FILMS IN - AND ABOUT - 3-D.

Byline: Valerie Kuklenski Staff Writer

With a large-format camera, computer-generated images and quality 3-D production, the opportunities to thrill moviegoers are bounded only by the filmmaker's imagination, as is evident with ``Alien Adventure,'' now playing at Loews Universal Studios IMAX Theater.

The history of three-dimensional art and film is the subject of its companion piece, ``3-D Mania: Encounter in the Third Dimension,'' an informative but less imaginative film from the same Belgian company, nWave Pictures.

``Alien Adventure'' brings a band of space gypsies to Earth in search of a new home. The leader, speaking in the ancient French dialect known as Walloon, dispatches two reconaissance teams to check it out.

The four bumbling aliens think they have touched down in a modern metropolis, but instead they have landed in Adventure Planet, a soon-to-open amusement park with state-of-the-art attractions.

With the large format, the subjective camera angle, 3-D projection and top-of-the-line LCD viewer headsets synchronized with the projectors, the aliens' journey through four rides - Arctic Adventure, Magic Carpet, Kid Coaster and Aqua Adventure - is the ultimate you-are-there cinematic experience.

That's a great thing if you're the kind of person who dashes for the front seat on the first run of any new thrill ride. It can be difficult if you're the type who gets motion-sick on an escalator. (I admit my churning stomach forced me to close my eyes a few times, but the parts I saw were spectacular.)

The Arctic Adventure in particular, in which a sled follows ice blocks through flumes and chutes, is what a good ride might be like while the conceptual, artistic types have free rein, before all those practical-minded engineers suck all the fun out of it. It has a few gravity-defying, plane-warping M.C. Escher moments in which one thinks, ``How did I get here from there?''

Kid Coaster is a lot of fun, with riders scaled about the size of Lego men in a roller coaster through a boy's bedroom.

The ``human'' animation looks stilted, but it's used only briefly on characters that are fixtures of the Magic Carpet Ride. As for the aliens, who can say whether their animation is unnatural?

``Alien Adventure'' is the first fully digital feature-length giant-screen film released, and it has set the bar very high for those that will follow.

``3-D Mania: Encounter in the Third Dimension'' better fits the mold of most large-format films, instructing its audience while amusing.

It looks at the history of three-dimensional art, from Renaissance canvases to stereoscope photographs and viewers to the Lumiere brothers' 1903 film ``L'Arrivee du Train,'' in which a locomotive appeared to plow out of the screen, sending moviegoers of that time shrieking from the theater.

It showcases some of the 65-plus 3-D films Hollywood cranked out from 1952 to 1954, and it explains how filming with two lenses set about 2 1/2 inches apart - the distance between an average person's eyes - fools the brain into perceiving depth on the flat theater screen.

The film is set in the digitally created Institute of 3-D Technology, which has an appealing Jules Verne look. Unfortunately, the main characters are too standardized - the absent-minded professor (Stuart Pankin) and his hovering-robot assistant Max, who could represent the darker side of the more likable Weebo in ``Flubber.''

When the professor finally works the bugs out of his Real-O-Vision contraption, out pops Cassandra Peterson in her Elvira ``Mistress of the Dark'' persona, to strut through a song and dance about haunted houses. She burns through the fog of the film's instructional tone, even while her infamous bust stays two-dimensional.

The facts

--The film: ``Alien Adventure'' (not rated).

--The stars: Voices of Phil ``Bouli'' Lanners and Pierre ``Lele'' Lebecque.

--Behind the scenes: Executive produced, directed and written by Ben Stassen. Produced by Charlotte Huggins and Caroline Van Iseghem.

--Running time: 38 minutes.

--Playing: Loews Cineplex IMAX Theater, Universal City.

--Our rating: Three stars

--The film: ``3-D Mania: Encounter in the Third Dimension'' (not rated).

--The stars: Stuart Pankin, Elvira (Cassandra Peterson).

--Behind the scenes: Directed by Ben Stassen. Produced by Charlotte Huggins. Written by Kurt Frey.

--Running time: 48 minutes.

--Playing: Loews Cineplex IMAX Theater, Universal City.

--Our rating: Two stars

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Alien gypsies visit Earth to find a new place to live in the IMAX epic ``Alien Adventure.''