Ahoy, squirts! Quint here... Now, the original animated CHARLOTTE'S WEB holds a very special place in my heart. I grew up watching that film and I recently revisited it when it played on some cable channel and it STILL got some tears out of me when Charlotte bids farewell to Wilbur. I'm not too incredibly hot on remaking the movie, especially since the live-action version will have to do something radically different to distance itself visually from the BABE films, but I like most of the voice talent they've gotten for the CG main characters. Also note, I read EB White's book in elementary school and I don't remember one word of it, so I'm approaching the casting from the point of view of a fan of the original animated film.

Paramount announced today that Julia Roberts is going to voice Charlotte, the spider.

I like this casting, but I'm coming off of recently seeing CLOSER which has, in my humble opinion, her best performance and most refreshingly different character in recent memory. I was thinking it'd be nifty if they got Carrie Fisher for the voice. Debbie Reynolds did an amazing job in the animated film, but she might sound a little too old for the character now and Carrie's voice doesn't exactly have the sweetness in her voice that her mother did.

(My favorite voice casting) Steve Buscemi as Templeton, the rat!

Paul Lynde did this role to perfection... the smart-ass, sarcastic and greedy tone was great. Casting Buscemi is a stroke of genius and the only working actor who I can accept in this role, personally.

Oprah Winfrey as Gussy, the goose & Cedric The Entertainer as Golly, the goose...

Winfrey's certainly got the maternal part down and I like her as an actress, but she lacks the insanity of the goose in the original as voiced by Agnes Moorehead. "T double E double R double I double F F F..." I don't know what to think about Cedric the Entertainer. I just hope they keep the story timeless and not try to modernize it with some recent and dating pop-culture references. I don't want this movie to turn into RACING STRIPES...

John Cleese as Samuel the Sheep.

I love John Cleese and I'm looking forward to hearing him talk down to Wilbur, but the sheep isn't much of a role as I remember it.

Reba McEntire and Kathy Bates as the two cows, Betsy and Bitsy

That's fine. I really don't have an opinion on this one. I loved Reba in TREMORS and dig her attitude, even if I could care less about her music. Kathy Bates is cool, too.

Thomas Hayden Church and Andre Benjamin (Andre 3000) will voice Brooks and Elwyn the crows...

I don't have much of an opinion on this. Church was cool in SIDEWAYS and has a distincitve voice... Anyway, that's all I got... The remake will be out in 2006 with Dakota Fanning in the human lead as Fern. Now who's going going to play Zuckerman? I'm pulling for John Goodman! What do you folks think?