All current and recovering smart kids must see...

..."Spellbound," the new documentary about the national spelling bee. All eight students--between 10-13--are tremendously interesting; some of them inspire pity for the pressure (implicit and explicit) they're under--pressure to succeed, sure, but pressure to deal with differences in culture and class, and in the largest sense, the great task of becoming oneself..I admired all of them for how they persevered--are persevering--through that difficult time of life.



Speaking of great movies, two things: first, here's Roger Ebert's review of Jacques Tati's 1958 comedy, "Mon Oncle." You know, if one was assembling a DVD collection, one could do a lot worse than just picking up all the films on Ebert's Great Movies list.



The second thing: I am now the proud owner of The Beatles Anthology on DVD, thanks to Kate. And a year older, but Kate had nothing to do with that.