By Peter Covino

Entertainment Editor

Bambi has always been (with the exception of the loss of his mother and that raging forest fire) the most gentle of Disney tales.

It’s characters, like Thumper the rabbit, are both extremely cute and juvenile at the same time.

Bambi (1942) makes its Blue-ray debut in a new Diamond edition on Tuesday. Restored and in Blu-ray, it is also one of the most beautiful animated films ever conceived.

Note: the animation world lost one of legendary pioneers recently. Bill Justice, who animated Thumper, and worked as well on the Disney classics Fantasia and Alice in Wonderland and even the animated opening for the original Mickey Mouse Club, died earlier this month at the age of 97.

I have Bambi in a few different versions, including a videocassette. It as always been a personal favorite. Seeing it in Blu-ray for the first time this week, is almost like seeing it all over again for the very first time. There is something but magical and ingenious about it at the same time.

There are so many scenes that are exquisitely done — from that opening scene of the forest, which has such depth, it makes some new 3D films look primitive to the excitement of Bambi’s “arrival” by the other forest animals, to his ungraceful ice skating with Thumper.

There are the beautiful changing of the seasons and the horrific forest fire, painted with such realism that Bambi and his friends were used in the original prevent fire campaigns by the

United States Forest Service. (Because that was just a one-year agreement, Smokey Bear was created).

One word of warning with Bambi, of course. Despite its beauty and overall gentleness, the death of Bambi’s mother remains one of the most devastating in all of film, animated or otherwise, and it will effect sensitive young children (and even some adults).

For this Diamond edition, which also includes a second standard DVD disc with bonus features, Disney has also debuted something they call Second Screen technology. The enhanced movie-viewing experience allows you to download the new Disney Second Screen application onto a computer or iPad, and synch it to movie. Your laptop/iPad now becomes a second storyboard on Bambi with interactive elements that include galleries, photos, trivia animated flipbooks and more.

Also featured in the Diamond edition is Inside Walt’s Story-meetings Enhanced Edition. This is not your standard behind-the-scenes look at a film. While Bambi plays, a other boxes run simultaneously and using extensive notes from the Disney archives, the backstage story of Bambi is told by the animators themselves (dramatic voice re-enactment). It is very effective stuff and a most for animation fans.

Other bonuses on the Blu-ray include deleted scenes, a deleted song and the Blu-ray galleries, a collection of images originally created as part of the design process for Bambi. The classic DVD also has many behind the scenes features as well as the cartoon short The Old Mill, the 1937 winner Academy Award winner for best short subject/cartoon.

A few more Bambi notes: Bambi was voted No. 3 on the American Film Institute’s list of top ten animated films of all-time. And astronomers have named two asteroids Thumper (1993) and Bambi (1995) after the film.

oooo

One of the great things about DVDs is that films and TV series you long forgot about or never even knew existed, eventually wind up on disc or are available for download.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will release on Tuesday the miniseries Kennedy: Robert Kennedy and His Times.

Originally airing in 1985, this two-disc event was a three-part television event running 315 minutes.

And that is how I spent Tuesday night this week. For the most part, it was well worth watching.

This was a first-rate TV production, comparable almost to an HBO endeavor.

The all-star cast includes Brad Davis (Midnight Express) as Robert Kennedy and Veronica Cartwright (Alien, The Birds) as wife Ethel. Other stars include Academy Award winner Beatrice Straight (Network) as Rose Kennedy, Cliff DeYoung as JFK and Ned Beatty as J. Edgar Hoover. If you look closely at Robert and Ethel’s 11 children you will also find very young versions of River Phoenix, Jason Bateman and Shannon Doherty.

But Robert Kennedy and His Times is more about the telling, and there are many highlights in this mini-series. Based on the best-selling biography by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (he was also a family confidante so there is no dirty laundry on display here) this is compelling real-life drama, from early political rumblings of John F. Kennedy, his early wins and the presidency to the Cuban Missile Crisis and his assassination.

For Robert, it is a candid look at his efforts to go against the Teamster leaders and Jimmy Hoffa and even more memorably his unpopular stand for Civil Rights.

Indeed, this mini-series is a chronicle of the some of the most turbulent times in American History from the Vietnam War to the assassinations of JFK, RFK and Martin Luther King.

Robert Kennedy didn’t always choose the popular side. He was often at odds with Lyndon Johnson, after he became president, as well as FBI director for life Hoover.

But his message was more about peace, unity and fairness for all.

His assassination in 1968 ended what could have been his road to the White House, which would have meant no Richard Nixon, and almost assuredly a much faster exit in Vietnam. Fate can be brutal.

The film features lots of newsreel footage from the item which is expertly woven into the story, never more effectively than the final weeks of his campaigning for the Democrat presidential nomination via many train stops. The final sequence shows his actual funeral train being greeted by thousands and thousands of onlookers as it travels cross-country.

The mini-series was directed by Marvin J. Chomsky who also directed one of the most popular TV series of all-time, Roots.