“Charlotte’s Web”

Some pig? Some spider! Julia Roberts, Oprah Winfrey et al. give voice to this childhood favorite.

By Stephanie Zacharek

Maybe there’s a way to resist the sight of a piglet eagerly suckling away at a baby bottle. But why fight it? The live-action “Charlotte’s Web,” directed by Gary Winick from E.B. White’s captivating and timeless kids novel, is one of those movies that could have gone wrong so easily, particularly considering the fierce love so many of us grown-ups have for the book. But the picture — its script is by Susannah Grant and Karey Kirkpatrick, from a scenario Earl Hamner Jr. wrote for a 1973 animated version — always strikes just the right note, honoring the spirit and humor of the novel without oversentimentalizing its delicate themes, among them the pricelessness of true friendship and the importance of recognizing beauty where you find it.

Set in a bucolic Maine community called Somerset County, “Charlotte’s Web” is the story of a young farm girl named Fern (Dakota Fanning) who saves a runt piglet from her father’s ax. She names the little pink squiggler Wilbur, and loves him so much she even sneaks him into school one day. (She hides him inside her desk, occasionally slipping her hands beneath the lid to give him a swig from that baby bottle.)

But Fern, having been told that the family can’t support a pet who will soon reach 300 pounds, is forced to give Wilbur to her Uncle Homer (Gary Basaraba), who lives just across the road. She visits Wilbur faithfully every day, but he also makes new friends at the farm and, because animals can speak to one another when humans aren’t around, the conversation in the barnyard flies fast and furious. The gregarious, ever-optimistic Wilbur — his voice is supplied by 10-year-old actor Dominic Scott Kay — becomes part of a scrappy but close community that includes an unfailingly polite sheep named Samuel (John Cleese), a motherly goose named Gussy (Oprah Winfrey), a temperamental rat named Templeton (Steve Buscemi) and, most important of all, a fuzzy brown spider of great charm and intelligence named Charlotte (Julia Roberts, whose voice has precisely the silky crispness you’d expect from a talking spider).

The grand drama of “Charlotte’s Web” involves saving Wilbur from the smokehouse. But although the movie (like the book) is far from blind to the realities of farm life, it doesn’t spew any overstated “cycle of life” crap, either. Wilbur is cute; Fern loves him, as we do; we want him to live: The story’s emotional momentum is as simple as that.

As a live-action tale about a talking pig and his friends, “Charlotte’s Web” owes something to the sweet-tempered, pastoral “Babe” and its even more wonderful sequel, “Babe: Pig in the City.” But Winick (whose last movie was “13 Going on 30″) makes sure this movie is still its own creature. The computer animation — particularly in the case of the fuzzy Charlotte, who has just the right amount of, to borrow a phrase from Thelonious Monk, ugly beauty — is unobtrusive and unforced. Shot by Seamus McGarvey, the picture has a vibrant ’50s feel without being aggressively nostalgic. (The book was published in 1952, and the movie’s look serves as a homage to its long-lasting popularity.) The performances are lovely: Fanning never even steps close to the overcuteness line, and Buscemi makes a fine, cranky rat. Best of all may be the narration, by Sam Shepard: His voice, the kind of voice God might have if he’d ever smoked Camels, frames this gentle but potent little story with good-natured authority, making it feel modern and ageless at once.

: Stephanie Zacharek is a senior writer for Salon Arts & Entertainment. More Stephanie Zacharek

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Alec Baldwin and John Krasinski shill baseball hats in viral ads, "Community" character gives Emmy picks, and more

By Drew Grant

Yankees vs. Red Sox, Baldwin vs. Krasinski, or "30 Rock" vs. "The Office": who is your favorite?

Topics:Celebrity, 30 Rock, Alec Baldwin, Baseball, NBC, Oprah Winfrey, Parks and Recreation, The Office, Television

What do the stars of NBC’s Thursday night comedy lineup do during their summer vacation? Keep themselves fresh, of course. Sometimes it’s a little hard to tell if these guys can separate themselves from their characters, but who’s complaining if there’s a real Ron Swanson or Jack Donaghy walking around?

“30 Rock’s” Alec Baldwin and “The Office’s” John Krasinski have figured out what they’re doing with their off-season, and that’s punching each other in the face about baseball. No, seriously. In this series for New Era Caps, Baldwin goes head to head with Jim Halpert over their Red Sox/Yankees rivalry. So far there have been three spots, and if you play them in succession it’s kind of like watching a crossover episode between the two shows.

Meanwhile, Amy Poehler isn’t the only cast member of “Parks and Recreation” keeping herself in the spotlight. While the comedian is off giving speeches at Harvard, her costar Nick Offerman (who plays her boss and meat-lover Ron Swanson) has been wooing Oprah to come play his first ex-wife next season. As he told the Huffington Post:

“I think Oprah would be the only, she’s the only person we can think of that might be intimidating to Megan Mullally. It would be so good.”

He then added, “I can assure you if it’s not Oprah, I will quit.”

And while that’s doubtful, Oprah should actually consider it. She did cameo on “30 Rock,” so it’s only fair.

Rounding out the news cycle is Danny Pudi, who plays Abed on “Community.” Anyone who still thinks that show isn’t being taken seriously should check out Variety right now, where “Abed” has been given a column in-character for Emmy season. He’s predicting who will win the awards based solely on his extensive knowledge of television and film (despite never having seen the shows in question), as well as his more savant-like tendencies:

I sort the last four into two groups: a) shows that have won an Emmy, so it seems like they’ll win again, and b) shows that haven’t won yet, so it seems like their turn. Sorting every winner since “I Love Lucy” in 1953:

B A B B A B A B B AA B B AB B A A B B AA A B A A B B A B B A B AB A A B B A A A A B B B B B B A B B A A B

The “ABBA” pattern emerges soon and repeats often, as people’s urge to shake up a system always results in systemic shaking. I totally get it: I once missed a week of school by trying not to touch my chin 7,000 times. The stretches of non-ABBA you see are “cable scares,” like when we just kept giving Emmys to “Frasier” until “Larry Sanders” went away. Think of TV as Rain Man getting through HBO’s smoke alarm by chanting “I like the guy from Cheers.”

The whole article is amazing, and by far my favorite post-finale offering from an NBC comedy actor. Then again, I’m a little biased.

: Drew Grant is a staff writer for Salon. Follow her on Twitter at @videodrew. More Drew Grant

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From "True Blood" to Mark Zuckerberg killing a goat to a purse made out of jerky, this week is all about meat

By Drew Grant

Pop Torn: 10 pieces of culture we're feeling iffy about

Topics:Pop Torn, Celebrity, Facebook, Faddy foods, Fashion, Italy, Oprah Winfrey, True Blood, Television

Memorial Day weekend, you guys! I know that I will be happy to wear all my white clothing again, because nothing says “I’ve been to a summer barbeque” like visible condiment sauce all over my clothing.

And with this warm weather comes tons of pop culture news stories that are just to the right of funky. We’ve rounded up some of the stranger stuff that we missed this week, and leave it up to you to decide if maybe being raptured wasn’t such a bad idea.

1. People who think the Onion’s headlines are real: Oh, it happens. And now it’s a Tumblr. (Expect a book deal in the near future.)

: Drew Grant is a staff writer for Salon. Follow her on Twitter at @videodrew. More Drew Grant

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O'Brien's guide to Oprah's audience rounds up familiar types, from "The Weeper" to "The Man Who Rocks and Claps"

By Emma Mustich

Topics:Morning Clip, Conan O'Brien, Oprah Winfrey

Last night, Conan O’Brien celebrated Oprah Winfrey’s final show by honoring “the people who made the The Oprah Show truly special” over the years: her audience members. His team compiled a jokey Oprah-fan classification, encompassing all sorts — from “The Jumping Clapper” and “The Face Fanner” to “The Extremely Alarmed Grandma” and “The Man Who Rocks and Claps.”

: Emma Mustich is an assistant editor at Salon. Follow her on Twitter: @emustich. More Emma Mustich

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Winfrey ends her show with a 42-minute monologue that encapsulates her many baffling contradictions

By Matt Zoller Seitz

Oprah's warm, funny, self-aggrandizing goodbye

Topics:Oprah Winfrey, Television

Oprah Winfrey’s final show summed up everything she’s been about for a quarter century. It was funny, warm, sweet and informative, and felt easygoing even though it was clearly written and rehearsed within a millimeter of its life. The episode had sharing and oversharing, confessions and anecdotes, photographs of Oprah in unfortunate clothes and hairstyles, and callbacks to shows and guests that made a big impression on the host during her journey toward self-knowledge — which, she assured us, was what her boundary-breaking, influential, astoundingly popular stint on daytime was truly about, anyway.

No, wait, scratch that. Her show wasn’t truly about Oprah at all. It was about you. All of you. But especially you, the individual sitting there watching her “every day,” as she said.

She had a message for you, the individual. Several messages, actually — and they were all intertwined: Take responsibility for your life. Be honest with yourself and others. Be responsible for the energy you put out in the world, because that energy comes back around eventually. Also: There is a God, or a life force, and you should get to know him/her/it, because he/she/it can improve your judgment and guide your life.

There was a clip reel of people admitting things on TV that they had never told close friends and family members. They said they were alcoholics or drug addicts, that they had HIV, that they had endured or inflicted spousal abuse. The confessions had a snowball effect and became collectively cathartic, Oprah said: “Little by little, we started to release the shame.”

One of the clips was of Oprah herself circa 1986, revealing that she herself had been sexually abused as a child. Another clip referenced the recent broadcast in which actor-director Tyler Perry said he’d been sexually abused as a child, then led an audience of 200 fellow sexual abuse survivors, all men, while they stood together holding pictures of themselves as kids.

Long sections of Oprah’s final syndicated broadcast, which amounted to a 42-minute monologue interspersed with video clips, suggested a church service, though precisely what kind varied from moment to moment.

Sometimes it felt like Sunday school for kids. Other times it felt like a sermon, or the opening remarks of a self-help group leader opening a meeting in a church basement. “Don’t wait for anybody else to fix you, to save you or complete you,” she said. “‘Jerry Maguire’ was just a movie. [But] no one completes you. We have seen that with guest after guest. When you accept that you are responsible for your life, you…get….free.”

Still other times the broadcast evoked the famous sequence in “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” where Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, presumed dead, attend their own funeral service and hear themselves eulogized. But here was Oprah doing the eulogizing. In an especially unfortunate moment, she suggested that God was responsible for the meeting of her father’s sperm and her mother’s egg. That may very well be true, but if so, it’s true for every other human being as well — and when you put it in the words that Oprah chose, it can’t help but sound oddly messianic.

Oprah’s last words before exiting stage left were, “to God be the glory.”

She talked about how, deep down, she really wanted to be a teacher, and near the end of the broadcast, she introduced her very first mentor, her fourth grade teacher Mrs. Mary Alice Duncan, who was sitting there in the audience, tearing up and grinning.

She said that her guests taught her that there was “no need to feel superior to anybody” because “there is a common thread that runs through all of our pain and all of our suffering, and that is unworthiness, not feeling worthy enough to own the life that you were created for…Your being here, your being alive, makes worthiness your birthright. You alone are enough.”

She said that within each person, no matter what his or her race, creed, color or life experience, is a little voice that asks, “Do you see me? Do you hear me? Does what I say mean anything to you?” That voice, Oprah said, was what she hoped to answer, encourage and embrace over the course of 25 years and 4,561 shows.

It would have been nice if, at some point during the telecast, even a single audience member had been permitted to utter one syllable. There was no dialogue, only monologue interspersed by cheers, laughter and applause. The key to Oprah’s success, she assured us, is that she knows that deep down, everyone wants to be heard. But in this last broadcast, nobody else got a word in edgewise.

It was a final summation in a career which, judged in terms of social good and emotional healing, required no defense. Oprah is a force for good, period. She may inspire love, loathing, bafflement, amusement, irritation, you name it, but there is no possible way to evalute the sum total of her career on TV without concluding that the world is a somewhat better place because she was in it. And yet here she was making a case for herself, Oprah Winfrey for the defense, as if she wasn’t worthy of all this attention and acclaim. As if she didn’t get her own memo. It was poignant in ways she herself probably didn’t intend.

She left her stage, her classroom, her pulpit, unfinished. A work in progress.

: More Matt Zoller Seitz

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From Jamie Foxx to Maria Shriver, the stars turn out to celebrate and honor daytime's favorite talk show host

By Drew Grant

Oprah and Maria Shriver.

Topics:Oprah Winfrey, CBS, Celebrity, Television

Oprah Winfrey’s final show airs tomorrow, and today’s second part of her “Farewell Spectacular” saw celebrities turn out in full force, a touching tribute to the woman who has been America’s best friend for 25 years.

Oddly enough, Oprah spent most of her show not trending on Twitter, though “surprise” guests like Tom Hanks, Michael Jordan, Maya Angelou, Jerry Seinfeld, Jamie Foxx, Stedman and Gayle all did. I use quotation marks because there are no surprise guests for Oprah … if Obama himself had taken the stage to wish her well, it would not have been that unexpected.