• Alanis is mentioned (along with Dogma) on CNN’s Showbiz portion of their website today, in part 1 of a 2 part article. Better yet, our own Dogma: Rumor Control gets a link at the end! We love to see stuff like that. Anyway, here’s the Dogma portion of the piece, folks:

No stranger to the camera — she was a child actor on Canadian television and made numerous music videos, including the surprising, nude appearance in “Thank U” — Morissette has recently set her sights on a film career. Her first role: God.

Kevin Smith, director Of “Clerks,” “Mallrats” and “Chasing Amy,” was chasing Alanis in hopes of casting her as God in his next film, “Dogma.”

“I had just gotten off the road, and I was tired, and I didn’t think I’d be of any value to him,” Morissette says. “I said no at first, but then as I kind of rejuvenated, I checked back in with him and he still hadn’t cast the role of God. And I said I’d love to do it and I did.”

Well, Alanis seems to have been a great casting choice for Dogma press ALONE! Read the full story from CNN HERE.

• Ben Affleck will star in the casino heist thriller, Reindeer Games, for director John Frankenheimer. He was just inked to the flick late yesterday.
• Appalachian State University in Boone, NC is showing “Clerks” on Thursday, February 4 at 8:00 PM in I.G. Greer theatre. It should be just a buck to get in.
• The Mos Eisley Multiplex site has added two interviews that might be of interest to you folks. There’s an interview with Jeff Allen all about how he made “Trooper Clerks,” and there’s also an essay by Fred Tepper, where he extols how he came up with the idea for “special defects” in “Hardware Wars”–and how that somehow eventually led to doing effects for “Dogma”.

• More info on Chasing Amy’s UK release. First of all, it looks like the UK vid may (exclusively) come with a free copy of the Clerks/Amy scripts at the UK’s HMV stores – but nothing public has been said about this yet. The UK book is by Faber and Faber. It has the 2 scripts c/w a few photos and B/W Bluntman and Chronic comic artwork in the middle, but it has a different cover than the US version – basically the still of Joey used on the Criterion disc (in black and white).

The Video trade magazine “Timecode” gives Amy 8 out of 10 for saleability as it were. They say as Clerks has been such a good and constant seller (over 150,000 copies sold) they expect Amy to do the same as fans of Kev know what to expect and there will be a lot of added interest due to the new found popularity of Ben Affleck (thus Amy will sell well off the back of Good Will Hunting which was released for retail here last week). They report that there will be a lot of advertising in the national media for Amy so that should help.

Finally, Also the German channel Teleclub (available in the UK on Satillite) are showing Amy throughout February. We hear that listening to Ben and Joey say “What did you do last night? “I got laid” in German is quite an amusing experience in itself. It’s running all month, so you German Askewers may wanna be on the lookout.

• We hear the latest edition of Nakedfella , a new comic strip on the web, features Silent Bob in some small capacity. Check it out.
• In the Miramax release “Playing By Heart”, when Angelina Jolie and Ryan Phillippe go to the movies, there are three Chasing Amy movie posters in the background (along with one for Swingers). Miramax is supporting their own, yet again!
• Finally today, a small piece on Kev & View Askew from TV Guide’s website:

Inspired by Richard Linklater‘s Slacker, Kevin Smith — a heretofore failed aspiring filmmaker who dropped out of both Vancouver Film School and a creative writing program at NYC’s New School — set out to make a semi-autobiographical movie about twentysomething slackers in a Jersey strip mall. Several maxed-out credit cards later, Smith emerged with the $27,000 Clerks (1994) and established himself as a strong new exponent of the potty-mouthed zeitgeist embodied in Beavis and Butt-head and South Park. Claims to the influence of Spike Lee, Hal Hartley and Jim Jarmusch notwithstanding, Smith admits, “I’m a very flat, simple filmmaker, with zero visual style. Helen Keller could probably fashion more visually interesting films than me.”

Smith’s dialogue-driven films, peppered with zingy pop-culture references, are more likely to quote Star Wars than any arcane auteur. After the serious sophomore slump of his studio-financed Mallrats, Smith concluded his “New Jersey trilogy” on a felicitous note. The $250,000 boy-meets-lesbian romantic comedy Chasing Amy, which hinted at a breadth of emotional and thematic range previously hidden beneath a sea of penis jokes, redeemed Smith with critics and found a larger audience than the previous two films combined. Smith’s upcoming Dogma, a star-studded comedic fantasy about angels, seems destined to be the indie equivalent of an event picture. — Sandra Contreras

• Many questions have been coming our way regarding View Askew DVDs today, so we thought we’d set the record straight. First of all, the Mallrats date is being announced as pushed back until at least May now, as reported by the DVD File. Note, these guys originally reported the April date, which we are now unable to confirm with Universal. In fact, no one at Universal can confirm ANY release date for the Rats SE as of now. So, I’d say, until we hear from Kevin or especially Vincent, dates are all RUMORS, but we’ll continue to post these rumors.

Also today, DVD Askew reported a new Canadian Good Will Hunting disc that does indeed exist. We’re unsure what the extra scene is on that disc, but recall reading about it somewhere. As for the 16×9 support, it is, alas, not ACTUAL 16×9, but just a technique that company uses to manipulate the picture into having the viewer think it’s 16×9, wherein in fact it’s just a stretched out version of the pic where you really see no more than the U.S. release. That’s what our sources who own the disc (and other Miramax discs that claim the same 16×9 enhancements in Canada). So, if you’re a BIG fan, you may want the disc for your collection, but we’d still recommend sticking with the American version. We just hope that Disney one day WILL see the light and start adding 16×9 enhancement to ALL their titles.

Finally, the other 2: Clerks and Chasing Amy. We’d say you’ll see Chasing Amy first, since Criterion will just copy the laserdisc master & extras for DVD release (yes, that ALSO means no 16×9, unless Vincent goes to their offices and threatens them, we suppose). Criterion isn’t talking, but we bet it’ll happen. Clerks is a different story. Miramax released this laserdisc, and will lean towards most likely just putting out the flick with NO extras on DVD. Of course, Kevin and thegang won’t let this happen if they can help it, so count on seeing those extras, but count on Clerks being the last of the View Askew flicks in your DVD collection.

Remember, NO official press releases or materials on these DVDs has been released at this point! This is ALL pure speculation! We hope this clears a lot of your questions up on this topic.

• Kevin stopped by the board for a quick summary post about what he’s been up to, including some Dogma looping out in CA, upcoming plans with Graphitti, and info on your chance to visit the Stash’s grand re-opening! Read on:

We assume that “November” meant “February” (or possibly March) above…We’ll followup with a correction on that one as soon as we hear from Kevin. Sure a lot of you may be disappointed that only 100 can make it, but like Kev says, it’s gonna be rough even getting THAT many folks through the door. Hope to see you there! Stay tuned for more info.

• Okay, it’s a new day, and we’ve got a new update ready to rock and roll for ya. Nothing better than that, right? Not too much going on around this place, actually, but a few odds and ends and loose ends to tie up, but that’s always a good way to start the weekend, we think. So, here’s today’s:

• HUGE congrats to all-around nice guy Jimmy Palmiotti!!! He took home the BEST INKER OF THE YEAR AWARD for his work on DareDevil at the Wizard Awards. No tracer jokes here, folks, Jimmy’s doing some DAMN fine work. We can’t wait to see more. Kudos!!!
• “Video Store” magazine printed yet another glowing review of the Mallrats DVD. By the way, the DVD IS in stock at DVD Empire as well as Amazon.Com, and we hear it’s starting to pop up in more plentiful numbers at local retail outlets. Keep searching, folks! Don’t miss your chance to own the best DVD on the market. Anyway, here’s their capsule review (our FULL REVIEW is still available in case ya missed it):

• Oni Press reports on their Jay & Bob Site that a TRADE PAPERBACKcontaining all 4 issues of Jay & Silent Bob will arrive in a couple of months (JUST in time for Dogma!).nd they say that they The price is $11.95, and it will be released on October 6th 1999. Jay & Silent Bob #4, the final issue in the series, hitsstands on its own towards the end of August (No official date from Oni has yet been given to us).
• The Unofficial Jason Lee Site just received some “top secret” info onthe upcoming Cameron Crowe flick (Lee‘s current project). Surf over to read all about it.
• Clerks is mentioned in an online poll over at BERSERKER (the trivia game). They ask which flick’s better: Clerks, Empire, or The Goonies. As much as we were (and continue to be) BIG Goonies fans,we’re hoping Clerks can pull this one off. Just because.
• FYI – The Affleck film “The Yards” we discussed yesterday is most likely the codename for his more recent project,the new Pearl Street Productions feature called “The Third Wheel”.
• A wonderful review of Daredevil #7 has been posted on 4-Color Review, a site that contains reviews, message boards,and columns on comics. They give the ish 5 out of 5 possible stars and refer to Kevin as one of the best writers currently in comics. Check it out under the New Reviews section.

• In our opinion, one of the best comedians of all time has to be the great George Carlin. HBO’s George Carlin Interview features some hilarious and informative Q&A with the man who’s done a fresh HBO special EVERY year for like the last 12 or something…Quite an accomplishment! George’s new special hits HBO next month, and is bound to be the funniest thing you’ve seen in quite some time. Oh, if you’re in a hurry, though, here’s JUST what he said about Dogma: