庭秀的部落格

English Children's Literature (Week Three)

Movie Time

Charlotte's Web

(click me for trailer)

Charlotte's Web is a 2006 American live-action/computer-animated feature film based on the popular book of the same name by E. B. White. It is directed by Gary Winick and produced by Paramount Pictures, Walden Media, The K Entertainment Company, and Nickelodeon Movies. The screenplay is by Susannah Grant andKarey Kirkpatrick, based on White's book.

It is the second film adaptation of White's book, preceded by a 1973 cel-animated version produced by Hanna-Barbera for Paramount Pictures.

• Plot
  

One spring, on a farm in Somerset County, Maine, Fern Arable (Dakota Fanning) finds her father about to kill the runt of a litter of newborn pigs. She successfully begs him to spare its life. He gives it to her, who names him Wilbur and raises him as her pet. To her regret, when he grows into an adult pig, she is forced to take him to the Zuckerman farm, where he is to be prepared as dinner in due time.

Charlotte A. Cavatica (Julia Roberts), a spider, lives in the space above Wilbur's sty in the Zuckermans' barn; she befriends him and decides to help prevent him from being eaten. With the help of the other barn animals, including a rat named Templeton (Steve Buscemi), she convinces the Zuckerman family that Wilbur is actually quite special, by spelling out descriptions of him in her web: "Some pig", "Terrific", "Radiant", and "Humble". She gives her full name, revealing her as a barn spider, an orb-weaver spider with the scientific name Araneus cavaticus.

The Arables, Zuckermans, Wilbur, Charlotte, and Templeton go to a fair, where Wilbur is entered in a contest. While there, Charlotte produces an egg sac. She cannot return home because she is dying. Wilbur tearfully says goodbye to her but manages to take her egg sac home, where hundreds of offspring emerge. Most of the young spiders soon leave, but three, named Joy, Aranea, and Nellie, stay and become Wilbur's friends.

• Production
  

Charlotte's Web was produced without any involvement from E. B. White's estate.^[2] It was the first film based on a book by E. B. White since 2001's The Trumpet of the Swan. Paramount had distributed the film as a result of its acquisition of DreamWorks, whose animation division became its own company in late 2004.

Major shooting was completed in May 2006. It was filmed on location in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria and suburbs in Melbourne, Australia. The fair scene in the story was filmed in Heidelberg in Melbourne, Australia at Heidelberg West Football Club's football ground.

Visual effects are by Rising Sun Pictures, Fuel International, Proof, Rhythm and Hues Studios, Digital Pictures Iloura and Tippett Studio. The visual effects supervisor for the film as a whole was John Berton, who noted that a live action version of Charlotte's Web has become much more practical in recent years due to advances in technology.^[3] Winick "was adamant" that Charlotte and Templeton (the film's two entirely computer-generated characters) should be realistic and not stylized, although they did give Charlotte almond-shaped eyes.^[4] John Dietz, visual effects supervisor for Rising Sun Pictures, notes that there was a debate over whether to give her a mouth, and that in the end they decided to have her chelicerae move in what he describes as being almost like a veil, as if there were a mouth behind it.^[5]

• Release
  

The film was at one time intended for a June 2006 release, but was pushed back to December 2006 to avoid competition with two other films from Nickelodeon Movies - Nacho Libre and Barnyard - as well as Over the Hedge and Cars among other films. It was released in Australia on December 7, 2006 and in theUnited States and Canada on December 15, 2006.^[6] The U.S. and Canadian release date matches that of 20th Century Fox's Eragon, another film with fantasy elements and a young protagonist. The scheduled release date in the UK is February 9, 2007.

Quiz on Charlotte