From comfy seats to the entire field of vision, IMAx offers enough to blow your mind. |
I’m a child of the modern era and one not easily impressed. Today’s kids got Electro Games of Boy, Stations of Play, Boxes of X and more extreme sports than you could shake a broken leg at, though we don’t actually have any of them personally. Still, with big TVs everywhere and endless cartoons on demand plus another million things on the TiVo, it’s really hard to show me anything with the hope it will overwhelm me, but IMAX may be the one true exception.
I’m already three and-a-half years old, so I’m pretty jaded by all this entertainment technology the clever marketeers try to astonish me with. What can I say, I’ve seen Bob the Builder in 5.1 surround on a THX certified system with a screen 9-feet tall. There just isn’t much left that can blow my mind.
But IMAX? Oh my goodness, I had no idea what I was in for. Have you ever seen this thing? It’s like a TV show, except it’s a hundred feet tall and wraps from ear to ear and chin to crown with razor sharp images that nobody could prepare you for by personal account.
There were three of us junior journalists (including myself and the senior editor who is the most traveled of our gaggle) but none of us were ready and all of us could do little more than perpetually waver between dumbfoundedly flabbergasted and tear-approaching terror.
When the film started, which was something about brains and bicycles, which I guess are combined alphabetically, Baby-D clutched Daddy-O’s shirt like it was his safety harness, and I grabbed onto his arm, periodically hiding behind it. Patrick wasn’t as physical with his fear, opting instead to intermittently holler out “wow, that’s so cool,” and “no, no, I’m scared of the bicycles!”
Have you ever seen an IMAX film? Better yet, let me ask the simpler and smarter question: When was the last time you sat through an educational film and were totally blown away by it? I don’t just mean on the edge of your chair, but sunken back so deep in it that the front just about flipped up and swallowed you like a fajita pita?
A normal film shows you just 24-pictures per second, while television shows you 30. That’s a big part of the reason they look so different, but IMAX shows you 60, which is speedy like a computer monitor, except a zillion feet wide and five inches in front of your astounded face. Rumor has it that IMAX is working on a 3D version for their films, but I don’t think I’ll be ready to handle that sort of thing for a very long time.
If you haven’t seen an IMAX film or haven’t taken one in for a while, you need to go back and see another. The resolution puts high definition to shame and the sound is better than the newest of the best THX theaters in the world. And if you’re just so stuck in the mud that you can’t tolerate a documentary, go in for a feature film instead, because the best of the best of those are released in IMAX format too, and it will be like no other way you could ever hope to see it.
There are 250 IMAX theatres operating in 36 countries, so there's gotta be one near you. For showing times and tickets, log on to their website. They’re all pretty equally cutting edge and great, but the particular one that blew us away was adjacent The Tech Museum in San Jose, California.
Above - When the film ended and the lights came back up, we all sighed a breath of relief and looked at each other like "did you see that?"
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