It was inevitable that the success of “Spellbound,” the documentary about eight kids who went all the way to the National Spelling Bee in Washington D.C., would make dollar signs appear in the eyes of ...

DESPITE the injustice, looks and athletic ability usually lead to schoolyard popularity while smarts often lead to social ostracism and decades of therapy. So brainy students such as Akeelah Anderson ...

Akeelah Anderson can spell. She can spell better than anyone in her school in South Central Los Angeles, and she might have a chance at the nationals. Who can say? She sees the national spelling bee ...

I'll never forget my father, the product of a classical public education, seeing a robin while driving me to elementary school and exclaiming, "Ah! The first harbinger of spring!" Harbinger. I was in ...

Word lovers and schmaltz lovers alike will find much to adore about “Akeelah and the Bee,” a sweet little lollipop of a human-interest drama in which a child’s greatest athletic ecstasy can be ...

Enough with the boxing and baseball and gridiron flicks. Hollywood has decided that the best spectator sport is the good old spelling bee. We’ve had a mini-flurry, first the wonderful documentary ...

The word “pulchritude” is a noun that means physical beauty or attractiveness. The word “pulchritude’ is pronounced ...

It may be hard to believe but it's been 13 years since Angela Bassett teamed up with Lawrence Fishburne to deliver her stellar Oscar nominated performance as Tina Turner in the film What's Love Got To ...

That seemingly inexhaustible new movie subgenre, the spelling bee drama, receives its most conventionally uplifting treatment yet in "Akeelah and the Bee." Framed around the relationship between an ...

Big question: Akeelah (Keke Palmer) embraces her spelling skills and pursues the national bee with the help of Dr. Joshua Larabee (Laurence Fishburne). After “Spellbound” and “Bee Season,” shouldn’t ...

Akeelah and the Bee is a reminder that films are ultimately good. They make us feel for their characters, they make us invest our emotions in fictional situations, and they have the power to inspire ...

Spellbound focused on a real group of children as they prepped for the National Spelling Bee. The film tapped into the newfound popularity of the spelling bee as ESPN brought the event to national ...