I Have Some Notes

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*.

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! But, as they say, art is never finished, only abandoned. We do, however, end up adjusting the Sam Raimi's firing pin slightly, but only after spending 30 minutes praising his flick.

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.

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!

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 Rangers to Michael Bay's production company, which is incorrect. I could have edited it out, but I'm lazy. Go Go Lazy Producer!

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.

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 debate over what direction to take in this one, however. In the end, however, one of us earns the consensus of our listens. One last quick note, we recorded this episode over the internet, so while the audio quality is perfectly fine, it's not totally where we want it. Bare with us, this is a work in progress.

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 haven't got the link yet, but I will add it when I do. Okay, now enjoy the show. EDIT: Here it is.

After wrapping up our discussion on the best movies of the 2010s we kept the mics on to continue the conversation on the decade that was. We discuss the impact of the biggest tentpole films, touch on some of the decade's the worst films and chat about our hopes and dreams for cinema in the 2020s.  But that's not all, our friends Abdul, Evan and Laura from Kino Lefter take over the show for 9 minutes to give us their top 10 of the past 10. We're sorry we couldn't fit you into the main episode, friends, but thank you so much for submitting your lists, really fun to get your perspectives. One last thing before you hit play, we're taking a bit of a break in January to both recharge the creative batteries and to switch our podcast feed to a new provider. The feed transition should be a smooth one, but we'll let you know on Twitter and Facebook if there are any hiccups.

The decade is over! Yes, the calendar is about to roll over to 2020, you are 10 years older than you were and have lived through another era of movies. As with the end of all eras, it's time to look back, reflect, and pointlessly rank subjective art. It's in that spirit that we present our Top 10 Films of the Decade. Liam, Gregg and Scott have carefully curated their lists and recorded celebrations of each film in exhaustive detail. This is the longest episode of I Have Some Notes yet, so strap in. Also, our friends a Flicks X-rayed, Emily Missed Out and Cinematological have sent us their top ten lists as well, filling this episode to the brim with diverse perspectives on what were the greatest movies of the past 10 years. Big thanks to our podcast buds for contributing to the episode. Alright, all that's left to do now is to pour yourself an eggnog, sit by an open fire and hit that play button. Follow along with our top ten lists below: Liam 10. Arrival (2016) 9. What We Do in the Shadows (2014) 8. Anom

Frank Herbert's Dune is a novel of intense size and scope, and somehow Hollywood, in their infinite hubris, felt they could condense it all into a single 3 hour movie. The only thing more egotistical than that is to think all that movie's problems could be fixed in 1 hour. Thankfully we have enormous egos, and thus we have a new episode for you. Liam, Gregg and Scott drink deep the water of life, inhale the font of spice, and bask in the light of Sting to fix this 1984 epic.

On August 28th, 2003, pizza delivery driver Brian Wells was jumped, forced to wear a bomb and told to rob a bank or the bomb would be detonated. He tragically died after failing to complete the task in time. I know what you're thinking, that sounds hilarious! Someone should make a comedy out of it. Well, you're in luck, because Hollywood doesn't know the meaning of decency and 30 Seconds or Less now can be found in DVD bargain bins the world over. I've thrown a lot of shade at this film, but it's actually right in our sweet spot. A mediocre comedy that, with a couple tweaks, could have been decent flick, optics not-withstanding. Listen in as we propose Jesse Eisenberg and Danny McBride go darker and explore the depths of one of America's weirdest bank robberies.

We have long been told that "The Rock is Perfect," but is he? This week we put Dwayne's appeal to the ultimate test, can it survive barely 90 minutes of extremely mild sword and sandals action? Will The Scorpion King forever leave doubt in our mind that TRIP? Liam, Gregg and Scott break down the Mummy sequel/prequel that apparently spawned a direct-to-DVD series of films, none starting The Rock. At first it seems the boys won't pull it off, but soon the fixes coming Fast and Furious. (sorry) (not really)

We didn't so much choose to watch Freddy vs. Jason as it was inflicted upon us. For that we have our good friend Tony from Flicks X-rayed to thank. Tony beat us fair and square (probably) in the Rotten Tomator Prognosticator and got to choose our next film, and for some reason he chose the dullest cross-over film since The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones. Best I can figure it, Tony has some kind of grudge against us. However, we like a challenge at I Have Some Notes, and we tried our level best to sharpen the knives of this dull monster mashup.

Well, this is one movie we are not giggy with. Nineties movies typically have some bad taste jokes we’ve long since learned are not appropriate, but like an oddly placed giant mechanical spider, this movie is rife with them.  Liam, Gregg and Scott power through another rewrite, ditching problematic jokes and giving the singular woman in the film something to do (another common theme in our 90s rewrites). Steampunk cowboys should have been easy money, but Will Smith and Kevin Kline showed us that any winning concept can bomb if you try hard enough.

You may remember, back in March, we started a friendly wager amongst our fellow podcasters to see who could best predict the quality of 2019's summer blockbusters. "March?!" I can hear you say, "I barely remember what episode of Voyager I watched last night." Fair enough, let's remind you of the rules, the prize and who participated. Each contestant guessed the Rotten Tomatoes ratings for an agreed upon list of summer blockbuster movies. Scores were determined by the difference between the guess and the final score of each movie. For example, I guessed Avengers: Endgame would land at 84% and its actual Rotten Tomatoes rating was 94%, so my score was 10. Today we tally all the scores to find out who amongst fellow podcasters from the PS2J Show, Flicks X-rayed, Modern Manhood, Emily Missed Out and Repodcasting podcasts. The person with the lowest total win and gets to select a movie the losers must watch and either live Tweet, or record an episode on.  I'm burying the lead here, but we've two special guests

Our listeners can be forgiven for thinking at this point that we hate the giant monster genre. After all, we've already taken Pacific Rim and Godzilla to the rewriters room, and now we're doing the same for Jordan Vogt-Roberts' Kong: Skull Island. The truth is we've genuinely liked all these movies (well, maybe not Gregg, but what does he like, honestly?), but even the most beloved movies can always be reexamined, tweaked and rejigged. Liam, Gregg and Scott do just that for Kong, taking special aim at the relatively blank cast of characters, as well as tweaking some motivations and, of course, deleting the protagonist.

Liam Creswick choose easily the most colourful and frenetic movie we've attempted to rewrite yet for his first episode as host: Speed Racer.  We spend the bulk of the episode exhausting Lana and Lilly Wachowski for their ability to make interesting choices. Whether they are good choices is up for debate, but they are never boring.  But, with great respect for wild choices, Gregg modifies the mystic surrounding Racer X, Liam cuts the amount of Chim Chim to just Chim and Scott expands the concept into an 8-part mini-series, because Speed Racer is a drug he can't get enough of.

Last month Colin retired as host of I Have Some Notes, so we decided for our bonus Side Notes episode we would salute the man who's given us so many laughs over these past three years. With that, we give you the very BEST of Colin MacIntyre. Thanks for everything buddy, we love ya! Our break is nearly over and season five is just around the corner, so stay tuned to our Twitter and Facebook feeds to get your notes in for the upcoming season premiere!