The Church of Scientology has paid for a full-page ad that preemptively denounces Alex Gibney‘s Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief…of course! The Scientologists have always aggressively gone after their critics so who’s surprised? The presumably scathing documentary will premiere on Sunday, 1.25, at the Sundance Film Festival, and then have a modest theatrical run before an HBO debut on March 16. What’s new to say about these dickheads anyhow? Scientology exposes were journalistically intriguing in the mid ’90s. Occasional hiccups and rants from Tom Cruise certainly brought renewed attention to the controversial church over the years. But when I first read about Gibney’s doc I kinda went “meh.” As Michael Cieply notes in a 1.15 N.Y. Times piece about the full-page ad, “The church’s forceful response risks calling attention to what might have seemed like old news.” But who am I to pre-judge? I’ll be there with bells on when Going Clear has its first peek-out at the MARC theatre at 2:30 pm.