It's Brendan Fraser, Mr. Mummy himself, talking with alarming earnestness about Journey to the Center of the Earth, which, he wants us to know, is "the first live-action, 3-D, narrative-driven, feature-length, CGI-and-actors film that was pre-visualized and shot with specialized equipment and cameras that are on the tip - on the pointy bit of the spear - that filmmaking is going to take a step in the direction towards." Phew.

Luckily, someone else wrote the dialogue for Fraser in Journey, a jolly, juvenile adaptation of the Jules Verne classic in which Fraser, as an absent-minded scientist, Josh Hutcherson, as his mopey teenage nephew, and Anita Briem, as their leggy Icelandic mountain guide, fall through a crevice near Reykjavik and wind up deep in the planet's core - "A world within a world!" Fraser exclaims.

There are giant bugs down there, and gargantuan butterflies, a humongous sea-monster, and huge stuff comin' right at ya, courtesy of those trademark Real D 3-D glasses that audiences have to wear.

The 3-D technology that went into Journey - opening Friday in regular and 3-D formats - was developed by Titanic mastermind James Cameron. Eric Brevig, who directed the new film, has known Cameron since 1989's The Abyss, on which Brevig served as a visual effects ace. Cameron lent the specially designed, twin-lens HD cameras for Brevig used on Journey.

"There's no film," explains Fraser, on the phone from the back seat of a car heading to the Atlanta airport a few weeks ago. "There's just a massive cable that goes off to a giant hard drive."

Fraser, whose third Mummy movie, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, opens August 1, says that working on big effects-driven projects always creates a challenge, as actors have to play opposite monsters, demons and whatnot that aren't there in front of them on the soundstage.

"Blue-screen, green-screen, pingpong balls on the tip of a stick, whatever," he says. "It's your job as an actor to believe in it anyway."

However, Fraser says that working with a camera that doesn't have the conventional magazine of film that requires refilling does offer an advantage: "With this [digital] equipment, the difference is really that when you're doing a take, you don't have to worry about the clock ticking. With [digital] video it gives you a certain amount of liberty, you don't have that pressure, you can stay loose.

"And if you're shooting an action picture, that's important, because you can capture the spontaneity of a take."

Fraser, 39, has mixed things up in his career, going from the knuckleheaded teen comedy Encino Man to prestige indies such as Crash and Gods and Monsters to the roller-coaster-ride "events" that are The Mummy films and Journey to the Center of the Earth.

"We can talk tech, for sure - but hey, however you get it in the box and then get it on the screen and then get it to the audience, it doesn't matter how expensive your gear is or whatever, as long as you get the job done properly and deliver what the story demands.

"In this case," he goes on, and on, "it's an action-packed adventure where you aren't just showing a pyrotechnic display, so to speak, but there's a story that's based on a classic. . . . And Eric and I always agreed that, look, if you don't care about the characters then you're not going to care about the movie."

True enough.

Gonzo Gibney. In February, Alex Gibney took home the Academy Award for best documentary feature for Taxi to the Dark Side, his eerie investigation into charges of prisoner abuse by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

It's grim stuff, and Gibney thwarted the worst kind of despair during the lengthy production and editing process by, yes, making another movie - simultaneously.

"It was loony," recalls the director, describing a setup where two separate editing operations were going at once. "I walked from one world to another in something like 10 steps."

That other world was Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, in which Gibney offers a portrait of the crazed journalist of Fear and Loathing fame, a guy who basically invented the so-called New Journalism that combined old-style reportage with a subjective, subversive approach. Thompson wrote about a wild, whacked-out weekend in Las Vegas, and covered the 1972 presidential campaign, filing his reports for Jann Wenner's upstart music mag, Rolling Stone.

Thompson's writings from the mid-'60s to the mid-'70s upended the journalistic status quo, and turned the bug-eyed, chain-smoking reporter into a star. Gibney's film features a wealth of Thompson footage and archival material, plus scenes from Where the Buffalo Roam (Bill Murray as Thompson), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Johnny Depp as Thompson), and interviews with Pat Buchanan, Jimmy Buffet, Jimmy Carter, George McGovern, Tom Wolfe, Thompson's first and second wives, and his son. The film opened Friday at the Ritz at the Bourse.

Thompson committed suicide in February 2005, but not before planning his own giant wake, which Depp in large part paid for. The Pirates of the Caribbean superstar narrates Gibney's film.

"Johnny had gone and lived with him in his house, and shadowed him when he was preparing to play Hunter in the Fear and Loathing film," says Gibney. "He really was, and still is, psychically connected to him."

Still, it wasn't easy getting Depp involved. Gibney had to track him down and show him a rough cut.

After that, he was on board," says the director. "He heard it with my voice [doing the narration]. So he probably took pity on us. You know: 'You can't have that.' "