I Have Some Notes

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.

Listen in as we debate if Life should be more science-y or more horror-ish, whether the twist should stay or go and how long we should keep Ryan Reynolds alive.

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.