Christopher Nolan's dream-based thriller, where "your mind is the scene of the crime" (or so the marketing materials put it), certainly left a lot of people doubting the testimony of their own brains. A cerebral-yet-silly blockbuster where Leonardo diCaprio puts together a group to go "break into" the memories of Cillian Murphy's rich boy in order to commit industrial espionage, Inception also hinted at a lot of backstory for diCaprio's character - specifically, his doomed relationship with Marion Cotillard's Mal, who died within a dreamspace but still haunts him whenever he visits. Having already given the audience a pretty full plate when it came to understanding the mechanics of how hacking into somebody's dreams, and going down multiple levels of their subconscious in order to get at their deepest secrets, Nolan elected not to go into too much detail about diCaprio's Cobb or his history with the other members of his group in the film. If you want to know more about the group and what they do, however, you're still covered. Concealed on the DVD and blu-ray release of Inception is a "motion comic", a semi-animated and voice acted graphic novel story about the events leading up to the film. We get background on the Cobol Job that opens the film, with diCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Marion Cotillard all making appearances. Pretty cool. How to find it: On the second disc's main menu enter the code 5 2 8 4 9 1, then select the image of Cobb's spinning top that appears.
14. Final Fantasy Thriller
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4nTlpYRPmQ Believe it or not, for a brief period at the turn of the millenium we thought this was going to be the future of movies. A huge gamble for Japanese video game developers Square, it cost millions of dollars to produce the photorealistic computer graphics of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and people were starting to have serious discussions about whether or not the admittedly impressive CGI "actors" would soon put their real life brethren out of work. Which obviously isn't what happened - for one thing the film relied on established stars like Ving Rhames and Steve Buscemi providing the character's voices - because the film bombed, and wasn't particularly well reviewed. Still, it was an impressive technical exercise, and the things the 200 members of staff at Square Pictures (which got immediately closed down after the film's release) managed over the four year production cycle are still a sight to behold over ten years later. Appropriately proud of their work, the Japanese animators did some goofy publicity stunts involving their computer generated actors, including producing a steamy bikini photo shoot for female lead Aki Ross. We're not showing it you. Not that we like assumptions, but we think you probably know how to find pictures of half-naked women on the internet. They're all on Bing. Another animator with a little more time on their hands and less of a dirty mind chose instead to use the models from The Spirits Within to produce a shot-for-shot remake of Michael Jackson's classic Thriller video, dance moves and all. It's hilarious and, whilst probably produced as an in-joke for their co-workers, it got included on the film's DVD later. How to find it: On the second disc's "Highlights" menu, navigate to the second page, press down until you hit a triangle, then press right until you can select an image of the dance.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
