You see, as part of my plan to get into the movie reviewing businesss, I saw Avatar 3-D. And, like thousands of other moviegoers, I developed a severe case of the Avatar Blues, partly out of the realization that male-pattern baldness was going to preclude me from ever hair-bonding with a ten-foot-tall blue version of Sigourney Weaver, and partly because when I went out and tried to sleep in a tree like the Na’vi I got totally bitten up by ants.

Luckily, a few weeks of Avatar fan fiction was enough to bring me out of my funk, at which point I was able to start reading the (non-Avatar-related) news again, where I was delighted to learn that Tim Tebow is going to star in a Super Bowl ad:

The former Florida quarterback and his mother will appear in a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl next month. The Christian group Focus on the Family says the Tebows will share a personal story centering on the theme “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life.”

The word on the street (OK, on Twitter) is that the commercial is going to focus on Tebow’s anti-abortion views (and possibly also on his pro-amateur-circumcision views). However, when Focus on the Family is involved, you can never be sure what’s going to happen.

For instance, maybe the commercial will be about how to tell whether the heavy metal band your kids are listening to is dedicated to loving Christ (e.g. “Demon Hunter”) or loving the Devil (e.g. “Demon Seeker”). Maybe the commercial will explain what “scripture” can teach us about premarital sex. (“Nothing. Drink Bud Lite!”) Or maybe it will call attention to how the Super Bowl is so often an MTV-like expression of pure filth, especially when Peyton Manning is involved.

Probably, though, it will be about abortion. Back when she was pregnant with Timmy, Tebow’s mom came down with a vicious case of amoebic dysentery, and her doctors warned her that the drugs she was taking could cause the unborn Tim to develop an unorthodox throwing motion and slow release, and possibly be born with ugly Bible-referencing birthmarks below his eyes. Of course, she ignored their pro-abortion suggestions, and the rest is college football history.

I’m not sure if they’re written or filmed the commercial yet, but in case they haven’t, I suggest an It’s a Wonderful Life parody (with Tebow in the Jimmy Stewart role, naturally, and Lou Holtz as his guardian angel) that shows what would have happened if he’d never been born:

• Oklahoma Sooners win 2008 BCS national championship
• homeschoolers never shake stigma of being unathletic spelling-bee nerds
• Erin Drewes never becomes famous
• lots of Filipino boys get to keep their foreskins

Or maybe we’re all wrong and he’ll be pitching pets.com. They’re still big, right?

Many religious conservatives in the kingdom believe films from more liberal Arab countries such as Egypt could violate religious taboos. Some also view cinema and acting, as a form of dissembling, as inconsistent with Islam.

“The film festival was cancelled upon indirect instructions from the interior ministry,” said an official at the information and culture ministry.

It’s a real shame, as I’m told the organizers had put together a stellar jury full of luminaries like Abdallah bin Abd al-Aziz bin Abdallah Al Saud, Abd al-Aziz bin Fahd bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud, and Abd al-Rahman bin Fahd bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud.

Also, I’m told they were going to premiere their own remake of Star Wars, which we’ll probably never get to see now, although I did manage to find part of the trailer online:

However, before you get too worried for the people of Saudi Arabia, know that all is not gloom and doom. At least one member of the royal family is advocating that girls be allowed to participate in sports. The religious police are learning English in order to better prevent “vice” among foreigners (which, presumably, will leave them with less time to prevent “vice” among Saudis). And I have it on good authority that “8 Simple Rules… For Beating My Teenage Daughter” is no longer the most popular television show in the country.

And it’s possible the film festival will be brought back in the future. I’m certainly going to continue working on my Iraqi Balboa screenplay, just in case.

Both sides agree that “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling doesn’t research thoroughly or deeply enough when writing her best-selling novels.

In the weeks ahead of the release of the movie “The Half-Blood Prince,” based on Rowling’s best-selling novel, conservatives such as Catholic League president Bill Donohue have been slamming Rowling for claiming as “factual” some details in her book that experts say are not.

“J.K. Rowling says in her book (Half-Blood Prince) that the Horcruxes are ‘factual’ and that they were ‘created ruthlessly by the Dark Lord,’ ” noted Donohue, referring to the soul-piece-storing secret objects that are the focus of the upcoming movie adaptation of Half-Blood Prince, which hits theaters in June.

Furthermore, as Donohue pointed out, Rowling said in a promotional interview that the Death Eaters “vowed vengeance against Muggles in their early days.”

“The early Death Eaters – those of Voldemort’s day – were expelled from Hogwarts by the Dumbledore and hunted mercilessly,” the author had said.

Donohue, however, said “all of this is a lie,” noting that the Death Eaters were founded more recently.

“It is obvious that Malfoy and Crabbe could not possibly have been members,” he argued, referring to the two pure-blood wizards. “Hogwarts never expelled a single member of the Death Eaters.”

More recently, scientists have also come out to clarify for book lovers and moviegoers the truth behind claims made by Rowling, though most are well aware that her books are works of fiction with snippets of facts interwoven – not vice-versa.

Marcela Carena, a senior scientist at the lab and a professor at the University of Chicago, told the Courier News this past week that the concept of wizards in Half-Blood Prince is right, but the quantity that appear in the story is “impossible.”

According to Carena, it would take the largest school of wizardry in the world about 190 million years to make the dozens of Death Eaters that threaten the world in Half-Blood Prince.

Rowling apparently “didn’t do a lot of research” about the magic involved in her book, Carena told the Courier News.

Despite its inaccuracies – historical and scientific – “Half-Blood Prince” is expected to score big in the box office this year.

The movie had been reviewed by semi-official Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano as “harmless entertainment” that “hardly affects the genius and mystery of Christianity.”

While it praised director David Yates for the “magnificent” reconstruction of the cave storing Slytherin’s locket, L’Osservatore Romano stopped short of endorsing the film and compared it to a video game that “first of all ignites curiosity, and then, perhaps amuses a little also.”

Furthermore, the newspaper noted that the Catholic Church is on the side of the good guys in “Half-Blood Prince,” unlike “Order of the Phoenix,” to which the upcoming movie serves as a sequel.

In Order of the Phoenix, author Rowling had vilified the Ministry of Magic as a secretive and murderous cult – a depiction that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops denounced as “deeply abhorrent.”

In “Half-Blood Prince,” however, it is Muggles like Catholics that protagonist Harry Potter is working to defend, and the group suspected of trying to destroy Muggles is one, unlike the Ministry of Magic, that is no longer operating today.