I Have Some Notes

Sequels! We love 'em! They're rarely any good and ripe for re-pitching. In Jaws The Revenge's case the film is really devoid of good shark-related kills and spends far too much time focused on the wrong character. The crew takes turns adding to a new pitch that turns the shark into more of a metaphor before shifting gears into a straight-up supernatural slasher flick.

Ghotbusters: Afterlife may devolve into a cynical cavalcade of nostalgia, but boy what a ride. Glenna Schowalter of the Slugblaster play along podcast Quantum Kickflip joins our cast of armchair screenwriters to punch up a perfectly fine, yet slightly unsatisfying Ghostbusters sequel. Together the paranormal foursome of pretend producers question the need for familial ties to the original cast, while also toying with the idea of making the O.G. proton slingers the villains.

As we all know video game movies are notorious for being great. They are among the most well-written and thoughtful blockbuster movies Hollywood produces, especially in the earlier 2000s when they definitely weren't cynical cash grabs. You'd think Lara Croft: Tomb Raider wouldn't be the kind of film we review, but Angelina Jolie's video game adaptation managed to buck the trend of hit film after hit film. It is salvageable, however, as we manage to add more tomb raiding to this Tomb Raider flick.

It was amazing to see all you armchair screenwriters in chat for our LIVE broadcast of Morbius! For those of you who missed while it was live the episode is archived on here YouTube. Of course, you can also listen to it right here on our podcast feed. Unfortunately Abdul was not able to join us due to a technical issue, but we soldiered on punching up Michael Morbius's relationship with his so-called friend Milo, while also making the film more of a  THE FLY pastiche with requisite R-rated body horror.

We're kicking off season 8 of I Have Some Notes with a killer live show fixing a famous vampiric flop. That's right, armchair screenwriters, it's Morbin' Time! Please join us on Friday, September 16th at 9 PM MDT for our season premier featuring special guest and talented screenwriter, Abdul Malik. LIVE SHOW DETAILS Live Stream Link: https://youtu.be/jSDDOu_HwNI Date: Friday, September 16th Time: 9 PM MDT

Season finale we have reached. Fix A bad movie, we will.  It’s been seven seasons of playing armchair screenwriter on this show, but I dare say no movie has evoked as much emotion and exasperation as The Rise of Skywalker. A deeply flawed movie from start to finish, no director has earned a place on this podcast quite like J.J. Abrams. As we mention in the show, you all came through big on your fixes for this one, and we sadly could not get to them all. However, we did want to highlight two really interesting pitches from listeners that were too long to read on the show: Tak’s Pitch  Sean McKnight’s Pitch Finally, here is a link to How Bad Movies Are Made feat. The Rise of Skywalker, the video Scott mentions at the end of the show. Have a great summer, armchair screenwriters! See you in September.

Danica LeBlanc, Anita Bourgeois, and Erin Beever are back for another podcast takeover, and this time they've brought IHSN veteran Glenna Schowalter with them! The movie? 2018's women-led heist extravaganza, OCEAN'S EIGHT. Together the takeover team works out a new conniving angle for Anne Hathaway's character, as well as adding some much-needed tension when the thieving is at its peak.

Cloud Atlas is an ambitious film about the ties that bind us through the passage of time. It is thoughtful and expertly edited. Does it deserve to be picked apart in the traditional I Have Some Notes fashion? Probably not. However, you suggested and voted for it, and we're not in the habit of disappointing our listeners. While there are some obvious problematic choices the Wachowskis and company make that could be very easily cleaned up, many of our other notes are more of the picking nits variety. Still, it was a great discussion about a really interesting film.

For our 101st movie fix, Cruella, because here at I Have Some Notes we allow numerical coincidence to dictate the show. In all honesty, Cruella was a pretty good time. It wasn't the least notes we've given to a film, but it was certainly close. Still, the lore of the film was hotly contested, making this a fun episode.

We have officially fixed 100 movies, and still no calls from any Hollywood execs. This is a free service we're providing here, you'd think they'd at least reach out and say "thank you", especially on our 100th movie birthday. One person we would like to thank is Colin MacIntyre, this show's original host, for returning for this momentous occasion. Believe me, it isn't easy watching mediocre movie after mediocre movie and to hit the century mark really feels Herculean to us, and Colin was a big part of that.  Listen to us flex our muscles 100th time as we take on an absolute classic in BATMAN (1989). I realize I just talked a big game about watching mediocre movies being rough, and no, Batman is not one of those. Give us a break, we wanted to watch something good for our centennial. But before you do we just want to say thank you so much for listening. Whether you're a diehard listener from the beginning or listening to us for the very first time, we appreciate every one of you. Thank you!

You've heard us talk about fixing a lot of movies, how about our own movie pitches? We've got great ideas, but Hollywood isn't returning our calls, so now we're giving them away for free! Returning guest Robyn Slack of the Quantum Kickflip podcast joins us to pitch some wholly original movies, except the ones that are pitches for existing properties…then they're just mostly original.

Robot Jox spent its budget on some cutting-edge special effects for 1989, and not much else. While the giant mechs looked great, the robot choreography itself was a bit dull. But that aside we found plenty of other easy wins to punch up this B-movie classic. Olav Rokne (of the Hugo Book Club Blog fame) returns for this sci-fi romp! He lends his insights into the genre as well as sharing stories about one of the screenwriters, who he knows personally. 

A classic 80s character is stripped apart and rebuilt by the modern-day Hollywood machine. Robocop may not have been the most cynical of reboot cash grabs, but it certainly missed many of the opportunities it set up for itself. That's where we jump in to reprogram some of the film's themes and attempt to add some contemporary pathos to a script ironically lacking humanity.  

If you grew up in the 90s Adam Sandler probably had a large influence on your sense of humour. He likely did not have a large influence on you as an eventual parent, however. While Big Daddy was certainly a more "mature" turn for Sandler at the time, his childish instincts prevented it from being a really touching comedy about fatherhood. Speaking of fatherhood, German Villegas of the Modern Manhood podcast joins us this week. The entire upcoming season of Modern Manhood is all about child development, which put Big Daddy right in German's big damn wheelhouse. Together we try to add some stronger comedic structure to the film while also analyzing Sonny Kaufax's style as a father.

Highlander II was so efficient at burning the goodwill of its fanbase George Lucas took it as a personal challenge, and that's how we got The Phantom Menace. We're not exactly Hollywood historians around here, but we're pretty sure that's how it went down. For some reason, the minds behind Highlander thought the best way to continue the story of a 500-year-old sword-fighting immortal with a rich background, not even Forrest Gump could hold a bucket of shrimp up to by making him an alien who's charged with fixing the ozone layer. Yeah… Suffice it to say we had a lot of gripes with Connor MacLeod's second appearance on the silver screen, but the fixes were a bit difficult. Thankfully Glenna Schowalter of the Quantum Kickflip podcast returns to lend us a head. Get it?

We're diving back into the MCU once again for Marvel's Studios The Eternals, a film rich in characters and short on development. The Note-ernals take passes at spreading the dense plot out over two films as well as dropping an entire sub-plot to make a more breathable single film. We also find an interesting twist on the main villain that would have been far more thematically relevant.

One good asteroid movie deserves another, we always say. For the second time in a row, we're tackling a planet-killing plot device, this time of the Michael Bay variety. Truly there was one simple fix to this oil-riggers-in-space fantasy, and we happened upon it quite quickly. However, we do spend a great deal of time taking shots at Michael, even as Liam is trying to get us to talk about what we liked about the movie.

Not since our Interstellar episode have we spent more time praising a film than giving it notes. Don't Look Up may have been polarizing with audiences, but for the hosts of this show, it was a unanimous thumbs-up. We may have only found a few things to tweak, but that didn't stop us from having a lively discussion about what the film wanted to accomplish and why. This was a fun one, enjoy!

We typically use our last show in December to sum up the best and worst movies of the year. However, we skipped the tradition last year and, thanks to a certain mutating virus, haven't been able to see all the films we would have liked in 2021. So instead we decided to talk about our favourites and least favourites of the pandemics era. Also, we spend about 20 minutes complaining about a Spider-man movie we haven't seen yet. That's a thing that happened. Thanks for sticking with us another year, armchair screenwriters, we'll see you again in January!

Love Actually is every kind of romantic comedy you want it to be. It’s got star-crossed lovers, it’s got love triangles and it’s even got your classic 90s style sex romp. Anita Bourgeois of The Read-Along joins us to sift through an actual plethora of love stories in an attempt to fix them all.