Spellbound (2002 film)

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Spellbound

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Jeffrey Blitz
Produced by Jeffrey Blitz
Ronnie Eisen
Sean Welch
Written by Jeffrey Blitz
Starring Harry Altman
Angela Arenivar
Ted Brigham
April DeGideo
Neil Kadakia
Nupur Lala
Emily Stagg
Ashley White
Music by Daniel Hulsizer
Editing by Yana Gorskaya
Distributed by ThinkFilm
Release date(s) 2002
Running time 97 min.
95 min. (Canada)
Country  United States
Language English
Official website
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Spellbound is a 2002 documentary that was directed by Jeffrey Blitz. The film follows eight competitors in the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Documentary Feature; Yana Gorskaya's editing won the ACE Eddie award for best editing of documentary.

Contents

Spellers

The spellers were Harry Altman, Angela Arenivar, Ted Brigham, April DeGideo, Neil Kadakia, Nupur Lala, Emily Stagg and Ashley White. As they appear from left to right on the DVD's cover:

Neil Kadakia

Neil (as speller # 139) missed "hellebore" in the bee to get ninth place. Other words Neil spelled include: encephalon, desecration, mercenary, Darjeeling, hypsometer and hellebore (spelled incorrectly as "helebore")

Emily Stagg

Emily Stagg (speller # 148) was sponsored by the New Haven Register in New Haven, Connecticut and spelled: seguidilla, disclaimant, kookaburra, viand, apocope, brunneous, clavecin (spelled incorrectly as "clavison").

Ashley White

Ashley White (speller 149) represented The Washington Informer(a false tabloid magazine) in Washington, DC in the bee. Following Ashley's teenage pregnancy (she was actually 18) , a marketing consultant who had seen the movie managed to rally support from other viewers of the documentary to help Ashley into Howard University. [1] The proctor of the Washington Informer regional spelling bee featured in the film is Mac McGarry.

April DeGideo

April DeGideo, who lives in Ambler, Pennsylvania, participated in the 1998 and 1999 bees, in the latter of which she placed third, representing the Times Herald of Norristown, Pennsylvania. April graduated in 2007 from New York University with a degree in Journalism. She was speller # 61 and spelled the following words:

  • terrene (spelled incorrectly as "terrine")

Harry Altman

Many critics who reviewed Spellbound singled out Altman (speller # 8) as its most interesting "character". Roger Ebert wrote that he "has so many eccentricities that he'd be comic relief in a teenage comedy... He screws his face up into so many shapes while trying to spell a word that it's a wonder the letters can find their way to the surface". He went to the Academy for Engineering and Design Technology in Hackensack, New Jersey. He enrolled in the University of Chicago in autumn 2005. He missed "banns" in the bee featured in the film and spelled these words:

  • cephalalgia (Harry laughed when the judge described this word's definition as "a pain in the head")
  • banns (on which he spent more than five minutes contorting his face; Harry was reminded several times to face forward and finish the word. He misspelled it as "bands").

Angela Arenivar

Angela Arenivar is a former student of Texas A&M University. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish in May 2007. Arenivar is currently attending graduate school at University of New Mexico to earn a Master of Arts in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese. She hopes to become a university-level professor. Arenivar spent the first half of 2006 studying abroad through Texas A&M at the University of Salamanca in Salamanca, Spain.

Angela, who was speller # 85, missed the word "heleoplankton". The words she spelled are listed below:

Nupur Lala

See also: Nupur Lala

Nupur Lala was the champion of the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee (as speller # 165), spelling "logorrhea" to win. She joined University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 2003 to study brain and cognitive sciences and pre-medical studies. Nupur won the bee against David Lewandowski, a speller from Indiana who misspelled "opsimath." All of the words she spelled were:

Ted Brigham

Ted Brigham was attending medical school in Kansas City, Missouri (2007) before passing away in December 2007. [1] From Lebanon, Missouri in 1999. Represented the Lebanon Daily Record, based in the same town. One of the more notable stories from his experience is the congratulations posted by students on the marquee in front of his high school in which "champ" was misspelled as "chapm". He was speller # 243.

Other notable spellers

  • George Thampy was speller # 245 in the bee and was mentioned several times within the film. He misspelled "kirtle" as "curtle" for third place, tying with April DeGideo. Thampy eventually won the 2000 national bee.
  • David Lewandowski finished second place in the spelling bee, spelling "opsimath" as "opsomath". After David's mistake, Nupur spelled "logorrhea" to win the competition.
  • Allyson Lieberman was originally slated to be featured as one of the spellers in the documentary, but her clips were ultimately left out of the film; the scene involving her can be found in the special features of the DVD. The youngest contestant in the entire 1998 bee, she misspelled "purblind".
  • Frances Taschuk and Ann Foley are shown in the final set of scenes prior to the last round of the spelling bee. Frances misspells "acoelous" and Ann "quinquevir".
  • Vinay Krupadev is in a scene involving Harry's mother feeling "sorry for the boy from Texas who got 'yenta'". She was referring to Vinay, and his pronunciation of "yenta" is shown in the film. He eventually spelled it "yente".
  • Andy Cherolis from Carmel, IN misspelled "pandisocracy" (government by the people) as "pandasocracy" (government by the panda).

References

  1. ^ www.kansascity.com

See also

External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spellbound_(2002_film)"

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