I love seeing movies at the Motion Picture Academy down on Wilshire. Some say it's the best movie theater in the country, at least in a tech sense…and if it isn't, it's darn close. Everything I see there reminds me of that "special" quality of film that you can never get at home watching a DVD, no matter how big a plasma screen you purchase. It's a special treat with a movie as visually rich and fascinating as last evening's presentation, Bambi.

The star of the evening…well, there were two stars. One was Ollie Johnston, the last of Disney's "Nine Old Men," who was one of main animators of the film. When they rolled Ollie out (he's 93 and in a wheelchair) for the post-screening panel discussion, the standing ovation from the audience was as touching as anything the Disney crew ever produced.

The other star was the print, itself. An amazing digital restoration was recently done and it's now available on DVD. But to appreciate how remarkable it is, I suspect you have to see it the way we did tonight — on a big screen, and preceded by a brief presentation of "before and after" examples. At the end of the film, when newly-added credits appeared for those who had done the restoration, there was a huge burst of applause for those folks, many of whom were present. We all hear bad things about the current management of Disney, but this preservation and refurbishment must have cost a bloody fortune. True, it will probably turn out to cost-effective but a lot of studios would have tried to strike a new print off an old negative, clean up a little dirt and release it as a "full restoration." Someone deserves credit for not going that route. (Here's an article that will tell you a little bit about what they did.)

So the film looked and sounded beautiful, and the introductions and panel discussion — hosted by good buddy, Leonard Maltin — were perfect. Joining Ollie Johnston were current-day animator Andreas Deja, and two Bambi voice actors — Peter Behn, who at age 4 voiced Thumper, and Cammie King, who wasn't much older when she recorded the voice of Faline. Ms. King drew a noticeable ooh from the audience when she mentioned that Bambi was one of two movies she worked on, the other being Gone With the Wind. I see by the Internet Movie Database that she was also in Blondie Meets the Boss, and I guess I can understand why you might leave that one off your résumé. Still, I wonder how many actors can say that 66.6% of their film roles were in movies that are widely regarded as classics. (Also present and applauded, though he declined to participate in the panel, was Tyrus Wong, who art-directed the film's extraordinary backgrounds.)

With all this wonderment, I hate to inject a "but" into this report but, as you know, we bloggers are always under oath when we post. I have to admit that there is something about Bambi that I do not love, and I'm not sure I can explain what it is. There's a stretch of film there — from just before Bambi's mother is killed through to near the end — where I feel unpleasantly manipulated. And though the whole movie is only 70 minutes, it always seems way too long to me.

Perhaps it's some form of sense memory. I first saw Bambi when I was five years old. It was the 1957 reissue and I remember my father driving my mother and me to the theater in Westwood, dropping us off and picking us up after. It was either the Village Theater or the Bruin — then, as now, right across the street from one another. I had been carefully briefed beforehand that there were sad moments in Bambi. I think newspaper articles of the day actually cautioned parents to prepare very young children for the mother dying and the forest fire. Anyway, none of that upset me but I do recall that the movie was, like most movies are when you're that age, about eleven hours long, and I really didn't like a lot of what was occurring on that screen.

There are some movies that bring out a sense of Unconditional Surrender in me. I just want to tell the filmmakers, "Okay, I'm yours. Play with my feelings. Take me on an emotional roller coaster and I'll follow you anywhere." Somehow, Bambi has never quite moved me to that point. It comes close, especially in the early scenes with Thumper, and I can certainly have a good time admiring the sheer artistry. I just feel like more of a distant spectator with Bambi than I do with Snow White or Pinocchio or Dumbo or any of the other early classic Disney animated features. Maybe in a few days, I'll have more thoughts and I can do a better job of explaining why this is. In any case, even if you buy the DVD, should you get the chance to see this version on a big screen, do not miss that opportunity.

Over at IGN, Fred Hembeck is ripping the lid off one of the best-kept secrets of The Marvel Age of Comics. While he was publishing the vintage Lee-Kirby Fantastic Four and other comic book masterworks, the firm's owner, Martin Goodman, was also putting out a line of ultra-cheap men's magazines. For some of them, he had the comic division whip up a low-budget strip not unlike Playboy's Little Annie Fanny. Various installments were written by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Ernie Hart, and drawn by Wally Wood, Al Hartley, Jim Mooney and Bill Ward. All but Mr. Ward were concurrently doing work for the comics. The strip was timid in execution (Pussycat kept most of her clothes on) and kind of satirical in an Al Capp sorta way, and Hembeck will tell you all about this curio, and he'll probably inspire some writer to bring her back and put her in The Avengers.

Fred Kaplan parses the Downing Street Memo for us.

Over at The Onion, Billy West talks about cartoon voice work — an area at which he excels. Billy complains, and rightly so, that a lot of producers would rather pay zillions of dollars to a "celebrity" voice who'll give a mediocre performance than to hire a reasonably-priced specialist who might not have the reputation but has a lot more talent. He's absolutely right. And the maddening thing about that is that many of those producers will tell you, off the record, "Yeah, the no-name voice actor would have done a much better job but the celebrity adds a note of importance to the project."

Billy notes one of the unethical practices in this area. Some less-than-scrupulous producers will bring in a guy like him or Maurice LaMarche or Rob Paulsen — any good voice actor — to audition. And then they won't hire them but they'll take that audition tape, play it for the star they do hire and say, "Try to read the copy like this guy did." This is a slight variation on a scam that a couple of studios were working years ago, when having voice tracks recorded in Canada was even more financially advantageous than it is now. They'd audition for a new TV show in Hollywood, calling actors back again and again, just as if they intended to hire some of them to work on the series. And then, once they'd selected the proper voices from all those created by the L.A.-based actors, they would not hire those people. Instead, they'd take the audition tapes up to a studio in Vancouver or Toronto, bring in Canadian actors and say, "We need you to match these voices." What a lovely practice.

Gore Vidal on how democracy is supposed to work.

In addition to voicing an astonishing percentage of the funniest cartoons ever made, Mel Blanc was also an accomplished recording artist. He did funny records for kids, many of them based on his cartoon roles. He also did silly songs for adults and while I have a pretty good-sized collection of them on 78 and 45, I welcome the forthcoming CD from Collectors' Choice Music. Here's a link to the page on which you can order The Best of Mel Blanc, and I sure hope this is Volume One, because as good as the selections are, there's more where that came from. And while you're over there, Collectors' Choice also has The Golden Age of Comedy: Mel Blanc, which offers cuts from Mel's radio work.

And Mel isn't on it, but I have to recommend Ready or Not, which is the CD release of one of Godfrey Cambridge's best comedy albums. Mr. Cambridge is way too forgotten these days, remembered (when he's remembered at all) for that dreadful movie, Watermelon Man. But he really sparkled as a stand-up, and I recall him as one of the first black comics to get mainstream exposure and to make audiences of all colors laugh at race-themed material. This one is worth picking up, too…and to tell you how sincere I am, these aren't even click-through affiliate links. I don't make a nickel when you order from Collectors' Choice.

Fans of the Deep Throat/Mark Felt story will not want to miss this article in The Nation. You'll especially love this aspect of the tale…

…Felt's role as the most famous anonymous source in US history was even more complex and intrigue-loaded than the newly revised public account suggests. According to originally confidential FBI documents — some written by Felt — that were obtained by The Nation from the FBI's archives, Felt played another heretofore unknown part in the Watergate tale: He was, at heated moments during the scandal, in charge of finding the source of Woodward and Bernstein's Watergate scoops. In a twist worthy of le Carré, Deep Throat was assigned the mission of unearthing — and stopping — Deep Throat

No wonder they couldn't catch the guy.

I think I've learned two things by following as much of the Michael Jackson trial as I followed. One is how unbelievably rotten the news coverage of something like this is. You may or may not agree with the verdict but clearly those jurors, like the ones in the Robert Blake case and maybe a few others, did not experience the trial that was described to us by the folks covering it. It's like the story of the blind men all trying to describe an elephant except in this case, you have blind reporters and most of them had their heads up the elephant's ass.

I was tuning in Court TV for five minutes every few hours since "Verdict Watch" commenced and I happened to be watching today when, right in the middle of a story about the prosecution of that Ku Klux Klan member in Mississippi, they cut in to say…well, not that a verdict had been reached. Court TV, with all its correspondents on the scene and all its boasts about providing the most extensive inside coverage, cut in to say that other networks were reporting there was a verdict. A few minutes later, they confirmed it, thereby announcing they'd been scooped.

That had to be embarrassing but not as embarrassing as what followed. That's when we began to get the cavalcade of predictions, almost all of which were dead wrong. I flipped around — CNN, Fox, MSNBC, back to Court TV — and I think I heard one person say Michael would be found "not guilty" on all counts, and even that wasn't so much a prediction as the pundit saying that was what should happen. The consensus was for conviction on some of the charges, usually either all the molestation counts or all the alcohol-related ones. After the jury acquitted on all ten indictments, I scanned the same channels and heard a lot of the same people say, "Well, I expected this," even though an hour earlier, their big debate had been whether Michael could be taken immediately into custody or allowed to post an Appeals Bond. Nancy Grace, the anchor on Court TV, even said of the outcome, "I'm not surprised," after earlier insisting there was no way a jury could fail to convict on some allegations of sexual misconduct.

So that's one thing I learned…not to listen to these people. The other is not so much a lesson as an observation.

A lot of people are saying, or will say, "Michael Jackson was found Not Guilty by reason of Celebrity," and that in California, you can get away with murder (or child rape) if you're famous. I don't know how much truth there is to this, but it occurs to me that there's also a downside to being a famous person who goes on trial.

Before the murders in Brentwood, O.J. Simpson was a guy who lived on his reputation and likability, essentially making a very good income as a famous, beloved football hero. After the acquittal, there was a lot of talk about how he'd build back that fame and fortune with a well-managed campaign of public appearances, book deals, interviews, etc. Anyone remember the big pay-per-view interrogation to be conducted by Larry King? The one they said was certain to net Simpson upwards of seven million clams? Never happened. The closest they came was an anemic VHS tape that sold next to nothing. (I have a copy purchased on eBay for two bucks. It's pretty awful.)

It turned out — and it must have come as a shock to Simpson — that there was no market out there for O.J. None. I remember the guy who bankrolled the tape appearing on Larry King Live, confidently projecting it would be the best-selling videotape of all time. King pointed out that something like 65% of Americans thought Simpson was guilty and might not want to give him money. The producer said, okay, fine. But if even 5% of the remaining 35% buy the tape, it'll make a fortune. Well, it didn't. Total flop. It turned out that even people who thought O.J. didn't do it — check that: people who told pollsters they thought O.J. didn't do it — wouldn't spend money on him. That's why there's been no book by Simpson, no movie (as promised) to give his side of the story, no big comeback. The public has placed him in a kind of purgatory, shunning him, yelling at him when they see him in public, and refusing to allow him to return to his former life as a much-loved star.

I am by no means suggesting that that kind of punishment is an adequate substitute for a proper guilty verdict and a sentence of many decades behinds bars. But it's also not nothing.

Simpson lost his home, his fame, his career, most of his money — all things that one assumes mattered a lot to him. Maybe he did escape long-term incarceration because he was a celebrity…but Celebrity Justice can also involve that other kind of penalty. If a plumber is accused of murder, tried and acquitted, he can go back to fixing toilets. O.J. couldn't go back to sportscasting, doing rent-a-car ads and appearing in bad movie roles.

It's not exactly the same with Michael Jackson. There are still folks out there who love him and who'll buy his albums and attend his concerts, but there aren't as many of them as there used to be and their number will go down, not up. Even if a lot of folks feel that this particular case did not merit a Guilty verdict, they've also decided that his rating on the Creepy Index has risen to a level that can no longer be overlooked because he dances well.

Since I can't do any worse than Nancy Grace did this afternoon, I'm going to make a prediction about Michael. I predict he's going to make a brief comeback — maybe a tour, maybe reuniting with his brothers — but eventually, it's all going to fizzle. The folks who believe he's innocent aren't going to support him for long, or support him with money, just as the folks who believed O.J. was framed didn't support him enough to allow for any sort of post-verdict career. Jackson may do okay in other countries, but his fans in the U.S. are just going to get tired of rationalizing the sleepovers and defending the weirdness. Eventually, he'll receive the same kind of Celebrity Justice that Simpson received…and no, it's not real justice. But it's better than nothing.

Here's my entry into the "What the Democrats Oughta Do whirlwind." I figure, everyone else is playing so I can play, too. What I think they oughta do is find a candidate. I don't think there's anything wrong with the Democratic platform or philosophy or battle plan —

Okay, maybe the battle plan. They're too worried about being called anti-religion or anti-American or anti-family or anti-military, and so they back down, as if the Republicans aren't going to call them all that, anyway. So far, and I may change my mind if he takes it in ugly directions, I like the fact that Howard Dean seems to be moving past all that. He's a good speaker and if he's going to go out there and call this Administration on some of its inconsistencies and misrepresentations, fine. Someone's gotta say it, and Democrats are dumb if they think the press is ever going to fulfill that function.

But as I was saying, I don't think there's anything wrong with what the Democrats are doing except that they don't have a candidate…and at this stage, it doesn't even have to be the person who might really be on the ticket in '08. They just have to prove there'll be some viable choices. Bush is unpopular and getting more so by the minute. More and more, Americans think the War in Iraq just ain't worth what it's costing us in lives (we just passed the 1,700 mark) and grief and money. More and more, Americans see the Bush economic program as a scheme to relieve the Super-Rich of the burden of paying for government and to shift it onto lower and middle-class working stiffs and destroy their Social Security at the same time. Even though Bush himself can't run again, it's a great track record to run against.

The trouble is, you can't beat something with nothing. "The Republican way is bad" is only half the sales pitch. The other half — the half they're missing — is offering up someone who can do better. Who might that be?

I don't think it's Hillary Clinton. Too much baggage. We'd spend the whole election talking about the Clinton marriage and her sexuality and Vince Foster and Whitewater and all those topics that we're all sick of, even if we think they're unfair accusations. We'd wind up talking about everything except what she might do in office. I also don't think it's Joe Biden. He's a smart guy but he seems to have every bad personal quality that made people think Al Gore was a boring policy wonk.

Maybe it's this guy. The link is to a Salon interview with Virginia governor Mark Warner. I don't know a whole lot about him but the last three Democrats who won the White House were all Southerners and that alone makes him worth a look-see. We also seem to like to put governors in the White House, as opposed to senators. The few times I've heard him speak he sounded good, and the interview (which unless you subscribe to Salon can't be read in full without viewing ads or buying a day pass, I believe) has him saying a lot of the right things.

This is not an endorsement. I just think the Democrats need a face to display, and his is the first one that I could begin to imagine on the 2008 presidential ticket. One hopes there will be more from which to pick.

Did you read that piece I wrote earlier about the settlement in the contract for actors who provide voices for video games? Well, Don Porges has some more thoughts on the matter over on his blog.

We've had a lot of items here lately about our dear friend, the late Howard Morris. So I thought I'd mention that one of his big movie roles — Boys' Night Out, co-starring Tony Randall, James Garner, Howard Duff and Kim Novak — airs this coming Thursday morning on Turner Classic Movies. It's not a great film but Howie is fun to watch in it. And if you do tune in, see if you can spot composer-actor Frank DeVol ("Happy" Kyne on the old Fernwood Tonight show) in a funny, unbilled cameo under a lot of make-up.

People have been debating whether Mark "Deep Throat" Felt was a good guy or a bad guy, and these debates often seem to be conducted on the assumption that he had to have been one or the other.

I don't think many public figures — especially in government — can be fit wholly into one of those two classifications, and I see no reason to expect that Mr. Felt can be so tidily rated. His motives in leaking to Bob Woodward were probably some mixture of wanting to protect the FBI from abuse by the Nixon administration and wanting to advance his personal agenda. In the grand scheme of things, I suspect he was less important to the toppling of a president than he was to the career advancement of Woodward and Bernstein. I don't think what he did was dishonorable or illegal — that's the spin of those who cast their lot with Richard M. Nixon — and to the extent he did it to expose corruption, I guess he's a hero.

But only for that one series of actions. He wasn't a hero for what he did soon after. This article tells all about that.

Michael Kinsley thinks the Downing Street Memo is not quite the "smoking gun" that many are making it out to be. I dunno. [Los Angeles Times, might make you register.]

I should have posted this the other day but a potential strike has been averted by actors who provide voices for video games. The rough terms can be read in several articles online like this one. As you'll see, the unions backed down on their demand for residual payments, which is not good. On the other hand, they got a nice increase in up-front fees, and the residuals battle can be fought again another day.

I did want to comment on this paragraph from the article to which I just linked…

Game producers had balked at providing residuals, arguing that people don't buy games because of the actors who appear in them. "That would set a precedent for hundreds of other people who created a game to say, 'What about us?"' industry attorney Howard Fabrick recently told the Los Angeles Times.

Both sentences are a little light on logic. Obviously, the actors are a factor in the sales of a game. If not, the employers would just grab a delivery boy, give him fifty dollars and stick him in front of a microphone. That they pay to get accomplished actors is proof that it does make a difference.

And, yeah, if actors got residuals, then everyone would want residuals. But voice actors have been receiving residuals in conventional animation for many decades, and the producers haven't had a lot of trouble in denying them to everyone else. And directors, writers and actors get residuals on live-action films and TV shows and somehow, this hasn't led to the cameraguys and caterers getting residuals.

One other point: If you Google for some of the other articles on the settlement, you'll see a number which refer to residuals as "profit-sharing." No, residuals are not profit-sharing. Profits are amounts that are calculated based on subtracting what something cost to make from what it grosses. Residuals are fixed fees for re-use that have nothing to do with what a project cost to produce or how much money it took in. This may seem like a trivial distinction but it isn't when you work on a show that's popular enough to be rerun hundreds of times but the studio is still claiming it's not in profit. (Has Paramount stopped claiming that Star Trek lost money?)

Frank Rich discusses the Deep Throat self-outing and the attendant media coverage. Among other observations, he reminds us that the famous D.T. quote, "Follow the money," was a creation of screenwriter William Goldman for the movie of All the President's Men.