I Have Some Notes

Ah ha! Fooled you. You thought we were done making pod for the year, and BAM! New Side Notes! It's a Christmas miracle, if you really stretch the definition of a miracle…and we are. We got together for this bonus episode to chat about the movies, TV shows and YouTube channels that made 2020 at little more bearable for us. We realized there were way more movies released in 2020 than we thought, and...

Skyscraper, finally! Yes, I know we're late on this one, sometimes life gets in the way of rewriting Hollywood blockbusters with friends. However, the show is here now, and we want to thank you (sort of) for suggesting Dwayne Johnson's ode to Die Hard, and for all the other great movie suggestions that we'll keep them in mind for future episodes. Speaking of future episodes, this is our last show...

Christine is not a movie about a talking car, that's the first thing I learned watching it. It is a John Carpenter film. And while his skilled fingerprints are all over this movie, overall this vehicular horror could use some tuning up. Glenna Schowalter joins us again for a ride down Armchair Screenwriter Lane, helping us re-imagine the themes floating around the spookem infested car known as Chr...

We recently watched two heavy social media related documentaries, The Social Dilemma and Feels Good Man , both of which left us jonesing to work out our feelings about. Sorry, we don’t offer any fixes for the giant mess Mr. Zuckerberg has made, that’s a bit outside our wheelhouse. We do, however, dive deep into the social and political ramifications of his software and how Facebook, along with man...

Venom is good…actually? Sure there's a serious lack of Spider-man, and there's at least 40-minutes of pointless globetrotting, but overall we have to admit this film is pretty fun. Of course, that doesn't mean we didn't find plenty to tweak. I mean, the titular symbiote has some real motivation problems, and Riz Ahmed needs a better relationship with his new genocidal alien buddy Riot. No amount o...

September marks the beginning of season six of I Have Some Notes. Six seasons, where does the time go? What is time? I seriously don't know anymore. Speaking of milestones, we pass 100 episodes like three shows ago and didn't even mention it. Acknowledging significant milestones is for suckers. Anyway, for the 104th episode *party streamers* we watched DUNGEONS & DRAGONS with our wonderful guest a...

The Old Guard is a pretty decent movie…there, the end, no need to listen to the show! I suppose if you missed the dulcet tones of our voices, we’ve got some tweaks that might be fun to consider. Gregg adds a new sentimental brotherly subplot, Scott sends Nile into the arms of the villains in the first act and Liam eliminates the TV pilot-esque stinger. Special thanks to Deja for providing research...

A listener recently asked if we've done an X-Men film yet, and we thought to ourselves: Wow, what an excellent untapped franchise! Of course, what better film for us to tackle than the worst one. This could be our last stand, friends. Liam, Scott, Gregg and special guest Olav Rokne take their first class in X-Men, united by the franchises' potential future, haunted by its past. Together we look to...

Indiana Jones, beloved cultural icon and with a fan base that spans generations, surely suggesting rewrites to a sacred franchise will go over well on the internet. Liam, Scott and Gregg struggle mightily with trying to fix the character of Willie Scott, while finding a bit of an easier time eliminating the films offensive elements. The end result is a reimagined story that belongs in a museum.

We're back from a brief hiatus! Hope the armchair screenwriting community got along without us, we certainly missed you. This week we're programming updates for the TRON: LEGACY, Walt Disney's attempt to cash in on a property that made almost no money the first time around. Sounds like a great business strategy to us! We spend time tweaking the villain, adding conflict for the main characters, and...

Sorry, everyone, the newest episode has been postponed. In the wake of the horrific murder of George Floyd and the massive protests that followed, now doesn’t feel like the time to riff on mediocre movies, so we’re kicking the Tron Legacy episode down the road a bit. We’ll be back soon, but in the meantime, if you are looking for ways to listen, learn, and participate in the fights against systemi...

At the height of their careers, Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton joined forces for an explosive disaster movie that had all the trappings of a certified hit. Unfortunately the box office did not agree, and this rather decent volcano flick has laid dormant ever since. Untill now! We power up our script rewriting robot and attempt to pull Dante's Peak out of the rubble.

James Cameron spent years trying to put a live action version of Alita: Battle Angel up on the silver screen, and once he finally did it took us less than an hour to tell him all the things he could have done better. Sorry James, such is the nature of the internet, eventually three white guys with microphones are going to unnecessarily disassemble all your good work. Truthfully though, Alita is no...

Hey, do you love Aladdin? Do you love the Genie and Carpet and Abu? Well now they’re back, in soulless live-action remake form! Hooray. This episode takes a few twists and turns as we discuss the cultural space Aladdin occupies and how that would affect any rewrites or changes to the film. We also get into a deep tangent about the value of remakes compared to more original screenplays. It’s a good...

We asked you to send us your questions for the I Have Some Notes crew, and holy crap did you deliver! We spent this week’s episode covering topics from how COVID-19 will affect movie theatres to our favourite/most hated movies of all time to whether we regret doing The Mighty Ducks (no). Huge thanks to all our listeners who submitted questions and a special thanks to our podcasting friends Flicks...

Life is a movie from 2017 that nobody watched, which makes it perfect podcast material, right? Look, we’re wannabe screenwriters, not wannabe marketing experts. It’s honestly pretty decent, though. There’s a lot of fun sci-fi and horror-y things going on, and a dynamite cast including Rebecca Ferguson, Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds. Still it’s not perfect, or we wouldn’t be looking for put it...

This week we take a microscope to the 2001 blockbuster attempt, Evolution. Liam, Scott and Gregg recoil in horror as they watch a decent sci-fi premise turned unnecessarily into a wacky goof-ball comedy. Reimagining a comedy can be difficult, particularly when "make laugh better" is not an insightful note, but we manage to dig a bit deeper, add some stakes and create an arc or two all while downpl...

What happens when you combine unchecked cinematic ambition with a the world's entire supply of cocaine? You get easily Bruce Willis' strangest (and possible best) film of his career. As you may recall, we were forced to watch Hudson Hawk after losing the Rotten Tomator Prognosticator to listener Michael Senchuk . Hope you enjoy the episode Mike, because it holds a bit of a surprise.

After having our souls crushed by movies like Beneath the Planet of the Apes and Ready Player One , we decided to take a breather from really, really bad movies. For once during the pandemic we wanted to watch a good movie, so we fired up Netflix and hit play on Sharon Stone's THE QUICK AND THE DEAD . How do you rewrite or reimagine a movie you have a lot of affection for? With great difficulty! B...

Are your eyes and ears ready to be assaulted by the densest collage of pop-culture references ever put to film? Perfect! Grab a Jolt, fire up that projection screen TV and insert a coin for Ready Player One. For an unremarkable film, we couldn't stop talking about it, this is our 2nd longest episode ever. It took a long time to record too, as we were having some audio problems again. Ain't podcast...

You've been to the The Planet of the Apes, but have you ever wondered "Hey, what's under there? What's beneath that little planet?" Well, wonder no longer! Today we grab our rewriting shovels and dig up Beneath the Planet of the Apes, starring Charlton Heston and a guy who looks exactly like Charlton Heston. Just a quick note, we had some audio difficulty with this one, we did all we could to touc...

It's a crazy time on this little blue ball of ours, so we hope we can provide you with a little distraction by reimagining the 2017 remake of Power Rangers. Thanks to listener Thomas Meehan for suggesting this movie to us. The boilerplate pitch for this film must have been "Hey, what if we remade The Breakfast Club, but it was also Power Rangers?" but somehow doesn't capitalize. Instead, this rema...

We have yet to tackle a romantic comedy here at the I Have Some Notes studios – a.k.a. Gregg's basement – and for our first rom-com punch up we decided to examine perhaps the greatest on screen couple of all time, Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, in easily their second best effort: You've Got Mail. We had a lot to say about this one, although the rewrites themselves were quick and easy. Oh, and here is a l...

Before the Matthew McConaissance or the Christain Balevolution or even the Gerard Butleration, there was Reign of Fire. This 2002 dragon apocalypse blockbuster had it all: a killer concept, an embarrassment of riches in its cast, and yet it couldn't convert on any of it. The only plus side is that this pile of mediocrity is right in our noting wheelhouse. Liam, Gregg and Scott get into a spirited...

We haven't put many Marvel movies through the notes process, and none from the MCU era. While Marvel has certainly been the more successful brand of comics-turn-movie, they are not flawless. That's where we come in! Smash the play button to hear our Heroes of Note suit up for their first crack at the MCU in Iron Man 2. Also, Liam recommended a video to watch towards just before the ad break, I hav...