Imax Movies In Vancouver Offer Nice Change Of Screen

----------------------------------------------------------------- IMAX closer to home

The IMAX films "Speed," and "The Eruption of Mount St. Helens" are at the Omnidome on Pier 59 (622-1868). The Pacific Science Center (443-IMAX) is showing "Blue Planet," "Destiny in Space," and "Titanica." Descriptions of these films can be found in the Family Movies column, page E 8. -----------------------------------------------------------------

No matter what city you're visiting, the movie theaters always seem to be playing the same half-dozen Hollywood pictures.

Expensive television campaigns now make 2,000-theater engagements mandatory for major-studio releases. The result is a sameness about most multiplexes. Even a decade ago, on your summer vacation you could find more variety during a trip out of town.

This summer, Vancouver, B.C., is something of an exception. While the Vancouver malls are filled with the same films unreeling in Alderwood or Issaquah, the city has a few unusual venues, including two super-70mm houses that are showing movies you can't see here.

Expo '86 legacy

For all its transitoriness, Expo '86 left behind the most spectacular pair of IMAX theaters on the West Coast: the CN IMAX, which is the only theater on this side of the continent that can show IMAX 3-D movies, and the Omnimax Theater at Science World, which has one of the world's largest IMAX-dome presentations.

CN IMAX, part of Canada Place at the Pan Pacific Hotel, debuted at Expo '86 with Colin Low's "Transitions," an IMAX 3-D movie that drew long lines for its enjoyable gimmicks, such as dropping an egg in your lap - or seeming to.

It worked because the process was so effective: the best 3-D motion-picture system ever devised. Compared with the primitive green-and-red glasses of the 1950s, or the standard mixture of 70mm and 3-D used in Disneyland's "Captain EO," it marked a quantum leap - and it's still state-of-the-art.

The movies have also gotten better. "The Last Buffalo," an intriguing, nature-oriented narrative film directed by Low's son, Stephen, has played off and on at the CN IMAX theater for the past five years. It's currently being screened at 6 p.m. daily.

Howard Hall's "Into the Deep," which opened in May and is packing them in this summer (show times are continuous from noon), is a marvelous undersea documentary in the Cousteau style. There's something remarkably intimate about IMAX 3-D, which creates such a seamless illusion that everything seems up-close and personal, and Hall makes the most of it.

Not as rushed and once-over-lightly as most IMAX directors, he takes his time, allowing his cameras to observe closely as a lobster discards its shell, or a fish defends its turf, or a shark is born, or a starfish slowly moves over a sea floor that's crawling with creatures that reach out to the audience. It's quite a show for $7.50.

"Wings of Courage" to come

"Wings of Courage," an IMAX 3-D film directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud ("The Bear," "The Lover") and starring Val Kilmer and Thomas Hulce, will open in Vancouver later this year. (It's playing in New York but is not yet destined for Seattle, which won't have an IMAX 3-D theater for at least a couple of years.)

The Omnimax Theater at Vancouver's Science World (on the old Expo grounds and next to the SkyTrain station) projects an image that's bigger, brighter and cleaner than those at similar domed IMAX theaters in San Diego and Las Vegas.

Somewhat pricier than CN IMAX (adult tickets are $9), it's a letdown only because the current show, Greg MacGillivray's "The Living Sea," is a typical IMAX production: handsome, well-meaning, full of roller-coaster effects (a trip through the waves on an Oregon Coast Guard boat is the highlight) and high-profile talent (Meryl Streep narrates it and Sting provides the music) but distrustful of the audience's attention span.

Because so much of it takes place underwater, it's impossible not to compare "The Living Sea" with "Into the Deep." It's also impossible not to notice that its most effective sequence - a relatively relaxed episode about a school of sting-less Palau jellyfish - was photographed by "Into the Deep's" director, Howard Hall. ("The Living Sea," which runs through Nov. 9, plays daily from 11 a.m.)

Both shows are preceded by an introduction to the IMAX sound and projection systems ("Hi, I'm MAX," says the folksy narrator at Science World) that emphasizes screen size and the wattage behind the speakers.

For information, call 1-800-582-4629 (CN IMAX) or 604-268-6363 (Science World).