• Is anyone else worried about Dogma’s release date? Sure, we’re happy to finally have one, but we couldn’t help but think that Dogma’s month to shine would have been October. There’s ALWAYS going to be competition out there at the box office, but we wonder if this release date choice is just a time factor, to give Lions Gate time to build a campaign, or rather just a business decision. It looks like Tim Burton’s “Sleepy Hollow” may see release on the EXACT same day as Dogma, a film which has its own cultish status due to Burton himself (though not NEARLY as attention-getting a cast as Dogma’s, if you ask us), plus you’ve got the new Bond flick just one week later (which ya know is going to take the number one slot THAT week, no matter how good or bad a film it is. Hey, if “Wild Wild West” can be number one at the box office, ANYTHING can, remember that.) But we digress. The point is, Dogma’s a damn fine film, and one that deserves to be seen by a large audience theatrically. There’s no doubt in our minds that, once Dogma hits home video down the road, it will become a cult favorite like the Jersey trilogy, top the charts, and receive much praise. We’re just hoping for this flick to be the big, mainstream, high box-office breakout feature that Kevin deserves so much.

So we ask…Lions Gate, Weinsteins, & Crew Askew: Perhaps you’d consider bumping Dogma up a couple weeks? At least releasing in the major cities a few weeks prior to going wide? You’ll please the eager fans as well as increase chances for some big box office before the onslaught of other genre films that risk stealing Dogma’s audience. Or even better, rush out a release on September 1st, when possibly one of the worst films to ever see wide release, “The Astronaut’s Wife”, streets. Wow, we can smell the money from here. But seriously, for us, October’s wide open except for “Fight Club”, and a sure-fire win for Dogma. As the weeks go by, it just seems like things are gonna get more crowded out there.

Dogma is a fantastic, highly original, entertaining film, and thus has that Blair Witch word-of-mouth potential going for it. It’d be great to hit the ground running and build a solid following for the flick before it gets lost in the Bond’s explosions and Burton’s latest.Something to think about, anyway.

• Dogma’s UK Release Date is being confirmed, by the Popcorn Site, the date itself is one sure to irk some religious groups somewhere:

They of course list the OFFICIAL SITE, this one, as Kev’s…AGAIN. What are they gonna call Ming’s Dogma site when it goes online? The OFFICIAL official site? We wonder.

• As we reported a long time ago, Another Universe, is now confirming that Marvel will be putting out a collection of the first issues of Year Two of Daredevil…But now we hear there’s gonna be a foreward written by BEN AFFLECK! This trade will cover all 8 of Kev’s issues, from what we’ve heard, and will be a must-own.
• Dogma catches a few small mentions on the Movie Monologue page.Surf on by for a gander.
• Cinescape did a write-up for “Detroit Rock City” in the past couple days, and one of the lines stood out. Many of you have written us asking about this interesting similarity and, now that we’ve seen the trailers and TV spots, we tend to agree:

• Vincent stopped by the board to field a question regarding how the FantasiaFest screenings went (the answer: REALLY WELL!), and also to update us on the status of A Better Place’s new video transfer preppin it for DVD:

We’re HIGHLY anticipating seeing this one again, since we seriously dug the flick when we caught it for the first time at Vulgarthon (and have only seen it one other time since then). Sounds as if we’re in for a real treat when this thing finally sees home video release sometime this Fall. We just hope that Don May & Vincent can keep working on the project enough to speed it along – It’s no secret that a lot of Synapse‘s stuff doesn’t make release dates (like the Brain Damage disc I’m currently awaiting), but perhaps that’s why they’ve been careful NOT to give a date yet. Maybe they just wanna finish it first.

• A word of warning to those of you placing orders for that Chasing Amy DVD: We hear that 16:9 support is still RUMORED, but has NOT been finalized at this point. As soon as we can confirm this, we’ll let you know, but in the meantime, keep in mind that there IS a possibility that this disc will not be anamorphic. We figured most of you would want it, regardless, as we do, but we still hope for a nice 16:9 transfer on the sucker! Stay tuned.
• Dogma’s mentioned in a couple online polls – You may wanna go and place your vote and help the flick out (if that’s how you feel about the film compared to the other choices, of course…Be honest!).

First off, Cinesape’s asking what flick you’re most looking forward to: Sleep Hollow, End Of Days, Dogma, Screm 3, JamesBond 19, or Joan of Arc.

Also, Achiew.Com is asking what you favorite Kev Smith flick is. We did this one a lonnnng time ago, but if you wanna vote again, hey, go for it!

• The BBC is premiering Mallrats (in widescreen, no less) in the UK on BBC2 at 11.55 PM, Sunday, August the 15th. They say:

• Clerks gets a very small mention among history-making indies in a Newsweek article inspired by Blair Witch’s success. Here’s the snippet:

• Finally today, scooper Mike’s running a site called The Banky Hat Campaign. It’s a campaign to get Banky’s Hat from Chasing Amy re-released for purchase at the Stash. You just go and sign a virtual form saying that you’d buy a hat if they are re-released. If you missed one, and wanted one, here’s your chance to at least let your voice be heard!

• It’s been predicted for a long time now, and it doesn’t surprise us in the slightest…This morning, indieWIRE announced that Lions Gate will indeed be officially coming forward this weekend as Dogma’s distibutor! This is excellent news for the film, as the studio has handled (and continues TO handle) some delicate projects, and many excellent films. We think that Lions Gate will be a natural fit, and hope they give Dogma the wide, highly publicized release that it deserves. Here’s indieWIRE’s blurb on the announcement, by the way:

The piece goes on to summarize Kev’s post that you can find in our weekend update, as well as give News Askew another nice plug – Thanks, guys! Good job breaking the big story. We’ll certainly be following up with the official news when it arrives, probably today or tomorrow. Next steps: A teaser poster and that wonderful trailer!

• Cinescape Online reports that the “Men In Black” sequel no longer has Will Smith or Tommy Lee Jones in the picture, rather just Dogma vets Linda Fiorentino and Matt Damon! It’d be kinda neat to see the pair back together after Dogma, though the idea of a MiB sequel just doesn’t thrill us very much.
• Scott Morse checked in with us — He’s the guy working on the Loki & Bartelby comic, remember? Anyway, Scott says that he’ll be at the San Diego ComicCon with some sketches from the book, so be sure and stop by and say hello! He’ll be forwarding the stuff onto us afterwards for those of you (like us) that can’t make it out to the west coast. Scott’s also working on a few more things: In addition to just finishing up his work on the Clerks series, as well as getting ready to shoot a little indie film that Mosier’s offered to consult on. This is all VERY sketchy information at this point, which we’ll clarify for you in a week or so.

• Another fairly quiet news day, though we expect a big announcement regarding Dogma’s distributor very soon, just because it seems that, with a release date and a teaser poster on the way, that’s the next logical step (followed by a trailer). We do have some FANTASTIC news regarding the raffle, thanks to the generosity of Mr. Kevin Smith. We hope you’re all enjoying the new server. The forwarding page still hasn’t disappeared for us when we point our browser to www.newsaskew.com, so it seems like the domain people are just GOD AWFUL slow at changing things over. Please let us know when you stop receiving that forwarding page, so we know the system is indeed working. Until then, forgive the weirdness that you’re seeing. We ARE holding off on some of the site’s new enhancements until the old server goes totally offline, though.

• Okay, we’re back — We somehow managed to survive yet another microbrewery festival, though we’re sure that one of these times we’re just going to drop over dead. Oh well. Anyway, it’s been a fairly quiet weekend, though Kev did make an excellent post that you’ll find below. Also, you may have noticed that you’re on the new server now, no matter what. We got tired of waiting for the sucker to change over, so we replaced our old page with a forward to the new site. In the next few days, www.newsaskew.com should start automatically taking you here to the new server, but you may get the forwarding page until then. Sorry for the inconvenience, the Internic guys just seem to enjoy taking their time!

The poll’s been updated, as we always do on Sundays, so feel free to get your vote in. We’re starting to unveil some of our new little surprises that we’ve promised, too — Today, we’re happy to report that finally got around to converting those Dogma clips to QuickTimes, though we’re still not aces at creating that stuff, so we had to keep the picture pretty small and the sound quality low just to make them of reasonable download size. Check out Dogma: Rumor Control for a much needed update and a little facelift, as well.

Thanks for stopping by, and enjoy the ‘ol update.

• The LA Times did a review of the recently released Clerks DVD if you wanna check it out.
• The site for Jason Lee‘s new flick, “Mumford”, has some cool stuff about the dude on there. His part in the flick was written specifically for him, according to screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan. You’ll also find a biography on Lee as well as the rest of the cast.

DOWNLOAD THE DOGMA CLIPS HERE

• We’re proud to present the long overdue QuickTime versions of the Dogma clips we debuted here about a month ago. Now those of you without good RealAudio access or that just wanted to grab copies of the clips for yourself can finally get your wish. Along with that, we’ve given RC a facelift and added some new info, including the release date Kevin just announced. If you’ve been reading News Askew though, RC will be pretty much rehash, since we’ve been keeping up with stuff pretty well on the front page here.