Money, Money, Money

Changing the face of money: The new $100 bill includes 3D security tricks — and hidden secrets galore

Have you seen the long-anticipated new $100 bill yet? The new money makeover is so busy and yet so cool that it could make you want to save a few.

It was nearly three years ago when the Federal Reserve board announced redesign plans for the Ben Franklin-faced bill. However, the release date's been continuously pushed back with the problems attributed to production issues. Now, currency collectors and financial institutions are expecting the note to finally begin circulating Oct. 8.

For starters, the new note has a sweet 3D ribbon on its face, making various designs (on the ribbon) look in motion. This and a number of other security features are designed to make the new $100 bill easy for consumers and merchants to authenticate and difficult for counterfeiters to replicate.

Here are some key features that are all so National Treasure (nerdy, I know) :

The 3-D Security Ribbon is cool enough for a movie. When you tilt the note back and forth while focusing on the blue, you will see the bells change to 100s as they move from right to left. If you tilt the bill side to side, they move up and down.

A Security Thread can be seen if held up to the light. The thread runs vertically to the left of Ben's face. Ever so patriotically, the thread is imprinted with the letters USA and the numeral 100. This is repeated along the thread. Also, under ultraviolet light the thread glows pink.

There is a Bell in the Inkwell. The inkwell color shifts from copper to green if you tilt the note. This effect gives off the illusion that a bell appears and disappears inside the inkwell.

The Watermark didn't change. When you hold the bill up to the light you see a faint and rather sad picture of Ben in the (one) blank space to the right of the portrait. The watermark is visible from both sides of the note.

Color-Shifting Ink turns the numeral 100 in the lower (front) right corner of the note from copper to green.

And those are just the main security features. There are still more Where's Waldo? type things to keep you interested. Microprinting on Ben's jacket collar that can only be seen with a magnifying glass, for instance.

It took nearly a decade for officials from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve system and the United States Secret Service to design, create and unveil the new bill.

So, let the countdown begin and here's to hoping we all get paid!

The new $100 bill brings 3D tricks to American money.

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Movie Review

Rachel McAdams goes feral in Sam Raimi's gory new comedy Send Help

Photo by Brook Rushton

Rachel McAdams in Send Help.

Director Sam Raimi has gone through different phases as a filmmaker, including leading the first Spider-Man trilogy and joining the MCU with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. But he first gained notice with the gory and funny Evil Dead movies, a sensibility he’s returning to with his latest film, Send Help.

Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is a meek and eccentric middle manager at a financial firm that’s just named Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) as its new nepo CEO. Bradley’s dad had promised Linda a promotion to vice president, but she gets passed over in favor of one of Bradley’s frat buddies, sending her into a mild rage. Still, she gets invited along on a planned business trip to Thailand, during which she hopes to prove her worth.

Unfortunately for most of the passengers on the private plane, it crashes into the ocean, leaving only Linda and Bradley alive on a deserted island. Linda, who has privately developed survival skills, adapts quickly to the forbidding environment, while Bradley tries to revert to bossing her around. But Linda quickly understands the power dynamic has shifted, and she uses this knowledge to try to keep Bradley in line, turning their stranding into a battle of wills.

Directed by Raimi and written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, the film is the classic “so bad it’s good” kind of experience. McAdams, inarguably an attractive and charming person, is given stringy hair, an antisocial personality, and quirks like eating tuna fish at her desk to make her as off-putting as possible. Bradley, along with almost everyone else at her office, is stereotyped just as hard in order to set up the twist of fate.

When the action shifts to the island, things get even more over the top. The audience has already been primed for Linda to demonstrate her survival expertise, but the film does way more than just show her making fire. Whether it’s flawlessly building a shelter or hunting a wild boar, everything Linda does is portrayed in a slightly off-kilter manner. Then they turn everything up to 11, indulging in gore that is so unnecessary that you can’t help but laugh.

The filmmakers prove they’re in on the joke the rest of the way, including a variety of preposterous but hilarious scenarios that would cause massive eyerolls if they were actually trying to take the film seriously. While they do a great job of showing Linda’s ability to handle herself in the wild, they also show that she is somehow the only person in the world who could get a glow up after a plane crash and weeks living in nature.

McAdams, an Oscar-nominated actor for Spotlight, is way too high class for a movie like this, which makes her presence here all the more interesting. She is all-in on whatever Raimi wants her to do, and she’s at her most fun when she goes the animalistic route. O’Brien, who was great in the recent Twinless, doesn’t get as much of an opportunity to show his range, but he still proves to be an interesting foil for her.

Were it released in any other month, Send Help might be looked at as bottom of the barrel material. But with the movie year just getting started, it’s easier to forgive its outrageous plot twists and just have fun, especially since Raimi and his team put the rest of the film together so well.

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Send Help opens in theaters on January 30.

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