Movie Pitch - Hungry Hungry Hippos: The Movie

With all the excitement surrounding 80s pop-culture it’s only natural to make a Hungry Hungry Hippos film.  The target demographic is males and females ages 25-46 as well as males ages 14-19.  It will cash in on the 80s nostalgia crowd as well as the teen horror fan crowd. 

The film will take place in the 1980s and revolves around Hippos that are genetically manipulated to be 4 times larger than the average hippo. The nearly indestructible hippos will escape from a secret corporate lab in the Midwest and wreak havoc in a small American town.  A defect in their genetic make-up will be discovered.  The only way to defeat the hippos is to feed them stone-marble which when ingested causes their DNA sequence to breakdown and they eventually implode. 

Characters

Our Hero - The bad boy teen, much like Steve McQueen in The Blob. 

The Town Sheriff – He’s tough but fair, he clashes with our local hero on many occasions but will learn to work together to defeat the mutant hippos.

The Sherriff’s Daughter – She’s smart and figures out how to destroy the hippos.  She’s also secretly dating our hero which will cause nice dramatic tension.

The Mayor – An inept politician that will get eaten by the hippos.  He’s in league with the evil corporation that made the hippos.

The School Principal – Our first public hippo victim.  He’ll get eaten while lecturing the school about something lame.  It’ll be a funny death scene.

The Crazy Old Man – He’s the local nut with a large gun supply that is used to fight the hippos.  He’s the Michael Gross from Tremors of this film. He can live or die at the end, doesn’t matter.

The Town Drunk – He’s our comic relief. He’s like a funny version of Dennis Hopper in Hoosiers.  He’s also our hero’s dad.  He will die saving everyone just as his son agrees to love him again or some crap like that.

The Compassionate Corporate Scientist – He made the Hippos to advance science in a positive direction.  He’s upset about how his invention has been perverted.  He will give positive scientific mumbo jumbo to save the say but will ultimately die in a grizzly hippo mauling.

The Dumbass that Causes the Hippo Escape – I’m open to suggestions on what to do with this guy.

The Evil Corporate Guy – He’s our main antagonist.  His greed causes the hippo fiasco and its escalation.  He’ll be the last to die at the hands of the hippos.  He’ll show his cowardness and moral corruptibility multiple times in the film.  The audience should applaud when he finally meets his demise.  

With an estimated budget of $50 million this film should garner a box office intake of $140 million.  Please reference the film Goosebumps for box office totals if you have doubts. 

Written by

Joseph Ammendolea

Owner/President

“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®

ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com

Producers of The Never Ending Story Arrested!!!

Producers of The Never Ending Story brought up on charges of fraud.

Bernd Eichinger and Dieter Giessler the Producers of the 1984 snooze-fest The Never Ending Story were arrested and indicted on charges of fraud by Interpol for the alleged false advertisement of their film.  The main issue being, that that the story ended even though the title clearly states it never ends.

Giessler smiling as all the children cry because the horse dies.

Eichinger during his Falco phase.

Jerry Gallo, attorney for the defendants maintain his clients’ innocence stating their subsequent sequels The Never Ending Story II: The Next Chapter, and The Never Ending Story III: Escape From Fantasia continue the story of Bastian and his Tonto like sidekick Atreyu.  The prosecution, unaware that sequels existed, immediately responded by adding additional counts to the charges.

If convicted the Eichinger and Giessler face a life sentence of having to watch all three movies on a constant loop.

   

Fan outcry regarding the charges has been mixed.  Steven Bari son of Ray, owner of Ray Bari pizza in New York City who was a child when he saw the film has stated “I agree with the prosecution.  I remember seeing the film as a child with the hopes of never having to go to bed early or attend school again, only to see credits roll after 2 hours.” 

Meanwhile Jeff Scarola, a used car salesperson from Long Island took his son Jeff Jr. to the theater to see the film multiple times and does not agree with the prosecutions charges.  “False advertisement isn’t the issue.  These people should be brought up on charges of torture.  I was forced to sit through one of the worst movies ever on multiple occasions because my son was a huge fan.  As far as I am concerned the film delivered as promised.  The film’s pacing was so slow that it felt like it would never end.  Don’t get me started on the shitty special effects.  I know it was the 80s but in a post Star Wars world there’s no excuse.”  Scarola goes on to elaborate.  “I believe the 6 theater visits and countless VHS viewings are the reason my son came out as weird as he did.”

Jeff Scarola Jr. pictured on the left

 When the prosecution was asked why they waited over 30 years to pursue charges against the producers they replied “we were only notified of the issue last week. But we plan on opening a special investigative unit to review all films with misleading titles and thus ensure they are held accountable for their names.  We’ve heard rumors that a Bronx Tale does have any tales in it and The Hurt Locker has no lockers giving or receiving pain.”

Perhaps that ball of fire shooting out of Calogero's butt counts as a tale.

Written by 

Joseph Ammendolea

Owner/President

“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®

ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com

Kubrick is Overrated

The word overrated is not used enough.  This is mostly because people genuinely believe the thing they are talking about is super cool happy awesome.  Most times they are wrong.  Overrated cannot be used enough to describe Stanley Kubrick.  The entire world fawns over his film work like it’s golden poop. Let’s review some of his more contemporarily cherished pieces and see just how blah they are.

Spartacus (1960)

This is Kubrick’s best work and it’s boring.  Kirk Douglas plays a slave that leads a rebellion and ends up getting everyone killed.  The best part is when everyone claims to be Spartacus out of loyalty to their leader.  The buildup to that takes forever and could have been told in half the time. 

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

The name alone screams terrible.  The movie itself is random and makes no sense.  Who wants to watch a political satire about the Cold War?  If it weren’t for Peter Sellers the film would be unwatchable.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

The only good to come from this film was the special effects which eventually lead to Star Wars.  The rest of the film was just terrible.  The computer Hal 9000 has a mathematical computer glitch so when the astronauts try to shut it down he flips out and kills them.  That’s the entire film and it takes 5 hours to tell the story.  It’s a slow boring cure for insomnia.  I am not even going to talk about the stupid ape scene that has nothing to do with the plot.  It’s not artsy it’s just stupid.

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

This is where Kubrick goes from boring to sadistic in his story telling.  Kubrick must have realized his other films were boring and decided to cash in on the fringe violence for the violence sake crowd.  There is no social commentary here it’s just an excuse to make a violent movie as annoying to watch as possible.  That’s the theme of the film, incessantly high-pitched whiny English accents. The goth/freak/emo crowd loves the movie, not for the moral message (if there is one) but for the gross trendy teenage violence.  I’d watch Summer School (1987) starring Mark Harmon any day over this film by Kubrick.

The Shinning (1980)

A film about a haunted hotel that drives Jack Nicholson crazy.  People tend to only like the part where Nicholson flips out and screams “Here’s Johnny!”  The rest of the film is just a boring snooze fest. Kubrick found a way to incorporate violence and boredom into one film.  It’s not scary, Nicholson saves the movie with his psycho performance otherwise what would people take away from the film?  The writer of the novel Stephen King hated the movie and talked tons of jive about it.  King may not be a filmmaker but he is a storyteller and had stated he hated the film.  Kubrick even earned a Razzie nomination for worst Director with this masterpiece. 

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

It’s lacking any real moral lesson here.  Kubrick appeals to that goth/freak/emo crowd again with the senseless violence, language and abuse strewn about the film.  Kubrick’s films by this point are all cynical shitholes that show human beings with no morally redeeming qualities.  Full Metal Jacket is really two different films pasted together and also just another Hollywood been there done that anti-Vietnam soapbox that has some more curse words in it.  His filmmaking is committed to just bleak worlds filled with evil and no chances of hope.  One or two films with such a theme is fine but every single film he made became more and more filled with morally bankrupt societies. 

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

This is the film that ruined Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman’s marriage.  It’s also a pointless story that leads nowhere.  Kidman’s character admits to having an affair and her husband decides to crash an orgy because sometimes a revenge fuck needs to involve multiple people to really mean something.  He meets some peeps there, gets caught and tossed out.  He read in the paper some chick gets murdered and he thinks some other dude is following him. Absolutely nothing happens.  It’s not even an original idea of nothing happening.  He just ripped off Michelangelo Antonioni’s style of pointlessness. But guess what? Antonioni’s films sucked too. 

While Kubrick isn’t terrible he’s not this innovator that everyone claims he is.  In fact he’s just a damn boring pessimist that has no hope for humanity.  Who wants to hang out with a guy that hurts the party?  People need to stop talking about him as some deep filmmaker who makes insightful complex tales.  Complexity is not in having evil characters who never grow or good guys turned evil or even pointless journeys that lead nowhere.  Deep complex story telling has layers and plots that progress forward.  Sure rules can be broken in story telling but all Kubrick did was break the rules for the sake of breaking the rules.  This is why Biodome (1996) is better than any Kubrick film ever made. 

Written by 

Joseph Ammendolea

Owner/President

“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®

ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com

Jaws 19

The future is now, we've waited a long time for the events of Back to the Future Part II to unfold and the biggest longest awaited film every in history is Jaws 19.  Since Marty and Doc regularly mess with history it won't have some of the glam you may have expected but it was still made and it is something to behold.  So setback and enjoy the best Jaws movie since the Jaws II.