I’ve spent the last couple of nights watching examples of a subgenre of documentary film I’ll call “feel-good documentary.” These films are firmly in the realm of Spellbound and Mad Hot Ballroom, and firmly not in the realm of, say, An Inconvenient Truth, or Jesus Camp. They’re both films I should’ve probably seen a lot sooner, so forgive me for being a Johnny-Arrive-Recently.

The first is Wordplay, which it’s ridiculous I didn’t see sooner, considering how much of a crossword junkie I am.

One thing this film drove home, however, is that I’m a downright novice compared to some of the endearingly obsessive fanatics who convene every year at Will Shortz’s annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. These are people who do the Monday crossword in under a minute and the Saturday in under twenty. These are people who create puzzles and mail them to Will Shortz for publication in the Times. These are people who look at a road sign reading “Intercoastal” and immediately say, “That’s an anagram for ‘altercations.’”

And then there are the appearances from celebrity puzzle solvers like Bill Clinton and Jon Stewart. Every film, no matter what it is, would benefit from cameos by Bill Clinton and Jon Stewart.

What I’m saying is that, as much as I’d love to attend the tournament, I’d get my ass handed to me right quick. I’ve done the Monday in six minutes, and I’ve finished the Sunday in under forty-five, but otherwise I don’t time myself. Still, though … I may just book myself a flight for Stamford CT next March.

The second movie is Shut Up & Sing, aka the Dixie Chicks documentary.

I’ve generally been indifferent to the Dixie Chicks’ music, but I like what I’ve heard of the new album, due in no small part to Matt Wilson and Neil Finn’s songwriting contributions.

This movie works very well as a documentary about both music and politics. What’s truly sad/amusing is the footage of the morons who “boycotted” the Dixie Chicks by buying their CDs and then tossing them into garbage cans on the local news; what’s truly surreal is the 20/20 highsight one gets from viewing footage from 2003, when the war in Iraq was “going to be a cakewalk” and Bush’s approval rating was “sky high” and a person who made an oblique comment criticizing the Administration during a public appearance overseas had to have extensive meetings with her PR handlers about how best to carefully plot her next move, then draw death threats anyway. (I guess the death-threat part threatens to nudge the film out of “feel-good” territory, but we know how it ends.)

The parts of the film from 2003 seem like ancient history, for better or worse (mostly for the better). But part of the hindsight here is the satisfaction of knowing Natalie Maines was not only right, but vindicated. A Grammy for song of the year doesn’t hurt, either.

The movie is also a fascinating look at the confluence of music, commerce, entertainment, politics, and everyone’s strange obsession with musical genres. And it has music-nerd cameos by Wilson, Rick Rubin, and Chad Smith.