An ode to the once ubiquitous typewriter

For these enthusiasts, the typewriter is a hallowed instrument

There are good reasons why the computer has replaced the typewriter as the best way to write almost anything. Word processing has proven far better than pounding the keys of a typewriter; computers are faster and make it easier to correct mistakes. Besides, as someone raised on typewriters -- even throughout a good part of my newspaper career -- I can attest to the fact that typing wore you out, although the manual carriage return created a motion that probably cut down on carpal tunnel syndrome, providing a built in motion that required taking at least one hand off the keyboard.

Don't tell any of this to the people in Doug Nichol's documentary, California Typewriter. These typewriter collectors and steadfast users of a now defunct technology believe that nothing surpasses the typewriter for composing written material.

Tom Hanks, for example, talks about his collection of typewriters and tells us how much more he appreciates a typewritten thank-you note than one delivered by email. I don't know why Hanks doesn't handwrite such notes, taking up an even older and more personal technology, the pen. But that's another story.

Much of California Typewriter centers on a Berkeley, Calif., typewriter repair shop owned by Herbert Permillion III, who opened his business in 1981 after spending years working on IBM Selectrics.

Ace repairman, Ken Alexander, who works in Permillion's shop, emerges as one of the documentary's singular voices. Alexander expresses his love for typewriters and talks about the increasing difficulties of repairing them. Replacement parts are vanishing.

We also hear the late Sam Shepard talking about his Swiss-made Hermes 3000 and the hallowed rituals made necessary by using a typewriter, inserting new sheets of paper, for example.

Younger viewers will recognize singer/songwriter John Mayer, another typewriter convert.

Not all typewriter fans are equally respected by purists. Take Jeremy Mayer, who collects typewriters and uses their parts in his sculptures. Desecration, some say, although Mayer also has a trove of spare parts that sometimes helps Alexander in his work.

How serious are typewriter collectors? As committed as the collectors of anything, including someone who paid $210,000 for the Olivetti on which Cormac McCarthy wrote most of his novels.

The history of the typewriter proves fascinating, and the movie thrives on the obsessive charms of its human subjects, qualities that prove infectious even if you're not tempted to start browsing the Internet in search of a machine of your own. The Internet, by the way, plays an instrumental role in helping to save Permillion's business from extinction, an irony that's not lost on anyone.

When it comes to obsession, I, too, am not immune. I found myself browsing various Web sites to see what it would cost to obtain a Smith Corona Clipper or, better yet, one of the Hermes 3000s about which Shepard waxed poetic. Personally, I never much like the IBM Selectric or any other electric typewriters. And, yes, I suppose I could drum up some nostalgia for the days when newsrooms were full of bulky Underwoods and you always seemed to get one that had been so abused that at least one key no longer worked or had the inconsiderate habit of sticking to the paper.

Ah, the good old days.

Gun fire blasts hole in this thriller

For a while, I thought Cold in July was going to be a thriller with something more on its mind than pouring a heaping mound of pulp over an oft-visited thriller landscape. Michael C. Hall plays Richard Dane, a Texas father who shoots an intruder (Dane's trigger finger slips) during a middle-of-the-night burglary. Dane is torn by feelings of guilt and fear, particularly when a man claiming to be the father of the dead intruder (Sam Shepard) shows up seeking revenge. Director Jim Mickle, who co-wrote the screenplay with Nick Damici from a novel by Joe R. Landsdale, puts lots of intriguing elements in play, but increasingly tilts the movie toward outrageous plotting, Texas color (a la the Coen Brothers) and a disconcertingly violent conclusion. Still, the movie features fine acting -- not only from Hall and Shepard, but from Don Johnson who shows up as a quirky private detective who also runs a pig farm. Vinessa Shaw has a nice small turn as Dane's wife, Ann. There's plenty tjim m admire here, but an over-the-top shoot-em-up finale offers the easiest (and least rewarding) sort of satisfaction.

Great cast puts 'Osage' on the map

A family that goes way beyond dysfunctional.

The big-screen version of Tracy Letts's Pulitzer Prize winning play -- August: Osage County -- may not reach the cinematic stratosphere, but it mostly holds it own. Credit several stand-out performances in the movie's large (and talent heavy) ensemble.

Trimmed from three to two hours, the movie version of Osage County also benefits from the tart humor in Letts's screenplay.

Moreover, director John Wells, known mostly for great TV work such as ER and The West Wing, wisely recognizes that his cast and Letts's writing constitute the movie's strongest suit.

A slight alteration to the movie's ending takes a bit of the sting out of Letts's drama, but Wells and cinematographer Adrinao Goldman add at least one dimension that's difficult to capture on stage.

They make it clear that the drama emanates from the flat desolations of the Oklahoma landscape. This sense of place serves as sturdy foundation for a caustic view of an American family steeped in bitter discord.

The story begins when the family's poet father Beverly (Sam Shepard) vanishes from home, leaving his embittered, pill-popping wife Vi (Meryl Streep) to browbeat the three grown daughters she summons in the wake of her husband's unexplained absence.

Julia Roberts's Barbara arrives with her estranged husband (Ewan McGregor) and her teen-age daughter (Abigail Breslin). Julianne Nicholson plays Ivy, the daughter who stayed behind and has become her mother's caretaker. Juliette Lewis portrays Karen, the wayward daughter who brings her fiancé (Dermot Mulroney) with her for the visit.

Additional characters include Vi's Sister Mattie Fae (Margo Martindale); her husband Charles (Chris Cooper); and their grown son, known to the others as Little Charles (Benedict Cumberbatch).

Streep provides the centerpiece for this deranged family table. Her Vi, a woman suffering from mouth cancer, spews vitriol along with cigarette smoke. She's one of those cruel people who views her venomous attacks as necessary examples of truth telling.

In reality, Vi isn't quite so courageous: She's a woman with a mean streak as wide as the Oklahoma flatlands, one of those people who feels cheated by life and refuses to take it lying down.

Sporting a wig that covers Vi's chemo-assaulted hair, Streep gives the kind of showy performance that demands attention, but her's is not the best work in Osage County.

For that, you need to look to look to Martindale, whose Mattie Fae has a totally lived-in feel. The same goes for Cooper: His Charles is given one of the play's more moving moments. In the face of so much craziness, he becomes a spokesman for simple decency.

Equally good are Roberts as the daughter with guts enough to stand up to her mother, and Nicholson, whose character acquires unexpected strength as the movie progresses. Lewis might be the weakest of the sisters, but when the material calls for Karen to have her moment, she delivers.

Misty Upham appears as the Native American housekeeper hired by Beverly to care for Vi. She's used by Letts as the play's one stabilizing presence.

Wells finds touching moments amid the comic clangor, which -- on screen -- tends to be overwhelmed by a slew of late-picture revelations. There's screwed-up, and then there's "too damned screwed up," a condition of which Osage County becomes an unfortunate example.

Still, a lunch scene packs plenty of comic punch, and there's enough fine acting here to keep August: Osage County on the map -- if not to make it one of the year's most highly regarded destinations.

Hard times in Pennsylvania

Despite intense acting, Out of the Furnace doesn't quite make the cut.

Almost every moment in Out of the Furnace -- a brooding working-class drama steeped in Rust Belt realism -- seems amplified in what feels like a strained search for meaning.

Boasting a terrific bad-ass performance by Woody Harrelson, the movie nonetheless seems an ultimately failed attempt to give pulpy material a socially significant boost. Director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart) tries for thematic elevation by garnishing a revenge-oriented drama with woes created by diminished economic opportunity and the psychological suffering of Iraqi war veterans.

Cooper (Crazy Heart) builds his generally grim movie around an intense performance by Christian Bale, who plays Russell Baze, a Pennsylvania steel mill worker and the older brother of Rodney Baze (Casey Affleck), a troubled veteran of four tours in Iraq.

Credited to Brad Ingelsby and Cooper, the screenplay piles on plenty of complications.

Principal among these twists: Russell winds up in prison after a fatal car accident. He was drinking.

Meanwhile, Rodney pleads with a local bookmaker (Willem Dafoe) to arrange a big-money, bare-knuckle fight for him in New Jersey.

As it turns out, the Jersey bare-knuckle scene and a variety of other criminal activities are presided over by Harrelson's Harlan DeGroat, a character cast in the fires of unapologetic evil.

But wait ... there's more:
While he's in jail, Russell's former girlfriend Lena (Zoe Saldana) takes up with a new lover, a sheriff played by Forest Whitaker, who might just as well have found something else to do for all the impact the script allows his character to make.

We also meet Russell's uncle (Sam Shepard), a character who rounds out the cast of hard-working, salt-of-the-earth Pennsylvanians, guys who toed the line, drank their beer, prayed the rosary, asked for nothing and went deer hunting for recreation.

You can tell that a movie is going for high-voltage impact when Dafoe -- no stranger to tough-textured realism -- gives one of the film's more relaxed performances.

There's no reason to fault any of the acting, but Harrelson's frightening performance achieves stand-out prominence.

Harrelson's DeGroat makes his presence known in the movie's opening scene, a brutal encounter that takes place in a drive-in and which calls for DeGroat to ram a hotdog down his date's throat before mercilessly assaulting a good samaritan who tries to intervene in the poor woman's behalf. DeGroat's wearing shorts at the time, a sartorial choice that gives his violence an alarmingly informal air.

It's equally clear that Affleck's Rodney has veered out of control -- albeit in a completely different way. Rodney has no interest in working in a steel mill, has accumulated substantial gambling debts and simmers with rage over lost comrades and memories of war-time carnage.

Cooper and cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi do their best to give the gritty Pennsylvania settings -- steel mills, bars, dreary row houses and abandoned factories -- the kind of polished decay that movies can bring to towns that have seen better days.

Bale's deep-immersion performance doesn't leave much on the table, but Out of the Furnace can't quite transcend revenge impulses that ultimately take over and cheapen a drama that seems to be trying for more.

And try it does. If it were possible to get a hernia from attempting something meaningful, everyone involved in Out of the Furnace would need abdominal surgery. In the end, though, I'm not sure that this isn't a case in which black-and-blue marks outnumber serious insights -- despite all the heavy lifting.