Archive for October, 1997

Commentary

October 30th, 1997 @ 12:00 am | No Comments » | Scooped by Brad & Chris

The Shape
HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!

Yeah, we know it’s OFFICIALLY tomorrow, but close enough. Plus I’ll probably get home from work and go out drinking and forget to update.Anyway, not too much going on today and I’m jogging between the front door and the PC giving candy to trick-or-treaters (instead of eating it myself like I usually do), so let’s just do some…

View Askew NewsBites™

October 30th, 1997 @ 12:00 am | No Comments » | Scooped by Brad & Chris

  • Jason Hambach saw a post on the webboard from Kev regarding a visit to The College Of New Jersey (formerly Trenton State) for an appearance. It’s gonna take place on November 15th, which is a SATURDAY of all days! If you’ve yet to see Kev speak, be sure and check this out if you can. It’s a blast!
  • Want the comfort of knowing that the Amy laserdisc is safely reserved under your name, AND get the BEST price around to boot? Look no further than Ken Crane’s! We always get our lasers thru them, and the service is great. The PACKED Amy disc will run you a mere $39.95 plus $1.50 for shipping. What are you waiting for?
  • Ming tells us that Ben Affleck’s “Good Will Hunting” posters will be hitting theatres shortly, if not already. All you Affleck fans may want to start begging your theatre managers for ’em if you want to add to your collection.
  • Finally, there’s a spread on the Oni Double Feature featuring a picture of Jay and Silent Bob in the november previews for comics issue. We haven’t seen this, but we hear it’s cool. Ask your local comic shop about it. It’s gonna be a great issue.

Ben Affleck Speaks To Harry!

October 29th, 1997 @ 12:00 am | No Comments » | Scooped by Brad & Chris

  • Harry Knowles (creator of the famous Aint It Cool News website) took a visit to the Armageddon set where he spent quite a while chatting with Ben Affleck. Here’s what he had to say about the experience (so far)…Lots of cool stuff here:
I got to talk with Ben Affleck for a loooooong time, and this would have been fun to of hit him with. Ben is incredibly excited to be working on ARMAGEDDON and can’t wait to get in front of Kevin’s camera for DOGMA. Oh by the way Kevin, thanks for turning Ben on to the site, it was a trip. I’m sitting there not paying any attention to what was going on, off in my “gosh this is sooo cool” world, when all of a sudden this incredibly handsome dude in a dashingly megacool space suit comes up saying, “You’re Harry Knowles, Alright I read your site all the time.” And it was Ben. I figured he must be a schmoozer, so I ask him where he found out about it, and he said Kevin told him to check it out. Cooool. I actually haven’t received any email (in memory) from Kevin, it’s almost always via people reading View Askew, so I had no idea Kevin advocated my site to people. This is very cool. Ben and I hit it off real well, sharing a smoke and some candy. You’ll read more about Ben and me and ARMAGEDDON later on, but this is basically what he said about DOGMA. He felt like it was going to be Kevin’s big mega-hit, the one that will blow all us geeks away. Personally, I felt he did that with CHASING AMY, but if that was just foreplay, we are in for one hell of a cool cinema ride! By the way, Ben looks sooooo different with out the facial hair he had in Chasing Amy. Seriously I barely recognized him, of course that space suit really was distracting, I wanted to just gawk at this beautiful outfit, but found out that Ben is a real geek. And oh yeah, to the person that wrote the GOOD WILL HUNTING test screening review, Ben says, “Thanks”.

Ben seems like a real nice guy. Harry also mentioned the Salma Hayek casting info in this newsbite, but (ahem) you all know who had the goods first on that one…hehehe…

Serendipity Info…SPOILER WARNING!!!

October 29th, 1997 @ 12:00 am | No Comments » | Scooped by Brad & Chris

  • Jutsin McGill gave us a bit of insight into Salma Hayek’s character in Dogma…We don’t think it’ll ruin anything from the flick, but if you want to go into in completely cold, don’t read this!
Serendipity is a muse but WANTS to be a writer. So when she comes down.. she is here and WANTS to write but comes down with a BAD case of writers block and makes a living as a stripper. The part sounds funny as hell and she seems perfect, with a good sense of humor to play the part.

What can we say? Dogma’s gonna kick some ass! Salma as a stripper? We’ll pay any price to see that.

View Askew NewsBites™

October 29th, 1997 @ 12:00 am | No Comments » | Scooped by Brad & Chris

  • A guy from the board who calls himself Turk 182 (great name, huh?) dropped us a line to let us know that the alleged 260 tickets for the “Gala” will be sold over the phone, via the net (Kev’s words). We assume this means they’ll be sold right through the Stash.
  • This isn’t really Askew-related, but all you South Park fans out there will want to definitely watch (or tape) tonight’s episode at 10PM eastern time on Comedy Central. It’s an all-new Halloween episode, sure to be an instant classic! The premiere (alien anal probe) episode will then air at 10:30. Enjoy!

We’ll see you next time, folks. Thanks for stopping by the new server!

We Made It, & So Did You!

October 29th, 1997 @ 12:00 am | No Comments » | Scooped by Brad & Chris

  • Well, here we are at our NEW HOME: http://www.intap.net/~newsaskew! Welcome. Glad you foundus alright. It’ll be rough for a few days as folks get their links updated around the net, but hopefully it’ll all turn out alright. Sorry for the confusion, but if you’re a regular reader of the site, you understand we REALLY needed to do this. Please let us know what you think of the new server and if you notice ANY problems that occurred during the move.

Big, HUGE thanks to Jay Desjardins and the folks at Intap for hosting News Askew.Jay’s been TOO helpful in the whole thing, it’s sickening! Thanks a lot, man. You’ve got a whole page in our cool book.

We hope to remain here for a long time, and it looks like we will. Be sure to tell all your friends about the new address if they have trouble finding us.

By the way, we lost a few hundred hits on the counter due to the transition. Let’s make up for it and get those hits back up there!

Salma Hayek To Play “Serendipity”…

October 28th, 1997 @ 12:00 am | No Comments » | Scooped by Brad & Chris

Salma Hayek

I feel guilty about not spilling on the Chris Rock/Jimmy Olsen thing earlier, so I figure I’ll tip my hat here on what’s likely the next bit of casting news on ‘Dogma’.

Had a meeting with Salma Hayek this morning. She was really, really, really, really smart. And funny. And insightful about the script.

That’s all I’m going to say.

Sources say that the lovely Ms. Hayek will be playing the part of Serendipity, but that’s really all we know since we’ve been refusing to read the script. Funny, I was just watching “Desperado” on HBO the other night and wondering what she was up to. Anyway, sounds like another big win for Dogma. The cast is really shaping up to be an excellent ensemble.

More “Gala” News…

October 28th, 1997 @ 12:00 am | No Comments » | Scooped by Brad & Chris

  • There’s been a lot of speculation and intrest in the upcoming event (naturally), so Kevin also said this :
The Gala (which I never called it, but seems to be the easiest description for it) will likely be January 5th.

There are only going to be 260 tickets sold, via this site.

When, we’re not sure. But we’ll be giving folks the heads up before they go on sale.

Since we sort of agree that “The Gala” isn’t a really snappy title for this thing, maybe we should come up with some ideas. Send us your suggestions and we’ll post them up here. Perhaps we can get some important folks to take notice and help out a bit. View Askew WinterFest 98? I dunno, there’s gotta be some good ideas out there.

By the way, assuming we’ll be amongst the 260 that get tix (we sure hope so, anyway), we plan to give you full coverage right here on News Askew. If anyone’s crazy enough to loan us a digital camera for the event, we’d certainly be in debt, since we never seem to have the equipment to cover these things properly. Never fear, though, for those of you that can’t make it, we’ll have all the info for ya right here as usual!

The Boxes Are Packed, And The Truck’s Backing Up!

October 28th, 1997 @ 12:00 am | No Comments » | Scooped by Brad & Chris

  • We’re very pleased to report that we’ve found a new home on the web and are in the process of setting a “clone” of News Askew/Drinks Askew up there as we speak! We hope to announce our new provider and our new address TOMORROW, so stay tuned and be ready to update those bookmarks! This page will remain, though we’re not sure for how long, with a forwarding address to take you to the new site. Thanks again to all of you who offered to help. You’ll be hearing from us!

PLEASE NOTE OUR NEW E-MAIL ADDRESSES! Most of you have been sending your mail and scoops Brad’s way, and that address is now brad@newsaskew.com. Chris’ new address is chris@newsaskew.com. Please start sending your mail to these new addresses. All links on the site (old and new) have been updated as well. Moving to a new provider sure is a pain in the ass, but it’ll all be worth it once we get through all this paperwork. Sorry for the mess!

Old Amy Review…

October 27th, 1997 @ 12:00 am | No Comments » | Scooped by Brad & Chris

  • Here’s an amusing article spotted by Meg on the WWWBoard. It’s a non-flattering review of Amy from one of those old poltician-type guys. It originated on a site called The New Republic, but you can read our local copy right here. Enjoy.
STANLEY KAUFFMANN ON FILMS: YOUNG PEOPLE AND OTHERS
by Stanley Kauffmann
There’s a unique situation today in film–internationally. Films about young people–say, those under 30–are being made by people under 30. Many such films have been made lately in America, and they have also come from numerous European countries, from Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan. Compare that fact with, for instance, Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and The Wild One (1954), made by directors who were 44 and 47, respectively.
True, in the late 1960s we got a clutch of “youth” films, some of them by newcomers, but they were patent studio moves to cash in on the temper of the times. Most of them affected me like the sight of gray-haired people at discos. Those films were leagues–generations–apart from the youth films arriving today, some of which seem to have almost an encoded air: in some degree, they seem to depend on generational recognitions.
Chasing Amy (Miramax) is one such. This is the third film by Kevin Smith, now 26, about young men and women in New York and the New Jersey suburbs. His people here are aging–they’re pushing 30–but in dress, talk, interests, ambitions, they still seem emblematic of their decade. I didn’t see Smith’s first two films, Clerks and Mallrats, but I understand that Chasing Amy is a sort of continuation; and I also understand that, though I knew what was going on all the time, and cared about it, I wasn’t really getting it all.
His three principals are in the comic-book business, not Superman stuff but comics targeted for their generation. Two men, played by Ben Affleck and Jason Lee, are collaborators; a young woman, Joey Lauren Adams, works on her own. Affleck meets Adams in a club, is attracted, then very soon discovers that she’s a lesbian. Nonetheless he continues to be attracted, and she in time responds. No slightest suggestion is made that Affleck is “saving” Adams from lesbianism: it’s sheer persistence, and it touches her.
Difficulties follow. Items from Adams’s past are dug up by others and make trouble. After some rough spots, an ending arrives, hopeful but not guaranteed happy. There is no Amy in the film. Lee, in one of Affleck’s bad patches, tells his friend of a mistake he once made with an Amy and how, figuratively, he has been chasing her ever since. The point is not lost on Affleck.
Smith gives his film a nice feeling of joint enterprise. It’s as if some young people got together, including Smith, and decided to explore this subject while a camera rolled. Affleck and Lee are limber–moody and high-flying–and Adams is like a human weather map as she continues to discover herself sexually.
One aspect strikes a viewer who is a bit over 30. A lot in the dialogue–and there is a lot of it–is about self and self-fulfillment in love or sex or both. This is not strange in a love-and-sex story (nor is the pungent diction); still, I couldn’t help remembering that a comparable story in the 1960s would have included some reference to matters other than self-satisfaction.
But Smith makes it crackle, with various aggressive honesties and wit. Instance: Affleck and Adams have a loud scorching argument in the stands at a hockey game, then storm out. A fellow in a nearby seat who has been listening intently turns to a friend and says: “I told you these were good seats.”