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In the normal course of the business day (such that it is in Defamer HQ, where we've been awake for two hours but still can't find our pants), we'd probably quickly skim our way through a newspaper piece on a relatively mundane subject like the corporate aftermath of the recently completed sale of MGM to Sony. But when the LAT deftly works a reference to MGM's leonine mascot into its lede (we've been gleefully guilty of the same strategy), we're magically transported to the Hollywood jungle of our imagination:

With the nearly $5-billion acquisition of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. by a Sony Corp.-led investment group now final, the lion's roar is being reduced to a meow. [...]

"It takes decades to build a library like this," Sony Pictures Chairman Michael Lynton said. "And this one is a real gem."

Amy Pascal, chairwoman of Sony's Columbia Pictures unit, and Lynton also will hold the creative reins, allowing them to scour that film library for potential remakes that will be among the handful of movies MGM chooses to co-finance with Sony each year.

Even this straight description of what lies ahead for MGM sends us on a mental safari, where Michael Lynton and Amy Pascal are magically recast as hungry jackals, greedily picking over the bones of a felled lion, gulping down only the meatiest parts of its flank. Also: The lion is inexplicably attired in James Bond's tuxedo, an overturned martini glass lays by its side, and we are very, very high.