The 9th Hall Of Fame Inductee For Contribution To Female Acting - Julianne Moore

Beginning her film career in 1990, Julianne Moore has been working steadily ever since, making at least one film nearly ever year and notching up over sixty film credits. Indeed, in this year’s line-up of film inductees, she’s a supporting player in both 1998’s The Big Lebowski and 2006’s Children Of Men. Among the reasons that she is acclaimed as one of the most talented actors of her generation is her remarkable range and versatility. With a natural quality and ability to bounce between supporting and leading roles, indie flicks and blockbusters, Moore always gets down to the emotionally raw core of her characters. From The Fugitive to Short Cuts, Safe to The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Boogie Nights to Hannibal, Far From Heaven to The Kids Are All Right, I’m Not There to A Single Man, Chloe to Don Jon, Maps To The Stars to her Oscar-winning performance in Still Alice, Moore’s characters always feel like real people. Now in her fifties, she has also broken down barriers by, as an older woman, continuing to work regularly in prominent roles.

Top 10 Julianne Moore Performances

The 9th Hall Of Fame Inductee Representing Thriller Film - Shadow Of A Doubt (1943) - Alfred Hitchcock

When I was younger, my favorite Pink Floyd album was The Wall, Roger Waters’ rebelliously spirited and operatic passion project. As I have got older, I lean more towards the more moody, meditative and melancholy Wish You Were Here. That same shift in opinion can be applied to Alfred Hitchcock. As anyone interested in self-educating themselves in cinema can attest, Hitchcock’s most notable film as regards it’s cultural legacy is 1960’s Psycho. Now, while I still adore that film and recognize that he made several masterpieces, it is his 1943 picture, Shadow Of A Doubt, that has since claimed the top spot as my favorite Hitchcock. I think part of the appeal that comes with Shadow Of A Doubt is that although it retains Hitchcock’s trademark dash of the macabre, there is something awful familiar about the characters and the world that they inhabit. Coming from a story conceived by Gordon McDonell (Uncle Charlie), the screenwriting team of Alma Reville, Sally Benson and Thorton Wilder ground the film in a small-town American setting. Furthermore, the main characters are a far cry from the stereotypical damsels-in-distress and maniacal villains that even in 1943 were old hat in this genre. ‘Young’ Charlie, played with great intelligence by Teresa Wright, is a precocious teenager, a trope in itself, but one who displays real smarts amidst her warm, idealistic qualities, and has a legitimate developmental arc over the course of the film. Joseph Cotten, in a magnificent performance that takes his everyman charm into sinister territory, creates in ‘Uncle’ Charlie, who may or may not be the Merry Widow Murderer, someone that is calm, measured, controlled and yet possessing a dark edge that is more unnerving than just about any other actor descending into wailing histrionics. Featuring a superb score from Dimitri Tiomkin, tight editing by Milton Carruth and majestically imaginative cinematography from Joseph A. Valentine, this is Hitchcock, with his painstaking preparations and immaculate attention to detail on display, at the peak of his craft. Many others seem to think so too. Unanimously praised upon release, David Mamet named it Hitchcock’s finest film, and the Master Of Suspense himself on several occasions asserted and reiterated that it was his personal favourite of his own works. A deft infiltration of very real, frightening events upon peaceful American suburbia and those who inhabit it.

TCM On Hitchcock's Shadow Of A Doubt

The 10th Hall Of Fame Inductee For Contribution To Screenwriting - Billy Bob Thornton

Although he’s perhaps most well-known as an actor (and to a lesser extent as a musician), the multi-talented Billy Bob Thornton, for many years a struggling artist, literally wrote his own success. Writing and starring in 1992’s One False Move brought him to the attention of many, it was the long gestation and development of his passion project, 1996’s Sling Blade (which he also starring in and directed) which made Thornton, then in his early-forties, one of the hottest new talents in Hollywood. Sling Blade, though an at times challenging film, is a quintessential example of classical storytelling in the poetic vein of Southern Gothic literature. Since then, he has primarily worked in front of the camera, but has an intermittent continuing presence as a writer. Admittedly, there have been mixed results, but nothing can take away from the brilliance of Sling Blade, and I feel that if the stars would align, circumstances coming together, he could do something of equal power. A unique and gifted talent.

How Billy Bob Thorton's Dreams Came Alive

The 9th Hall Of Fame Inductee Representing Horror Film - The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) - Tobe Hooper

Upon it’s initial 1974 release, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was met with a mixture of responses, varying from “despicable” (Linda Gross, Los Angeles Times), to being hailed as the most important horror film since George A. Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead (Patrick Taggart, Austin-American Statesman). Among the most notable aspects of the release is that Hooper was originally seeking the MPAA to give the film, complete and uncut, a PG rating. Not surprisingly, it was originally rated X, before a resubmitted cut version received an R rating. Now, from a technical standpoint the film, with its minimal degree of onscreen gore could pass for a lower certificate, but it is completely understandable in this case that it would be rated higher. In a testament to the film’s lasting power, it remains one of the most outright terrifying films ever made. Overcoming budgetary limitations and all manner of things involved in the tough shoot (namely working sixteen-hour days, seven days a week in humid, hot temperatures over one-hundred degrees Fahrenheit/forty degree Centigrade), Hooper and co created what in many ways is a textbook example of guerrilla filmmaking. Daniel Pearl’s darkly lit camerawork highlights the grotty, grubby grunginess of the film’s overall production design (by art director Robert A. Burns), and mixed together with the frenetic editing of Larry Carroll and Sallye Richardson create a visual assault on the senses. Even the sound design and score by Hooper and Wayne Bell, which mixes together distorted found sound recordings, narration/monologues and all manner of clattering instruments that sound like pots and pans being bashed together, aurally sounds like something emanating from the seven circles of hell. With it’s deft deconstruction of contemporary America on several fronts through the Sawyer family (including the iconic Leatherface) and their victims, it is a work, that in the words of Stephen King, he “would happily testify to its redeeming social merit in any court in the country.” But we can never forget it’s cerebral barrage; King also called a work of “cataclysmic terror;” the late Wes Craven wondered “what kind of Mansonite crazoid” could have created such a thing; banned or censored in over a dozen countries at different points, including the United Kingdom and Ireland, critic Rex Reed called it the most terrifying film he had ever seen.

First Visit...

The 10th Hall Of Fame Inductee For Contribution To Cinematography - Adam Greenberg

Beginning his long career as a DP in 1966, Adam Greenberg (born Adam Grinberg in Krakow, Poland, raised in Tel Aviv) from the mid-sixties and throughout the seventies worked in Israel, most notably the Golan and Globus-produced Lemon Popsicle. After working with Sam Fuller on The Big Red One in 1980, he began working in North America on all manner of genre films throughout the 1980s, most notably The Terminator, Near Dark, Three Men And A Baby and Turner & Hooch, before his greatest success in the early-nineties. Following on from 1990’s smash-hit romance Ghost, he shot James Cameron’s long-awaited sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Greenberg’s work on this film, expertly capturing all of the action, drama and visual effects and unifying them into a single cohesive visual aesthetic, earned him an Academy Award nomination. He would continue to work throughout the nineties and early-2000s, several times again with Arnold Schwarzenegger, but has gradually reduced his work-rate, his last major feature being 2006’s Snakes On A Plane and most recently 2013’s documentary Footsteps In Jerusalem.

The Terminator Tech Noir Scene

The 8th Hall Of Fame Inductee Representing Science-Fiction/Fantasy Film - Children Of Men (2006) - Alfonso Cuarón

Alfonso Cuaron’s 2006 adaptation of P.D. James’ novel, The Children Of Men, has a particularly unique place in my own personal history as an enthusiast of cinema. It is, so far, the only film which has caused me to have a complete shift in opinion. When I first saw it, I was relatively nonplussed. I didn’t get or understand what it was about, felt that the film was all craft and no substance. However, every couple of years, I would end up watching it, and every single time I felt it was a better film, to the point that I have now for some time considered it to be a masterpiece. As I alluded to, there is a tremendous amount of skill in the craft behind the technical achievements in this film. Emmanuel Lubezki’s mastery of the long take is on full display here, which mixed together with the sound quality and the sharp editing from Cuaron and Alex Rodriguez give this a powerful and contemporary feel. Even though it is set in a dystopian future London, this is an urbane landscape that feels eerily familiar, the almost-newsreel style presentation of the piece bringing to mind docudramas like Peter Watkins’ The War Game. But it’s not just a technically sound film, because at the heart of it is a strong, powerful story. Clive Owen, in his greatest screen performance, as Theo, is a sympathetic and relatable reluctant protagonist in his attempts to protect the pregnant Kee, who after two decades of infertility may be humanity’s one glimmer of hope. The sociopolitical implications of their travels across England to provide safe sanctuary for the illegal immigrant against the oppressive government forces are all very prevalent today with the recent demonization of the ‘other’ in the eyes of Western civilization. It is a remarkable and thought-provoking tale.

Children Of Men Opening Scene

The 9th Hall Of Fame Inductee For Contribution To Editing - Milton Carruth

Known for his work for Universal from 1929 to 1966, Milton Carruth was one of the regular go-to guys as far as editing on their lot. Aside from the an oddly prolific couple of years in the mid-1930s as a director (seven films between 1936-37), he racked up over a hundred credits in his thirty-seven year tenure in a wide range of genres. Although plying his craft to just about everything (most notably he cut the silent version of All Quiet On The Western Front in his early days), he became most well known for his work in the horror genre, in particular as the film editor for several of the classic Universal Horror features, including Dracula, The Mummy, Murders In The Rue Morgue, Werewolf Of London, among others. He also worked with Alfred Hitchcock on Shadow Of A Doubt, and while that film has prowess in just about every department, the contribution of Carruth cannot be denied.

"I am... Dracula."