Word: spellbound
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This may go some way toward explaining the unusually large amount of attention documentaries are receiving this summer. There are three among the 25 top-grossing movies now in theaters. ThinkFilm is a distributor of Spellbound, about contestants in a national spelling bee, which has grossed more than $2.6 million--a huge haul for a documentary. Spellbound follows the fortunes of eight kids, of very different backgrounds, from their victories in local spelling bees all the way to their participation in the nationals. It works "as human comedy and suspense," says Urman. The other currently hot docs, Capturing the Friedmans...
...Spellbound's moms remarks that competitive spelling can be construed as a form of child abuse. All that study, all those desperately furrowed brows, all that tension--for what? Well, in this competition, to spell words you'll probably never use--or even hear again--in any form of civilized discourse. Director Jeffrey Blitz is sympathetic to the eight kids he follows through this agony, and they and their parents largely seem to have the contest in wry perspective. And we do get caught up in their fates. Implicitly, Blitz seems to be asking but not quite answering this question...
From his early days as the most gorgeous man in pictures (in Spellbound and Duel in the Sun) to his long prime with a Mount Rushmore visage and the voice of Yahweh on a good day, Peck was the sonorous pitchman for movie humanism. He showed how a strong man could also be a gentle man. He counseled ethnic tolerance: of Jews, in Gentleman's Agreement, and blacks, in Mockingbird. As a crusading attorney who is also a gentle single dad to his two young kids, Peck made rectitude appear robust. That sanctity had staying power: this month the American...
...know is that suddenly it was everywhere. It was picked up first by the new order of geeks, enthusiastic young people with sleeping bags. "It" was coming, and they wanted to experience it first: to sit in the dark, the shadow and light of space battle flashing on their spellbound faces. And they came back over and over again. I drove by at least one long, snaking line in Westwood, holding down the humiliating urge to screech, "Yes! I am Princess Leia Organa, come to tell you all, come to tell you all!" But what had I come to tell...
...crowd of several hundred dance enthusiasts sat spellbound yesterday evening as legendary choreographer Mark Morris spoke about the creative process and his career in a moderated discussion at Sanders Theatre...