- Today’s update marks our finally catching up on e-mail. All your scoops should have been received and replied to at this point. We had to cut it short yesterday, so if you noticed some mistakes or weirdness, it should all be corrected now. We’re pleased to have some of the first Dogma-related shots to leak out for you today, so let’s get on with this!
Archive for June, 1998
View Askew NewsBites™
- TNT Roughcut Online ran a story of one guy’s opinion on the top 10 grosses moments on film…Mallrats’ third nipple scene actually made number 10! Personally, we could think of much worse stuff that that…
Armageddon In The News…
- We’re pretty psyched to see Armageddon on July 1st, and it sounds like the rest of the public is, as well. We’ve got tons of news on the flick for you today, which we’ve gathered in one big news story right here. Commercials are starting to feature more of Ben, so it looks like this film’s definitely the one that’s going to give him international recognition.
The Leno Appearance on June 29th will be a repeat from 1997, so while Armageddon or Dogma may get a mention, he’ll most likely be there plugging Good Will Hunting. This doesn’t mean Ben’s not getting PLENTY of press though. Here’s a small piece from the newswire:
Affleck Cites Romantic Disasters
NEW YORK ( AP) – Ben Affleck, who’s out to save the world in “Armageddon,” admits that he’s had some real-life disasters with romance.
“I have a real capacity for the head-on collision,” the actor says in the upcoming USA Weekend. “I’m so compromising … then it blows up.”
Affleck, 25, is fearless as a wildcat oil driller in the new action movie “Armageddon.” It’s the real-world stuff he finds frightening.
“Beautiful women scare me,” he said. They’re “more trouble than handsome men, let me tell you. A lot of handsome men are shy. But women are taught to trade on that beauty, and they take advantage.”
Last fall, Affleck broke up with his girlfriend of seven years. Of his current love interest, Gwyneth Paltrow, he says she’s “the smartest woman I have ever met.”
Aint It Cool News has a lot more first-hand reviews of Armageddon, which you can read HERE.If you surf around other recent news of the site, you’ll find even more. Watch out for those spoilers, though! We’ve also included a review of the flick from a View Askew perspective by Rolando in its entirety. We’re using a new “swoop” technique to read this so you don’t accidentally see a spoiler. Just use your mouse to highlight the black area below if you’d like to read the review. If not, scroll down to the next story! Let us know what you think of this.
Tonight I went to see an advanced screening of ‘Armageddon’ here in NYC. (It was free at the UA Criterion theater. The tickets were distributed Monday morning at the Coconuts store on 51st and 5th Ave.) I thought you guys might want a review from an Askew fan.
I have to say that this is going to be THE movie of the summer. I’ve been to a lot of movies were the audience cheers and gets into the movie. But besides the rerelease of the Star Wars Trilogy, I have never seen a movie where people were cheering and getting into it like this.
The special effects were, of course, nothing short of amazing. And the action sequences–which were MANY–leave you on plastered against your chair, unable to move. From a special effects/action point of view the movie was awe-inspiring and surpassed everything I was expecting, and that was a lot to surpass.
What made the movie even better, though, was the writing and acting. Frankly, I didn’t expect much of either in this film. I thought it was all going to be special effects shots and action sequences. It wasn’t. The story was very well done. As everyone knows, it follows Bruce Willis, his oil drilling team which includes our boy, Ben Affleck and Live Tyler who isWillis’ daughter and Affleck’s girlfriend (and later fiance and after that….well, I don’t want to spoil it). After an amazing opening narration by thegreat Charleton Heston and shots of New York being laid to waste by small pieces of asteroid we find out that the Earth is less than 3 weeks away from being destroyed by an asteroid, and the people at NASA, headed by Billy Bob Thorton, come up with a plan to split the asteroid in two so the halves will pass by Earth. To do this, though, they need to drill 800 feet into it so they call in Willis to help them. He says he will do it, but only with his team. In dire straights, NASA agrees and we are off on one hell of an adventure.
As with most of these type of movies, each character has his ownbackground story which affects them throughout the movie. The most interesting is the Bruce Willis/Ben Affleck/Liv Tyler one. Affleck’s character insists on following his gut instinct at all times which leads him to screw up, regularly. Willis’ character isn’t one to take that kind of crap and finds himself arguing with Affleck most of the time but he still trusts him with any job. Then there is Liv Tyler. Her character is the typical daughter who is overprotected by her father, Willis. She finds herself feeling very bitter towards him for raising her around his oil drilling business and being so immature. So bitter, in fact, that she calls him by his first name. For 5 months she’s been dating Affleck and when Willis finds out he flips. He hates the fact that his daughter wants to be with another oil driller. He feels she could do much better.
Affleck, as usual, turns in an amazing performance. He did a great job playing the gun-ho action hero who will fight to the bitter end and accept any challenge that comes his way. And the first scene we see him in he is absolutely brilliant, running away from a gun-toting, pissed-off Bruce Willis. Ben was at his best, though, in the more emotional scenes with Tyler and Willis. The romance between him and Tyler was set up with next to no exposition but when you see them on screen you really believe that they are madly in love. And when he is with Willis, you can tell that under the yelling and screaming, both characters hold each other in high esteem and that there is an underlying father/son relationship between them. Ben show that he can be and action hero and still acts and make you believe that he is more than a stereotypical adventurous young guy. He did a great job of crossing over from the dramatic genre and further proves his flexibilty as an actor.
I think a scene about 5 minutes into the movie forshadows the box office brawls between the biggest movies of the summer: a dog runs to a bunch of Godzilla toys on the sidewalk and proceeds to pummel them. When all is said and done, ‘Armageddon’ proves that it can be a high budget, special effects heavy summer movie that still has a plot and acting that has the audience feeling everything from humor to fear to love. This is what sets it apart from all the summer movies so far and this is what’s going to make it the number one movie of the summer, if not the year.
We now return to our regular programming…
Wizard & Kevin’s Power…
- The latest Wizard has a ton of Kevin-related stuff…There was a Marvel Knights preview, where he talks about writing Daredevil, but they don’t really give away anything. In the letter column, Kevin answers a three question letter from Matt Hart:
1)What’s your favorite type of cheese?
-Kevin says, “Kraft Low-Fat American Cheese Food Product” In slices. “God only knows whats in it, but you can pull a Homer Simpson and eat the whole package if you want to, and as least it’s not fattening.”
-Kevin says, “Kraft Low-Fat American Cheese Food Product” In slices. “God only knows whats in it, but you can pull a Homer Simpson and eat the whole package if you want to, and as least it’s not fattening.”
2)What’s his next movie? Will it continue the “Jersey Trilogy”? Will Jason Lee be in it?
-Smith says his next cinematic offering, “Dogma”, is “a supernatural comedy road movie featuring Jay, Silent Bob, angels, demons and God. It stands alone, but there are plenty of references to his other movies, and a trip from Illinois to New Jersey. So its kind of peripheral to the Jersey stuff.” Smith also promises lots of comic stuff “I think the screenplay reads like a comic. It’s closely relate to Matt Wagner’s “Mage”, and there’s also stuff inspired by Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman in there.” And Jason Lee is in it.
3)Of the three films he’s made, which is his favorite?
-Smith: “Thus far, ‘Chasing Amy’. It was a very small and intimate movie, and we had really tanked with the previous film, ‘Mallrats’. We needed to come back and prove ourselves and we did”.
He’s also listed as the 14th most powerful person in comics today:
Position of Power: Filmmaker, Screenwriter, comic store owner whose self-professed love of comics brings fandom to the masses.
Why he’s 14: One man takes comics to a mass audience every day, and his name is Kevin Smith. In major-release movies he’s written and directed (Clerks, Mallrats and Chasing Amy), Smith has worn a badge of comic fandom with pride. His movies gush with comic references, so much that he was tapped by Warner Bros. to write a screenplay for an upcoming Superman movie (his draft has since been scrapped). Playing off his celebrity status, Smith has preaced the comic gospel on MTV and in Time. And since his movies have been popular out in the real world, he’s cool in the real world. By association, Smith helps make being a comic fan cool. In the comic world, Smith will write a six issue relaunch of Daredevil beginning in September and DC‘s Green Arrow in 1999. And in the meantime? He’s telling anyone who will listen that his upcoming movie, “Dogma”, is heavily inspired by comics.
And FINALLY, in the Wizard News, there’s a little Kevin Smith Watch box. In a nutshell, it says he was at the Pittsburgh Comicon, picked up Danger Girl Tour books for the Stash and tried to get the Nightwing twelve inch figure, but they weren’t out yet. He mentions that the film is wrapped, and that is a Batman reference exists in Dogma (about how Batmandoesn’t use guns).
Clerks Number 17 In Our Generation…
- Remember that “Our Generation” survey that we mentioned a while back? Did ya vote? Obviously, a lot of you did! In the list of the top important films of our generation, Clerks was listed as #17! Check out all the results HERE. There’s a lot of great stuff there. Makes us proud to be a part of this generation…Even if we had to grow up in the 80’s. 16,499 folks participated in the survey. Oh, and we think we set a scooper record on this one, too.
Commentary…
- Okay, the new PC is up and running nicely…Played some Quake 2 earlier today, and whoa baby, it was quite a sight to behold. We’ve still got some bugs to work out and LOTS of software to install, but being the kind guys that we are, we thought we’d take a break, catch up on some mail, and get an update to you…Here we go!
PC Update…
- Yep, the PC has arrived and is now pretty much connected. The job turned into a much more complex project than I’d anticipated. Getting a DVD drive to play properly and 2 PC’s to network together isn’t as easy as it looked! Anyway, I plan on spending tonight and all day tomorrow installing software and getting the internet connection up and running. At that time, we’ll read your mail, respond, and hopefully catch up with an update. Thanks for sticking with us during the downtime. See ya soon.
New PC Arriving Today…
- Alright, so it’s not news and you’re probably disappointed to see a new banner pop up with just some rambling underneath…But we figured it would be best to at least let you know of our impending downtime rather than just disappear.
As I mentioned a few days ago, I had a new PC on the way and, well, the thing’s here already! It took the folks at Dell exactly one week to take my order, custom build this thing (and what a machine it is), and get it to my door. Pretty amazing. I’m not getting kickbacks from them for saying this or anything, but service so far has been outstanding.
There’s a few news stories, but nothing major going on at the moment, but we’ll get all caught up as soon as the new PC is running smoothly (which may take a day or so, I’m doing some customizing of my own).
Anyway, bear with us, keep checking back, and we’ll see ya again soon. We’ll have all the latest News Askew & a report on how the new machine’s working (and how it will help make this site an even cooler place!). ‘Til then…
Oh, and by the way, if you’ve yet to cast your vote for the Global Internet Top 100 and ya dig us, CLICK HERE to surf on over and put News Askew at the top of your list! We sort of have our doubts about making it higher than our present #4, but we’re gonna try, dammit!
Dogma on Access Hollywood…
- Our scooper caught an episode of Access Hollywood where some stuff on Matt & Ben was mentioned. Here’s what she had to say about the piece:
On Access Hollywood tonight, they interviewed Matt after the 25th annual Vision Awards ceremony. They had him comment on Ben’s Armageddon action figure. Matt said that when he has an action figure it will look more like himself. He also claims that Saving Private Ryan will be bigger than Armageddon. Nothing like a little friendly rivalry. Anyway, they closed the segment saying that Matt and Ben will be starring together in the upcoming movie Dogma, a religous satire featuring a Catholic guy and a renagade angel. No mention of Kevin. Oh, well.
More ARMAGEDDON & Ben…
- For once, we’ve got some swag that you CAN’T pick up at the Stash…All you Affleck Armageddon fans can pick up your merchandise HERE…Cool stufflike the posters you see pictured here and the now famous figures. See below!
Oh, and speaking of Armageddon, Ben’s doing the press circuit and you know what that means…That’s right, TALK SHOWS! Catch the man on Letterman AND Leno (hey, the guy doesn’t play favorites) on the days listed here:
Tuesday, June 30
Monday, June 29