Spellbound (2002 film)

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Spellbound

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Jeffrey Blitz
Produced by Jeffrey Blitz
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 dates 2002
Running time 97 min.
95 min. (Canada)
Country United States
Language English

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;[1] Yana Gorskaya's editing won the ACE Eddie award for best editing of documentary. Spellbound won the Emmy for Cultural/Artistic Programming and Jeffrey Blitz was nominated for directing. In 2007, it was included as #4 of the "IDA's Top 25 Documentaries" of all-time by the members of the International Documentary Association. Frank Neuhauser, winner of the first National Spelling Bee held in 1925, also appears in the film.[2]

Spellers

The spellers were Neil Kadakia, Emily Stagg, Ashley White, April DeGideo, Harry Altman, Angela Arenivar, Nupur Lala and Ted Brigham. 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, and hypsometer. He was sponsored by the Orange County Register.[3] Neil is a graduate of UC Berkeley. Before he went to college, he went on a jet ski expedition with his father and his sister, Shivani, also a speller. He is currently the COO of Greens Global, a real estate company based out of San Clemente, CA. On July 3, 2011, he married Archana Sheth, also a UC Berkeley graduate. He is also an avid chess player, and has earned over 15 chess trophies in his life.

His grandfather paid 1000 people in India to pray for him.

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"). She came in 6th place. In 2006, as a junior in Carleton College, she wrote an op-ed article for the New York Times questioning the usefulness of the National Spelling Bee.

Ashley White

Ashley White (speller 149) represented The Washington Informer in Washington, DC in the spelling bee. Following Ashley's teenage pregnancy (she was 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. 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.

Harry Altman

Many critics who reviewed Spellbound singled out Altman (speller # 8) as its most interesting "character". Yet in the finals Altman is stumped by the word 'banns'. 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".[citation needed] He went to the Academy for Engineering and Design Technology in Hackensack, New Jersey. In autumn 2005, he enrolled in the University of Chicago. Harry now attends the University of Michigan Ann Arbor pursuing a PhD in Mathematics, in work concerning integer complexity.[4]

Angela Arenivar

Angela Arenivar represented the Amarillo Globe-News in the 1998 and 1999 bees. Angela graduated from Texas A&M University in 2007 with a bachelor's degree in Spanish and earned a master's in Spanish from the University of New Mexico in 2009. She has taught Spanish in Texas public high schools.[5]

Nupur Lala

Nupur Lala was the champion of the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee (as speller # 155), spelling "logorrhea" to win. Nupur won the bee against David Lewandowski, a speller from Indiana who misspelled "opsimath." In 2003, she entered University of Michigan at Ann Arbor to study brain and cognitive sciences and pre-medical studies and graduated in 2007 with a degree in Brain, Behavior and Cognitive Science.[6]

Ted Brigham

Ted Brigham was speller # 1. He represented the Rolla Daily Record of Rolla, Missouri. 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 (presumably as an ironic joke) as "chapm". Ted attended medical school in Kansas City, Missouri until his death in December 2007.[7]

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, who is actually from Marietta, Ohio, and his pronunciation of "yenta," shown in the film. He eventually spelled it "yente".
  • Jess Altmam was mentioned in a scene by Harry Altman for being a terrific speller and that he was disappointed she didn't make the Nationals.
  • Sonia Nagala won the North Dakota bee with the word "butyraceous", but was eliminated in the second round of the Nationals. She is currently taking her MBA at Harvard Business School.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "NY Times: Spellbound". NY Times. Retrieved 2008-11-23. 
  2. ↑ Brown, Emma (2011-03-21). "Frank Neuhauser, winner of first national spelling bee, dies at 97". Washington Post. Retrieved 2011-04-03. 
  3. ↑ http://www.ocde.us/SpellingBee/Pages/default.aspx/
  4. ↑ http://www-personal.umich.edu/~haltman/
  5. ↑ http://www.angelaarenivar.com/
  6. ↑ http://web.mit.edu/gabrieli-lab/People/technical-assistant.html Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Gabrieli Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory website
  7. ↑ www.kansascity.com

External links

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