Will this Panasonic camcorder be compatible with my MacBook/iMovie '09?

no, panasonic camcorder usually shot video in avchd format, which is not a friendly format with imovie, who accept few file formats like mov, mpeg-4, dv etc, therefore, to make it workable with imovie, you need to change it to the proper format, why not try avchd to imovie, probably it can help you, have a free try, good luck :)