Money for Nothing

No, not Dire Straits, although this could be said to be relating to a situation in dire straits. Instead this is a documentary about Money for Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve.

This movie takes us through the history of the American Economy as it relates to the Federal Reserve. From the creation of, and through various failures, we get the history and see that the recent crash wasn't new. And then it talks about the recent crash... and about it's still doing things wrong.

This movie places the Federal Reserve at the heart at various collapses, when it pulled the wrong lever or didn't pull the lever at all. For one reason or another, the Federal Reverse failed to do its job, although this wasn't helped by the bills placed on it to fulfil, or the various chairmen who had their own priorities about how things should work. Greenspan gets a lot of screen time, and there is a lot of picking over what he should have done.

However, while it does discuss the recent crash, and that there is still work to do... this movie doesn't really point out what should happen, only that something needs to happen. Other than as an interesting historical lesson, I'm not sure what their overriding point is.

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Bonus Video: Tasmanian Devils

Finally recorded the more elusive of creatures, the Tasmanian Devils!

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Robotic Crocodile

Yeah, it's terrible movie time. While it's not The Asylum, it's meeting their standards!

A space launch goes wrong, and the payload lands in a zoo. The payload bursts out, encounters a crocodile, and then converts it into a cyborg killer croc. Why? Nanomachines, son! So there are hijinks at the zoo, but they don't last long, because there aren't enough teenagers to kill there... so here's a water park in the middle of what looks like spring break, so woo hoo, teen killing time! What then follows is a chase about many different places and eventually into the sewer, but fortunately there's no problem explosives can't solve...

Yep, this movie is firmly in the 'dangerous predator' genre, doing nothing original, and certainly nothing of interest. The effects look like they were done by the same group that does The Asylum, ie the croc looks clearly CGI and badly composited into shots. There are a few moments where the croc might be real (especially when it's not moving), but otherwise we get animal shots that are largely filmed... 'actor adjacent', in which we conveniently don't get the animal and the actor on screen at the same time. Oddly, the zoo seems to be open air, in which you can randomly run into the not-enclosed area containing birds of prey.

Star power, we have Corin Nemec, who isn't breaking big time. And other people who are also in this.

Definitely deep in the schlock territory here, and just another drop in the bucket.

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Punishing Black Widows

This is probably as close as we'll get to the Punisher turning up in the Marvel Universe movies. An animated movie that looks dropped directly from a Japanese animation studio.

Frank is after people who put some guns on the street, and starts the movie with a whole lot of death (cartoon style, so not much actual blood). But SHIELD already has an operation underway to deal with it, and so he is forced to team up with Black Widow to trace them. And then they find a base filled with people being turned into organic soldiers (and no-one mentions Super Soldier Serum, although that would be an obvious thing to do), and maybe the base is blown up with the people in it? It's not clear. But then there are more soldiers and the Avengers turn up and Egghead is in here, although nothing like Egghead, and more people die. Just like a fun movie should be!

No-one was trying hard with this movie. Like the previous Stark movie, this is just something to fill time without any passion. The plot moves slow, despite the action, and co-incidences abound, and...sigh. Some effort was put into making Frank Castle look intimidating, but effort was also put in to put Natasha into an idealised version of hips and boobs in tight leather.

Just as DC have ceded live action superhero movies to Marvel, Marvel have ceded animated movies to DC.

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Paranormal Clopping Hill

Pro-tip: If you have Clophill in your movie title, you better be an MLP cross over... this isn't an MLP cross over.

In Clophill there's a ruined church where satanic rites apparently took place. And, of course, a bunch of people decided to play paranormal investigators, and spend time up there. There are such scary things as someone seeing something white in the distance, and a cracking sound and bunnies...

And no plot here at all. This is like various useless moments (ie all of them) from a standard Ghost Hunters show, in which people wind themselves up and think they are experiencing something. Even when they zoom in on strange things on screen, I still can't work out what I'm supposed to be seeing!

But because this is a movie, there is something strange going on... in a very lame way. In which we are more told that something strange happened rather than actually seeing anything.

A paranormal movie that doesn't try to do anything original... or even interesting.

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Early Monk

I'm rewatching Monk... because I can! Only season one so far, but it's interesting how much the character is different from later seasons. I can't say I'm that surprised, as time goes on loading more problems on Monk gives more opportunity for humour, but this first season gets by with only a few quirks.

Watch the opening:


Just in that we can see differences. In his wardrobe, he has two cop suits, and gets his usual suit out from between them... Monk would never put it in there like that in the first place. And tellingly, when he's leaving the house, he turns the third umbrella around... and yet, in later seasons, Monk hates odd numbers. There would be no way he would have just three umbrellas, let alone a three prong hanger. Two or four, he would throw away a three one.

Also he only have a few phobias, heights, germs, milk... not the whole volume he gets saddled with later. He can ride in elevators, so that will only be done under duress later. And he seems to be quite capable of getting around with Sharona, and yet later on he seems reluctant to even get in a cab.

If anything, Monk gets worse over the show, not better. So much for that therapy then!

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As a coffee stain

Have you seen these recently? Okay, this isn't a recent phenomena, but I've noted a bit of an uptake of them recently. I'm talking about 'let's take characters of a TV show and imagine what they would look like as these other things.'

A good example is Doctor Who as Dogs. Now, these are well drawn, and well chosen, but the overall point will stand.

How about Disney Princesses as Apocalypse characters? Or as in Star Wars? Or as in Game of Thrones?

Or let's make bands out of Lego figures? Or Batman villains as Sharks?

This is all creative work, and they are doing better than I can draw, but that's not what's bothering me. It's how I know about them.

At the moment it seems that every time someone does of these things, it's deemed newsworthy enough to be reported on on various game related websites and such. Really? Do we need to know every time someone puts these out? Are you so desperate to fill up the news page that your job entails telling everyone must see this work.

These are the sort of items that are shared, but as 'hey have you seen this?' causal posts on forums. Not as headlines.

At least I know that when I do 'Doctor Who Monsters as Coffee Stains', it'll be well reported.

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