The astronauts are playing with their food.

One sends an M&M gliding across the Space Station cabin for another to catch in his mouth, but the receiver hits his head on a floating can of tuna. Another releases an orange toward the audience.

Thunk.

It hits us in the nose. A kid in a back row has the presence of mind to cry, "Ow!"

The next generation of the movie-going experience has arrived.

IMAX's "Space Station 3-D" kicked off the opening of the latest, and largest, IMAX movie screen in Japan in the newly opened Shinagawa Prince Hotel Executive Tower.

While the IMAX brand is known for its larger-than-life film presentation -- its picture area is 10 times that of a conventional 35 mm film frame -- the new three-dimensional technology will give "in your face" a new meaning.

Sure, 3-D has been around for decades, but the two-toned, plastic-lensed, flimsy-cardboard-glasses variety never really reached a stage of quality to propel it beyond the realm of novelty -- it was little more than a way to spruce up low-grade horror flicks.

IMAX 3-D may mark the beginning of something different, and the choice of subject matter -- a space documentary -- signals that IMAX is aiming for higher ground, not cheap spectacle.

Glasses are still required, but the new shades are more substantial, and even wearing them over prescription glasses presents no problem.

The design of the IMAX theater, with the seats more steeply sloped than in conventional movie auditoriums, and the size of the screen -- 16.1 X 21.3 meters -- make the movie fill one's entire field of vision.

It marks a huge improvement on the 3-D of old, and because it's on huge IMAX screens that extend beyond one's peripheral vision, it's really a different experience entirely.

However, it's not perfect. At times the shadow-images that characterized old-style 3-D still appear and can be a distraction.

Also, be warned that sitting in the outer-aisle seats can result in an inferior 3-D experience.

Astronaut-filmmakers

The movie itself -- which opened the same day in Karuizawa, Nagano Prefecture, and which will open in May in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, and in Osaka in July -- is a massive feat, one made possible through the cooperation of NASA and the support of aerospace industry giant Lockheed Martin.

In order to get the real outer space footage that gives the audience the virtual astronaut experience, the astronauts of the International Space Station had to be employed to do the direction and filming.

One of those astronauts, Japanese mission specialist Koichi Wakata, was on hand for the Asian premiere of the film in Shinagawa.

The filming capacity was severely limited aboard the Space Station, Wakata explained.

The three cameras specially engineered for the project were big items in tight spaces.

Carrying just 108 seconds of film took a camera the size of a safe. The remote-controlled camera mounted to the space shuttle cargo bay -- for capturing bird's-eye views of space walks -- could not be reloaded during flight and thus carried more film, making it the size of a bar fridge.

Given the limitations, Wakata explained, they had to choose their shots carefully. He said his crew shot a mere four minutes of 3-D film during his 10-day mission in October 2000.

But he said watching the film made real for him again an experience that had come to seem "like a dream."

Altogether, IMAX cameras were with the Space Station for 337 days.

The dubbing of the film into Japanese, over the original narration by Tom Cruise, is only a minor detraction for nonspeakers -- the visual experience is the main event: the Space Station soaring over the continents like a great mythical bird; the sensation of being in the space suit, hanging in the void by a tether; and perhaps most entertaining, experiencing how the details of daily life are dealt with in zero gravity -- how, for example, one gets a hair cut without clippings floating all over the cabin.

Loron Orris, managing director of IMAX Japan, says the 47-minute film represents IMAX's largest launch in its 21-year history, opening at more than half of its 225 theaters worldwide.

It is also its most expensive, costing "well above $15 million."

Remastering Hollywood

Beyond plans for more 3-D films in the pipeline, like "T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous in 3-D," Orris says IMAX is cultivating another source for IMAX material -- Hollywood.

Until now, IMAX has shown Hollywood films on its screens simply by enlarging them. Now a new process to digitally remaster Hollywood films for IMAX has been developed, promising a sharper and more powerful experience.

However, to maximize visual impact, IMAX films don't deal in subtitles, so all those released in Japan will be dubbed into Japanese.

The early likely candidate for the first digitally remastered run is "Apollo 13," which may arrive in Tokyo this year.

"Ron Howard and Tom Hanks are all over it," Orris says of the director's and star's enthusiasm for rereleasing for IMAX.

As for others, he said talks are under way. "We've shown the studios the (remastered) best clips of their movies."

In an industry known to spend more than $100 million to make a movie, the "couple million" it costs to reformat to IMAX doesn't seem prohibitive, Orris suggests.

"And who wants to see it in a regular theater if you can see it like this?" he asks.