The Daily Avatar: Vatican Denounces Film as 'Godless', 'Kick-Ass'; Post-Pandorum Depression Identified

Welcome to The Daily Avatar, your trusted source for breaking Avatar news, styles, sports (including the latest round of Mountain Banshee Ball trades) and Na'vi wedding announcements.

God Hates Eywa

The Vatican's newspaper has roundly dismissed the film as being a triumph of style over substance -- an "anti-imperialistic, anti-militaristic parable," (coincidentally, two expansionist systems that have served the Church well over the centuries), "which doesn't have the same bite as other more serious films."

Squeezed between front page stories "The Holy Father's Angelus Reflection

on humanity's reason for hope" and "Holy Father appeals for peace

during Angelus Reflection," L'Osservatore Romano's withering review claimed Avatar possessed "numerous captivating special effects but little true emotion...visually there is impact but the plot is stale." As a result of this chilly reception, all events for the planned Vatican/Avatar Day meant to coincide with the film's Italy release -- from the blue chimney smoke to the fully operational heavy-loader suit Benedict XVI was to pilot down the steps of Basilica -- were scuttled.

Post-Pandorum Depression

Doctors have now identified a potentially devastating psychological phenomenon sweeping through the planet: the Avatar blues. A topic thread called "Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible" on Avatar Forums has over 1,000 responses from audience members who have found themselves down, despondent, and in some cases suicidal, caught in a mundane planet that denies them the ability to prance through dayglo rainforests and ponytail meld with fearsome flying reptiles.

Wrote one male who called himself Mike: "Ever since I went to see Avatar I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na'vi made me want to be one of them. I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in 'Avatar.'"

Another wrote, "When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday, the world seemed ... gray. It was like my whole life, everything I've done and worked for, lost its meaning," Hill wrote on the forum. "It just seems so ... meaningless. I still don't really see any reason to keep ... doing things at all. I live in a dying world."

Experts recommend not saying the obvious -- i.e., "Why don't you turn off your computer and travel to an area on Earth that possesses a wide array of exotic wildlife and flora, and interact with these actual examples of nature," -- but to rather organize Avatar group-therapy sessions in local community centers, where PPD sufferers can work through their Dr. Grace Augustine-envy while chain-smoking and chugging black coffee.

Avatar Shooting

There was a shooting at an Albuquerque, NM theater showing Avatar Saturday that left one girl with a bullet wound in her ankle. /Film has an eye-witness account:

Not long after the Hometree fell in the movie, I hear two LOUD pops and saw one of the flashes near the bottom left of the theater, near the ground floor... I quickly realized that what I had heard sounded more like a gunshot than a firework. An audible, "Ahhhhhh...." that sounded like a whining was heard and I saw someone throw someones arm over their shoulder and half-run out the right side.

Not long after random people started getting up and running out, including my girlfriend, her son, and I. As we were running out I felt a panic start to set in. People were frantic and not being considerate...This happened right when they removed the shoe of what looked like a teenage girl and a small dime-sized mark was visible on her sock. The girl said something like, "Oh my God! What is it, what happened to my foot?

Two men are currently in custody. The sad thing is, they'll probably do more hard time than the New Moon accidental she-pirate.