For those of you who have never had the pleasure of being right up close at a U2 concert, let me divulge a spoiler: Bono — a.k.a. Paul Hewson, a.k.a. The Fly, a.k.a Mr. MacPhisto, champion of Africa and two-time Nobel Prize nominee, debt-relief crusader and F-bomb-dropping bane of the Federal Communications Commission, the big-brained, big-hearted, big-mouthed and wholly unembarrassable front man for The (all together now!) World’s Biggest Band — is a wee, short little dude. Five-seven, five-eight, tops. When he performs — and truly, no rock and roll frontman has ever looked more at ease serenading a stadium-load of air guitarists than this guy — he wears thick-soled boots that give him an extra inch-and-a-half on the vertical plane. Every little bit helps, right?

But to paraphrase Al Capone, you can get further with a pair of platform shoes and a 3D IMAX film that captures your every messianic gesture in six story high close-up than you can with platform shoes alone.

Thus arrives U23D, the most unambiguously-titled movie since Alien vs. Predator. It’s an 85-minute concert film compiled from a half-dozen early 2006 stadium gigs from U2’s Vertigo Tour. (Two other concert DVDs from the Vertigo Tour have already come out, making it perhaps the most exhaustively–documented rock roadshow since Bono created the world in seven days. Oh, relax, would you? I’m kidding now.) Released through National Geographic exclusively in IMAX theaters, it’s the first live-action film to be completely shot and edited using a digital 3D process that James Cameron helped to develop and is using to shoot Avatar, his post-Titanic return to features. The results are, from a purely technical perspective, extraordinary.

Photos courtesy U2