That concludes round 10. We have two spellers remaining. We will now move to the championship words subsection.
"Opsimath"

Spellbound is a phenomenal film. This movie dives into the spelling bee subculture. It follows eight teenagers who compete in the national competition bee. We see their families and home lives and get a glimpse into how they study. Some of them are more crazy then others (the kid from Orange County was nuts, Matt and I likened him to the Yankees.) But all of them have worked hard to get to the Nationals, where 249 kids are whittled down to one in two days. It's brutal, there's all these super talented kids who are thrown into the deep end of the pool. Where just one mistake and you're done.

I ended up rooting for all the kids, and felt for them when they were eliminated. But watching the kids isn't the best part. It's the parents who are the best. It made me think about how hard it must be for these kids, with their parents wrapped up in this competition as a success measure. And it's a brutal success measure too - only one of them can be the winner, and everyone else makes a mistake. To give you an idea the movie starts off by saying 249 kids go to the spelling bee, 248 will spend just one word wrong.

This is fabulous documentary. And as much as I like Michael Moore, Bowling For Columbine was more of a political piece then a documentary. Spellbound ended up losing the Academy Award to Bowling For Columbine, but if I'd been a voter I would have voted for Spellbound without a second thought.

Note: My spell checker doesn't know the word "Opsimath"

Still want more?
Read the Archives!