Rec (2007), which used the motivation of a news crew covering a fire station that becomes the centre of a viral attack. Drawn out scares are substituted for violent bursts of action, distortion and night-vision shooting - perhaps than the blend of digital and 'haunted house' kinetics is more sustainable when amped up, rather than toned down. Ultimately Paranormal Activity's success came down to whether it could unsettle, and despite enjoying some of the ingenuity of Peli's direction, it never quite tipped over for me.

An Education (Lone Scherfig 2009)

Widely celebrated, Lone Scherfig's An Education has steadily built up a critical reputation this year that should translate to a strong showing in 2010's award season. Adapted from Lynn Barber's memoir by author Nick Hornby, the Danish Scherfig came to the film from a background in television, as well as the family study Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself (2002). Co-developed by BBC Films, it has since been distributed in the US by Sony Pictures Classics. I went into An Education with high expectations, and was rewarded with a richly constructed coming of age tale built around a star-making lead performance by Carey Mulligan, and Hornby's script.

Hornby's novels and their screen adaptations, from Fever Pitch to About a Boy, have all arguably depended on the exploration of passionate, if somewhat isolated characters pushed to make difficult mid-life or adult transitions. The arrested adolescence of Paul, Rob and Will in Fever Pitch, High Fidelity and About a Boy is varied through the teenage struggle of Marcus in the latter. Making similar life-changing decisions also shaped the ensemble narratives of How to be Good and Long Way Down, while more recently, 2007's Slam saw Hornby delve into teenage culture. Like Hornby's love of the transformative power of pop music, his best work has seen him take simple stories of coming of age, break-ups and redemption, investing them with wit and rounded characters.

In taking on Barber's memoir of life as a girl approaching adulthood in early 1960s Britain, these strengths find an ideal balance in its focus on the trials of 'an education'. Mulligan plays Jenny, a 16 year old in early 1960s London whose life has become structured by her parents around winning a place at Oxford University. Meeting the thirtysomething David, Jenny's desire for independence sees her drawn into a fast-paced lifestyle of parties and cultural trips shared with David's friends Danny and Helen. Despite reservations over the petty theft and schemes that support their lifestyle, Jenny chooses to distance herself from her parents and school, before suffering the break-down in the glamour and missed opportunities of the relationship.

Jenny's story is framed by the skilfully played transformation of Mulligan from a schoolgirl fascinated by a just out of reach intellectual culture given to throwing French phrases into conversation, to a reflective figure confident in a newfound recognition of purpose. There's an inevitability to the reveal of David's manipulation and weaknesses, and the realization that Jenny is forced to make over fantasy and future, but without moving into a broad moral lesson. An emphasis is instead placed on a world where what either future would mean is uncertain - Jenny berates her parents, an excellent Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour, for being just as caught up in David's romance as her.

The resignation and inability to explain the lasting benefits of higher education for a young woman in early 1960s Britan is also presented as a limited, but optimistic choice. Initially reading the frustrations of English teacher Miss Stubs (Olivia Williams) as a failure of ambition and risk, in contrast to the hedonistic expression of David, Danny and Helen's lifestyle, Jenny comes to re-orient herself around the greater challenges and more uncertain, but potentially richer rewards of higher education. Like the best coming of age stories, An Education is then neither about the painful journey to success, but an understanding of the relative risk and potential of either choice.

The comparatively narrow future as an ambitious young woman that Jenny opts for in 1961 therefore no less universal than the similar risks taken by Hornby's characters in committing to fragile family set-ups, marriages and careers, fully aware but accepting of their unpredictability. This is not to say that An Education or Hornby's work are inherently conservative, but rather that they suggest a complicated optimism beyond world-weary cynicism. Structured around its excellent ensemble cast, An Education's transitions between the dual drabness and glamour of early 1960s London, supported by flourishes into Paris and Cambridge, as well as restricted contemporary pop, clearly establish it as one of the most rewarding films of the year.