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T-REX: Back to the Cretaceous Directed by Brett Leonard Starring Peter Horton, Liz Stauber, Kari Coleman - - - - - - - - - - A L S O__T O D A Y 21st Log Doug Engelbart -- his mouse roared - - - - - - - - - - T A B L E__T A L K In the market for a notebook computer? Exchange information and advice on brands and features in the Digital Culture area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Spin sisters By Janelle Brown Why is PR the only high-tech field that women run? (12/03/98) The father of Mario and Zelda By Moira Muldoon Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto creates the world's most popular video games (12/02/98) Let's Get This Straight By Scott Rosenberg Block those pundits: AOL-Netscape isn't like an NBC of the Web -- and can't be (12/01/98) "We Were Burning" Reviewed by Andrew Leonard A new book tells us to forget about Japan Inc. -- Japanese entrepreneurs led the high-tech consumer electronic revolution (11/30/98) The 21st Challenge No. 16: Misdirected love notes By Charlie Varon and Jim Rosenau Answer the mystery e-mail -- win a prize (11/25/98) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE 21ST REVIEWS ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - S A L O N E M P O R I U M SALE! Salon's versatile, ultra-tough bag. Now on sale at just $39 for members and $49 for non-members.

IMAX MATES WITH T. REX These dinosaurs are bigger and cooler than any you've ever seen before -- but they could use a better movie to star in. BY MICHAEL JOSEPH GROSS | To the IMAX Corporation -- purveyors of large-screen, high-resolution, high-tech cinema experiences -- size really does matter. The company has big plans to expand its market beyond museums and amusement parks during the next few years, and bring the nation's shopping malls a new generation of IMAX features that will be more Hollywood and less PBS. "T-REX: Back to the Cretaceous," an IMAX 3-D film directed by Brett Leonard ("Lawnmower Man," "Virtuosity") and starring Peter Horton of TV's "thirtysomething," is being hyped as the first IMAX movie with blockbuster potential. (It premiered in New York in October, and will open in wider release, on at least 40 screens nationwide, through January.) When you view them on the largest IMAX screens through 3-D glasses, the dinosaurs in "T-REX" will appear bigger and taller than they did in real life. But they're not going to command nearly the amount of attention or respect that IMAX needs to make the huge transition from destination entertainment to mainstream commercial success. Nobody expects a dinosaur movie to be clever; it just has to achieve one simple thing -- create a world that lets us imagine what it would be like to live with our planet's former tenants. The more realistic the special effects, the more successfully uncanny a dinosaur movie tends to be: The difference between "One Million Years B.C." and "The Lost World" is like the difference between finding a cache of family photos left by the previous occupants of your house and having the whole clan show up one day at your kitchen door. In its best moments, "T-REX: Back to the Cretaceous," the first IMAX 3-D dinosaur movie, creates precisely the same eerie, thrilling, transporting effect that most of us experienced when we first saw that long shot of the Brontosaurus at the beginning of "Jurassic Park." The computer-generated dinosaurs in "T-REX" have skin that shines with iridescent blues, greens, yellows and reds, following the latest trends in paleontologic research. They have the disconcerting habit of lunging to within spitting distance of the audience and shaking their heads furiously as they roar, open-mouthed, saliva strings stretched between their teeth, their tongues vibrating in the wind of their own breath. Yet despite being able to brag of the most realistic dinosaurs ever to appear on-screen, "T-REX" is a terrible movie. The dinosaurs in "T-REX" romp for maybe 10 of the film's 45 minutes, and their scenes are over so fast the audience can barely register the painstaking detail in which the creatures are rendered. (Technically, the resolution of the computer-generated graphics in "T-REX" exceeds anything that's ever been seen on-screen; scientifically, the images are equally impeccable -- director Leonard says he spent a full hour one day during production discussing the precise nostril slant of a Hadrosaur.) Even worse, there's no real mystery, awe or terror in the film's interactions between contemporary and Cretaceous-period creatures. The dinosaurs in "T-REX" can't inspire much emotion because they're too busy illustrating a point -- the screenplay's preachy platitude that parental neglect is bad. This was, coincidentally, a central theme of "The Lost World" as well. N E X T_ P A G E .|. Cracked eggs send a girl on a rendezvous with dinosaur destiny