I Have Some Notes

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.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle is a deeply flawed film, which should make it the perfect fodder for our show, but can it be too flawed? Matthew Vaughn really stretched our capacity and desire to reimagine his movie, to the point that Liam felt the need to apologize to previous films we've given notes to. Thankfully Evan MacDonald from Kino Lefter stopped by to help. With our combined notes, we explore deleting the resurrection of Colin Firth, eliminating the weird drug plot, and generally giving Pedro Pascal more to do.

However you feel about Zack Snyder, there is no denying he is a rich vein for movie podcasts such as ours. In fact, Man of Steel was the movie that inspired the creation of this show. While we've mined the depths of his DC offerings, listener Andrew Craig asked us to take a swing at Snyder's most polarizing film, Sucker Punch. Liam, Scott, and Gregg look to add contrast and connective tissue between the dream sequences while failing – as Zack did – to add more meaning to the film's central theme. CONTENT WARNING: This episode discusses themes of sexual assault.

Horror aficionado Glenna Schowalter joins us for a deep dive into the genre exploring what makes it tick. Is it the suspense? The scares? The atmosphere? The inventive R-rated kills? It will vary from person to person, to be sure, but this was an extremely fun episode discussing what we look for in a good horror flick. Let us know if you would like to hear more genre deep dives.

Paul W.S. Anderson had to wait an extra week for our Event Horizon episode, but we promise, Paul, it was worth the wait. Big thanks for Olav Rokne for saving our skin at the 11th hour, subbing in for Scott C. Bourgeois who was not available to record. Together we make minor tweaks to a flawed, yet charming sci-fi horror. A change in motivation here, a removal of a text crawl there. I'd say Paul got off easy.

The all listener curated season continues, and for some reason you picked Charlie's Angels (2019). I love you, listeners, even if I don't understand you. Thankfully, Glenna Schowalter of Quantum Kickflip fame returns to help the Altoids go down a little smoother (that's a funny reference to the movie, you'll just have to trust me). Together we shuffle around the plot twists, add some character conflict and remove weird and unneeded restraining devices.

Season 7 is here! Every movie this season will be chosen by you the listener, and for our season opener Chris on Twitter has selected for us SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY. Prequels are hard, and prequels of cool but relatively thin secondary characters are even harder. With the help of returning guest Robin Slack (Quantum Kickflip) we jettison some unneeded back story, merge two weak characters, and beef up Lando's love of robots.

A recording of our season ending live show with special guest Stephanie Chan! With Steph's help, we took Wonder Woman 1984's gnarly script and  created something hella bodacious.  Apologies for some of the rare digital compression noises, the audio is lifted directly from the live stream.

We're ending our 6th season in style. Tune in this Friday, July 30th at 9PM MDT for a special LIVE broadcast of I Have Some Notes. We'll be joined by guest Stephanie Chan giving notes to Wonder Woman 1984. Catch the broadcast on our YouTube Channel or our Facebook Page.

Splash! A classic 80s rom-com with a stacked cast, a fun premise, and just enough flaws to make our show. We look at removing a problematic trope, giving Tom Hanks a relevant occupation and adding more context to the fishy romance. Splash discussion starts at 00:09:53.

Say what you will about Hollywood, back in the early 2000s they really had their finger on the pulse of sci-fi fans. What they were really clamouring for was a product placement packed, extremely loose adaptation of Isaac Asimov's I, Robot. Boom. Another home run for studio execs. Speaking of home runs, we landed Olav Rokne as a guest this week. Olav returns to the show to provide some history and context surrounding Asimov's work, as well as advocate for stories of his that would have made better movies. The I, Robot discussion starts at 00:16:18.

Christopher Nolan is a wonderful filmmaker who somehow keeps landing films right in our wheelhouse. Say what you will about the man, but he is never boring. There is always good reason to analyze his films forwards and backwards. Back again to reverse engineer TENET's script is follow podcaster and time travel expert Robyn Slack! Together we unravel this pandemic blockbuster's curious directorial quirks and overcomplicated heist plot. You may have noticed we are adding some general film discussion off the top of each show, which we hope you're enjoying. However, if you'd like to skip to the TENET discussion, jump to 00:14:03.

It took us six years to get to an M. Night Shyamalan flick, but the writing was in the corn fields, as it were, we were going to get there eventually. Signs is a film made famous by its plot holes, but it is the film's philosophy that commits the greatest sin. We look to tweak the meaning of Signs to something that would speak a clearer message.

We take a break from furiously rewriting blockbusters to kick back, relax and watch some classic comedies from our youth. Did they hold up? Are they still funny? Has the evolution of our social consciousness rendered them unwatchable? Join us as we relive the comedy stylings of the 80s and 90s with Dumb & Dumber, Liar Liar, Police Academy, Basketball and UHF.