One thing I enjoy about the holiday season is having time to go to movies. For more than 40 years, I’ve been involved in making television programs to educate people about science and the natural world.

But people watch television in a desultory way, often interrupted by the need to help children with homework, let the dog out, or go to the fridge for a beer or to the bathroom for a break. So we tune in and out, often forgetting whether we got a memorable factoid from The Nature of Things or Grey’s Anatomy.

Movie audiences are different than those in TV land. For one thing, people have to make an effort to go to a theatre. They must then pay to watch, and once they start, they have to focus on the film. There are no commercial breaks. So the impact of watching movies is far greater than the impact of television viewing.

Years ago, while camping on the Serengeti in Africa with my family, I was astonished to meet three young Chinese-Americans, who, as I could see by their clothing alone, were clearly not seasoned campers. I asked what made them want to come and experience the wilderness. Their answer amazed me: "Because we saw The Lion King."

So even an animated film had such a powerful impact that these urbanites were motivated to set off on a wilderness adventure. For me, Dances with Wolves was a monumental experience, as it presented North American aboriginal people and their values in a way that was a big departure from the usual Hollywood stereotypes.

Which brings me to the latest movie blockbuster, James Cameron’s Avatar. Some reports claim that Mr. Cameron has wanted to do an environmental film since he was 14 years old. I don’t know whether that story is apocryphal or not, but I do think he’s produced an incredible film.

Of course, the 3-D effects are dramatic and charming, but the best part is that Mr. Cameron has created a world that is instantly compelling and believable, which is what good fairy tales do. The indigenous inhabitants of Pandora are clearly alien but not so profoundly different that we can’t identify with them.

All of the issues on this world are clearly the same as those on Earth when Europeans first contacted the indigenous people of the Americas, Africa, and Australia. The invaders perceive the natives as ignorant, superstitious, and cultureless beings with far less worth than their own. When the Earthlings learn that an ancient, immense tree that is a sacred home to the native Na’vi sits on a priceless resource, nothing is going to stop them from exploiting it.

The movie is over the top, as most fairy tales are, with its conflict between the good guys (the Na’vi and a few Earthlings) and bad guys (the rest of the Earth people), but it’s a rip-snorter of an adventure when the good guys fight back with flying reptiles (I’d give my right arm to have one of them!), six-legged horses, and a host of other ferocious "beasts". I won’t give away the ending, but I can say that I left the theatre very satisfied.

Right-wing commentators in the U.S. and Canada have been apoplectic in their condemnation of Avatar. They say it is anti-American, depicts soldiers and corporations negatively, is anti-Christian, promotes paganism, and on and on. One of the more amusing comments came from someone who wrote a letter to the Calgary Herald, claiming that "This movie will be the undoing of our children. They will soon turn into a hive-mind of radical environmentalism – puppets of their master, David Suzuki."

Talk about confusing fiction and reality!

One U.S. "family" movie-review site says Avatar "has an abhorrent New Age, pagan, anti-capitalist worldview that promotes goddess worship and the destruction of the human race."

Of course, this anger is in reaction to the clear analogy of Na’vis with North American natives – the way they’ve been exploited and the ignorance of the oppressors about the interconnectedness of everything in nature.

Sure, the movie has a great ecological message, but overall it’s just a lot of fun. Please go and see it if you haven’t already. I’m going to watch it again – and again!

IT’S ABOUT TIME Will Arnett gets to play a nice guy. The Canadian-born funnyman has made his name playing clueless jerks, but he doesn’t mind putting his trademark smirk to rest for When in Rome, his latest feature film, which also stars Kristen Bell (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and Josh Duhamel (Transformers).

“It’s nice to play a guy who isn’t a total dick,” says Arnett over the phone from the West Coast where he lives with his wife, comedienne Amy Poehler, and their son Archie. “That’s part of what attracted me to the script. I wanted to play a sweet guy for once.”

Arnett donned a curly haired wig that he admits is “pretty gross” to play the goofy but earnest painter Antonio, one of four men who fall obsessively in love with Beth (Bell) when she unknowingly takes their coins out of the Fountain of Love in Rome (hey, it could happen). Naturally, plenty of wacky antics ensue. “It was a lot of fun,”says Arnett.“The people were great, and we got to film in New York and Rome — what more could you want?”

The characters that have made Arnett famous would probably not be described as “sweet.”

After all, he first rose to stardom on the cult favourite sitcom Arrested Development playing Gob. (pronounced like the biblical “Job”), the selfish, clueless, Segway-riding (but somehow still charming) magician and eldest brother of the Bluth clan.

More recently,his recurring guest role on the hit NBC series 30 Rock as Devon Banks, slimy nemesis of network exec Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), earned him an Emmy nomination last year. But before the awards shows and the film shoots in Rome, Arnett was just a typical Toronto kid biking around Rosedale.

He remembers his Toronto childhood fondly. “I had a fantastic childhood,” he says enthusiastically. “Toronto is a great city to grow up in — there are so many neighbourhoods that are close to downtown, and it feels safe in a way that most American cities don’t.”

In his early high school years, Arnett briefly attended Lakefield College School where he dabbled in school drama but just for fun. “When you’re in a school play somewhere north of Peterborough, you don’t really think, ‘Oh, I’m going to be an actor,’” he says with characteristic modesty (he is still a Canadian, after all). But when he returned to Toronto to finish high school at Leaside, he started going out on auditions and even filmed a few commercials here and there.

His most notable (and embarrassing) work from his high school days? A Manwich commercial. “It’s just such a terrible word,” he muses. “Although ‘Manwich’would make a great name for a gay bar.”

Because of the small-town feel of so many of Toronto’s neighbourhoods, Arnett feels that the city offered him the best of both worlds growing up.

“I loved riding my bike all over the place and playing shinny hockey,” he says. “But you still had all the advantages of city life, like going to Maple Leaf Gardens to watch hockey games, which was great.” (He remains a huge Leafs fan.)

And he did take advantage — Arnett admits to “acting out” as a teenager. “I was still trying to figure out where I fit in, I guess. I wasn’t a jock or a cool kid or a nerd. Oh God!” he says in mock horror. “I’m just realizing I had no identity at all!”

So he picked up a few bad habits. “I was a ‘bad seed,’ as a friend of mine would say,”he says.“I drank and smoked and cut class to hang out at the Mo’.”

That would be the Morrison, a now defunct pub at Yonge and Davenport, just south of the Masonic Temple. “It was this great dive,” he recalls. “There’d be some hobo getting sick into his beer at the bar, and they didn’t card — it was a really classy joint.” (The teenage Arnett had consistent, if not sophisticated, taste in bars — another favourite hangout was the Annex’s notorious Brunswick House.)

When he was 20, Arnett moved to New York City to pursue acting more seriously. “Insert clips from the movie Fame,” he says wryly, rather than waste time describing his years as a struggling actor.

Things looked bleak for Arnett until salvation arrived in the form of a script about a wacky family and an offbeat character named Gob.

Arnett auditioned for the role on Arrested Development and to his great surprise, got it. The show was a critical hit but failed to register the ratings many thought it deserved. After three seasons, it was cancelled, but Arnett had made his name.

Now, Arnett is half of what many would agree is Hollywood’s funniest couple. His wife Poehler was one of the more beloved cast members of Saturday Night Live before she left in 2008, to give birth to the couple’s son, Archie, and to star in her own series, Parks and Recreation.

Arnett and Poehler have worked together on a number of projects, often poking fun at their own relationship: Poehler had a recurring role on Arrested Development as Gob’s wife, (they married on a first date dare, as fans will remember).Arnett recently returned the favour: He made a guest appearance on Parks and Recreation in early January as an obnoxious (but hilarious) suitor to Poehler’s character Leslie Knope (this time, rather than get married on their date, he insists that she submit to an MRI scan).

They starred opposite Will Ferrell in the 2007 figure skating spoof, Blades of Glory, playing a disturbingly close brother-and-sister ice dancing team.

But despite his reputation as a comic actor,Arnett is actually heard even more than he’s seen: he’s got a list of voice credits a mile long. His gravelly baritone has been heard in car ads and movie trailers, and he’s voiced characters on two adult animated series (Sit Down and Shut Up and Freak Show).

And it doesn’t sound like he’s planning on slowing down any time soon. Arnett has plenty of projects on the go, Arrested Development: The Movie not least among them.

The eagerly anticipated follow-up to the sitcom is due out in 2011 and scheduled to film this year. “There’s no final script yet,” he warns. “But we are all quite excited about it.” In the meantime, he’s been working with Mitchell Hurwitz (AD’s creator) on writing a new script, which is still in its early stages. “It’s about a narcissistic guy who has to win over the one girl he really cared about and who he was never able to get,” he says. “I’ll play the narcissistic guy.” (So much for nice guys.)

Most of Arnett’s family is still in Toronto, and he loves to visit home, whenever he can, to catch up with his parents, sisters and nephews. But he and Poehler have been so busy lately that it has been over a year since Arnett has been able to hang out in his hometown.

“Between work and baby stuff,it’s just made more sense for my folks to come to us lately,”he explains.“But I’ll be back again … with a vengeance!”