Tag: Tom Hanks
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Courage & Camaraderie in ‘Band of Brothers’
Band of Brothers, the 2001 Tom Hanks-produced HBO miniseries that dramatized the history of Easy Company paratroopers throughout World War II, was a formative viewing experience for me, especially on the heels of Saving Private Ryan. That was as a youngster interested in history and World War II, and as the grandson of a veteran […]
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Little Book of Typewriters
I’m a little tardy on this, but I wanted to share what my wife got me for Father’s Day. After a great deal of secret preparations, she presented a one-of-a-kind Little Book of Typewriters for me and our son: The first page includes a scan of something we got from Tom Hanks in reply to […]
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The Post
Ready Player One took my esteem for Spielberg down a notch, but The Post—made after Ready Player One but released before it—has elements of his best work, even if it doesn’t rise above the sum of its parts. Generally it’s standard Spielberg, with old-school liberal and institutionalist views on the press, akin to Lincoln in […]
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Tom Hanks Goes Postal
Arriving home after a long weekend in Asheville, I opened our mailbox and saw a letter addressed to me from Playtone, Tom Hanks’ company. Oh shit, I said out loud. I’d typed and sent him a short letter a few weeks ago about my photo of his book and to thank him for being a great ambassador […]
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Tom Hanks, Olympia, and Me
I had the pleasure of seeing a photo of mine get the Ken Burns treatment on CBS Sunday Morning’s story this weekend about Tom Hanks, his new book, and his love of typewriters: One of my colleagues got an advance copy of Hanks’ book at a library conference back in June specifically because she knew […]
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The People’s Machine: On ‘California Typewriter’
As was the case with Tom Hanks’s new typewriter-inspired short story collection, I was the easiest mark in the world for the new Doug Nichol documentary California Typewriter, which profiles the titular typewriter repair shop in Berkeley and the wider place of the typewriter in modern culture. Though I’ve been anticipating the film for a while, I […]
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‘Uncommon Type’ by Tom Hanks – a typecast review
It’s fitting that my very first typecast is a review of “Uncommon Type: Some Stories”, a book of typewriter-inspired short stories by Tom Hanks (out October 2017).
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One Year in the Revolution
Tom Hanks, the most famous typewriter enthusiast in the world, couldn’t be a better ambassador for the field. Whether in a podcast or film or newspaper, he tells the Good News with his trademark charming gravitas. Though I’m sure longtime collectors wince at the thought of prices rising with such high-profile boosterism, it’s ultimately good […]
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Pruning The Rosebushes: What Not To Share
There’s a scene in Saving Private Ryan when Matt Damon’s Pvt. Ryan and Tom Hanks’ Capt. Miller sit and chat, waiting for the impending German offensive to hit their French town. Ryan’s three brothers had recently died and he can’t remember their faces. The Captain tells him to think of a specific context, something they’d shared […]