A behemoth of a movie requires a behemoth of an episode, so strap yourself in armchair screenwriters! If you had the stamina for Zack Snyder's Justice League surely you can survive 90 minutes of us rewriting the already rewritten. But how could we talk about Zack Synder's Justice League without bringing on two of Edmonton's biggest and brightest comic experts to help us break it all down. That's right, Brandon Schatz and Danica LeBlanc from Variant Edition return to relive the the Super Friends ...
Apr 05, 2021•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 116
Blues Brothers 2000 is our first foray into Saturday Night Live movies, and it will likely stand as the most challenging to rewrite. Dan Aykroyd gave us precious little to work with, for a movie billed as a celebration of the Blues, the script feels like the equivalent of Hot Cross Buns. But all is not lost, Robin from Cinematological joins us to try and crack the musical code of this would-be comedy. Robin also provides a follow-up to our discussion on Netflix stream quality during our Pitch Bl...
Mar 22, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 115
Pitch Black is a movie I dare say most of us remember fondly. After all, it gave us Vin Diesel, and what would the movie going world be like without that living pile of muscle? But, as with every film we choose, it's far from perfect. Listen in as we explore the many ways Pitch Black lets down its secondary characters and how giving them more depth could have made this movie the Pitchest of Black.
Mar 08, 2021•59 min•Ep. 114
Sometimes when I walk away from watching a film for the show I'm not certain it will turn out to be a great episode. The Da Vinci Code is kind of bland and felt like it might not be that exciting to talk about, but boy was I wrong. We had tons to say about it, so much so that the first half of the show went 10 minutes longer than usual. So enjoy our spirited attempt to fix this famous book adaptation.
Feb 22, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 113
Take the first draft of your script, hire an A-list cast, sprinkle in some Guy Ritchie and voila! You've got a Robin Hood. Trouble is, will anyone watch it? They might have if only they had passed the script over to us for a punch up. Sadly, no one may remember that Jamie Foxx was once in a Robin Hood movie, but you'll remember this episode for all our great fixes!
Feb 07, 2021•58 min•Ep. 112
The thing you have to appreciate about a director like Baz Luhrmann is that he doesn't make boring films. Regardless of the finished product's quality, there will always be plenty to talk about. And talk we did, discussing The Great Gatsby in all its glitzy glory and bombastic faults. We did decided – rather wisely, I think – not to relitigate the plot of a classic novel, instead focusing on how Baz could have been more successful in his adaptation (hint: no 3D). Enjoy!
Jan 25, 2021•58 min•Ep. 111
We've been released from our cryogenic prison blocks to bring you an all new episode of an old classic. Are movies from the 90s considered classic now? Don't say yes, I want to maintain some illusion of youth. The boys who note take a cold hard look at Sylvester Stallone's Demolition Man, sending scenes back and forward through time in hopes of generation a better movie. Also this one is chock full of your comments, apparently you had a few notes for old Sly.
Jan 11, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 110
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 that we've barely seen any of them. Most of the films we screened were the stinkers we had to watch...
Dec 24, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 109
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 of 2020. Unfortunately I (Gregg) am too swamped at my day job to produce more shows this year, so we...
Nov 06, 2020•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 108
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 Christine.
Oct 20, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 107
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 many other companies, shape our everyday lives for good and for ill....
Oct 05, 2020•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 106
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 of fun can stand in the way of our movie meddling, and we do it all with fan favourite guest, Danica ...
Sep 21, 2020•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 105
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 and D&D expert Glenna Schowalter. It's the kind of movie that takes gleeful pride in making a...
Sep 09, 2020•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 104
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 on this film for us. He dug up all sorts of great tidbits including the fact that the post-producti...
Aug 24, 2020•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 103
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 stave off the screenplay apocalypse and attempt to resurrect Dark Phoenix....
Aug 10, 2020•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 102
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.
Jul 27, 2020•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 101
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 building a new plot device to beef up the secondary characters. Tune to the episode then let us kno...
Jul 13, 2020•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 100
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 systemic racism, here are some things you can do. On the listen and learning side you can start right here ...
Jun 15, 2020•2 min•Ep. 99
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.
Jun 01, 2020•47 min•Ep. 98
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 not a bad film, and while we put it through our notes process, most of our proposed changes revolve ar...
May 25, 2020•59 min•Ep. 97
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 one, listen in!
May 20, 2020•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 96
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 X-Rayed , Repodcasting and Cinematological for sending us audio questions!...
May 11, 2020•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 95
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 through our notes process. Listen in as we debate if Life should be more science-y or more horror-is...
May 04, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 94
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 downplaying some characters who were played by poor performers *cough* Orlando Jones *cough*....
Apr 27, 2020•1 hr•Ep. 93
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....
Apr 21, 2020•54 min•Ep. 92
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! But, as they say, art is never finished, only abandoned. We do, however, end up adjusting the Sam Rai...
Apr 13, 2020•54 min•Ep. 91
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 podcastin' fun.
Apr 07, 2020•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 90
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 touch up the audio and the result is completely listenable, just slightly noisy. Enjoy!
Mar 30, 2020•59 min•Ep. 89
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 remake contains a whole lot of training montage and not much else. Gregg mistakenly attributes Power Ran...
Mar 16, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 88
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 link to the Onion article Scott mentions....
Mar 02, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 87
