• Dogma had a fantastic weekend gross considering the competition. Here’s how it’s tracking:

• The Dogma script book should now be in a bookstore near you, so pick it up or get it from the Stash. The New York Daily News ran a little blurb about how it all came about, as well.

• Mr. Ben Affleck himself stopped by his web board over at Affleck.Com recently to respond to some questions and give web fans some inside information. Surf over to his fantastic site to read them all. In the meantime, here’s one that summarizes what he’s been up to lately:

• Bigstar.com recently published a new Chris Rock interview where Dogma gets some mention. Here’s a choice quote:

Read the full piece HERE.

• Today’s Comic Continuum has an article about the Mage movie. It’s changing studios and Matt Wagner talks a bit about Kevin. Hmmm…
• The Jay & Silent Bob A-Thon out there on the west coast about a week ago went incredibly well, we hear. They immediately sold out their main auditorium and then had to open another screen to accomodate the fans for the all-night shindig.

Due to the overwhelming success, a nearby city is holding their own similar fest. Here’s the details:

If ya go, why not send us a report? Tell us how things were!

• It sounds like the United States isn’t the only country that was saturated with Dogma press. The UK’s holding their own as well! Here’s a few tidbits on what we’re hearing from overseas:

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• A new ad has surfaced using a very strange color scheme and a new tagline. Click the thumbnail for a better look. This has only appeared in the UK as far as we know (until now!).
• Film Four made the following announcement: “You’ll be pleased to know that there will be a special screening of Dogma on December 15th, AND you’ll have a chance of winning tickets! We’ll let you know a bit more over the next week or so…so keep tuned to www.filmfour.com”. Sounds like you folks that want the first look better surf up their website.
• The magazine “Film Review” has the front page headline “Dogma – Ben Affleck and Matt Damon Find Religion”, but with no interview with them on the inside. There’s a 2 page interview with Kevin that doesn’t cover much new ground, and there’s a review with some spoileresque pictures inside as well. In the review, they mark Dogma as a 3 out of 5.
• Total Film magazine gave the film just 2 out of 5 stars, and a fairly poor review.
• A large Dogma ad was spotted on the side of a Double Decker Bus, saying something to the effect of “Next Stop, Heaven”.

• Vincent also filled us in on some tidbits for the Dogma DVD. Looks like this puppy’s gonna be the greatest DVD to hit shelves in the history of the format, and we mean that. We’re damned proud to be associated with such a good crew of folks who know how to put a DVD together. Check this out: First of all, they’ve reteamed with producer JM Kenny, who did the fantastic production work on the Mallrats disc. That’s a PERFECT start. Next, Vincent is again working closely with JM and the crew to make sure that the deleted scenes and other extras are done JUST right. It looks like the direction right now is NOT to include the full-length workprint, but rather, to include VERY long deleted scenes from that workprint so not a beat is missed. Likely, they’ll leave the full sequence intact so you can go back and see how it fits into the film itself.

ALSO, look for this one to be a double-disc set, folks, or one two-sided DVD-18 (though they’re leaning towards the former at the moment). The first disc will contain both the final print AND the print of Dogma that went to Cannes (which some prefer, as it does run about 20 minutes longer). This disc will of course have the usual commentary track with Kevin, Scott, and a bunch of the film’s actors. JM also hopes to bring the cameras along for some live-action commentary footage. The second disc will be totally devoted to extras, which will include a new documentary on the film, tons of interviews, all the extra workprint scenes, and more. We’ve talked to Vincent and JM about the disc and both are totally gung-ho about it. Kevin’s lending a ton of input to Vincent on what he’d like to see, as well. He wants to also put the entire Split Screen show with him and John Pierson on there too, and MAYBE the 1st draft script which is different from any of the others substantially. And it’s a lot. Expect this one to have more film and extras than any DVD you’ve seen before. Wow. Drool city. We’ll follow this one close.

Finally, a lot of you are still eagerly waiting for Synapse to announce “A Better Place”’s DVD release date. Well, it looks like it’s going to be sometime in the Spring of 2000 now, at least that’s what Vinnie and Don May are HOPING for. They’ve been given the opportunity to take the film to Skywalker Sound to do a brand new Dolby Digital 5.1 remix, and that’s holding things up a bit. We can’t blame Vin for waiting, though. We would, too. It’ll all be worth it in the end.

• As we mentioned in the intro above, Vincent’s been checking in with some fantastic scoops for us lately. First of all, we were lucky enough to get our hands on the first 45 pages of Vincent’s next movie, “Autograph”, a dark horror flick done in the tradition of great Italian director Dario Argento. In reading the script, And man, if the sucker doesn’t just grab you right from the opening lines and keep you on the edge of your chair. Not only was the script well-written dialogue-wise, but it really painted a picture of how things in the film are going to look. Vincent doesn’t just write the words and character names down; he also does a TON of camera move descriptions as well as scene stylization to almost make the thing read like a novel. And we can’t help but think that Jason Lee would be perfect in the lead role. Sorry we can’t give away more, it’s meant to be kept confidential, but we can’t wait to see what happens in the rest. It’s about time someone went back to making a good old-fashioned straight horror movie rather than all the tongue-in-cheek stuff that’s been hitting the box office over the past years. This one’s one to watch for.

• Forgive our absence yesterday…It’s a rare Monday that an update doesn’t happen, but we’ve got good reasons, trust us. We don’t want to say more at this point, but we’ve been doing a TON of behind the scenes work (and will continue to do so during the month of December), but fear not, it’s all for a good cause. More on that as we feel like revealing it.

In other news, though, there’s some interesting stuff to talk about today. Dogma continues to do very well given the number of screens it’s playing on and the competition here in the States. The film’s also gearing up for it’s upcoming UK release, and we’ve got all the latest happenings on that.

We’ve also been chatting with View Askew Historian Vincent Pereira a lot lately, and boy have we learned some very interesting stuff. You’re gonna love this story.

Dogma RC continues to be updated, but not as well as we’d like. It’ll be caught up soon, hopefully in the next couple of days, with the latest newsbites from News Askew on its own front page. We ARE keeping up with reviews and articles over there on the press page, though, so keep checking there whenever you see we’ve updated the site. Today’s additions come to us courtesy of Finbar Ryan & Brandon Owens.Let’s kick it: