• Well, if the doomsday-types are right, we’ve probably only got about 2 or 3 News Askew updates left before the world ends. We have a feeling that they’re wrong, though. But still, hey, if we’re gonna go out, let’s go out fighting. Things have still been very quiet, with most folks taking an extended vacation until after the new year. We’ll be around off and on, but with the millennium weekend coming up, updates may be a bit on the lighter side. Again, though, with not much to report, you’re not missing anything.

We’d hoped to have some major surprise for ya come the 2000 switchover, but it’s just not going to happen. We’ll more than make up for that in another few weeks though, so stick around. You won’t wanna miss it.

Today, Affleck’s back in the headlines yet again for that pesky ‘ol Batman rumor, plus we’ve got a few more Dogma tidbits from here and abroad…

• Our top e-mail submission today regarded a series near and dear to Kevin’s heart, Degrassi Jr. High. On Friday the 24th, a Canadian teen talkshow called Jonovision had a cast reunion. An e-mail from Kevin was mentioned, where he told the cast to make more movies and that he’d love to see more of them. The Canoe website’s also got a small piece on the reunion. Check it out HERE.
• Previews magazine is advertising new new View Askew shirts: One is a new another Bluntman and Chronic shirt and the other is a black RST Video shirt. Both are 17.95. We assume the Stash will offer them soon.
• Interestingly enough…A very old piece…But the Random House dictionary has a daily feature where the explain the origin of a word: Wanna know where “Brodie” comes from?
• UK’s Popcorn website has posted a new interview with Kevin. It’s on multiple pages and full of photos, so we’re not going to attempt to rip a local copy for the site or anything. You can check it out at their site HERE though.
• Matt Damon‘s followup to Dogma, “The Talented Mr. Ripley”, is opening to some very good reviews as well as 5 Golden Globe Nominations. E! Online sat down to chat with Matty about things. Check it out HERE.
• Finally today, we’ve added a new poll, not really Askew related, but just something of personal interest. By the way, last week’s poll had by FAR the most OVERWHELMING results of any poll in this site’s history. An INCREDIBLE majority of you would rather see the Dogma DVD delayed a few months to give Kevin, Vincent, & Co. time to put together a jam-packed release, rather than a speedy April release that’s now planned. Are you listening, Columbia/Tristar?

• Hey all! Hope you got a lot of nice stuff for Xmas. You can definitely tell it’s winter here in Central PA. While we didn’t see any of the white stuff all weekend, it sure felt like it could start up any minute. Temps were FRIGID. Is it Spring yet???

So, here comes the REALLY fun week. Enjoy it, folks, cuz you’ll only see it once in your lifetime. Stores will be crazy with folks stockpiling water, canned goods, batteries, and the like, all preparing for the worst. It’s not every day that you see those first TWO digits of the calendar year changing. What a neat time to be alive. Just think, it’s only ever happened once before in recorded history. Wow. Anyway, hopefully you’ve all got some sort of plans for New Years Eve, whether it be slaving away at your jobs to monitor the Y2K changeover, out partying up a storm, sitting comfortably at home watching Dick Clark from your couch, or cowering in a corner with a loaded shotgun prepared to defend your life (though we’d advise against that last one). 5 days to go. It’s gonna be cool, but man, we’ll be happy when it’s finally over.

It’s nice to be back home at News Askew, though. As the Real World Seattle marathon plays on good ‘ol MTV (that big slap scene is coming up, the drama), it seems like a good time to get caught up on e-mail and site stuff. Not TOO much to report due to the news basically stopping over the holiday weekend. Dogma finally showed up in its first foreign market overseas in the UK today, and early reports are extremely positive. We’ve got some more press over at Dogma RC relating to this release (some Film Unlimited interviews, to be exact, courtesy of Simon). In addition to that, JUST a few more newsbites as we coast back into another work week (yep, we’re each back at work, until the 31st). Rock and roll:

• The latest issue of the DVD magazine called “Film-fest” has four clips from Dogma on it. The issue deals with the Cannes Film Fest. Each of the clips is pan and scan, and subtitled in French. They are:

Don’t look too hard for the issue, though, we hear the clips are quite short and the quality’s not that hot. And yep, our little clip did make the promo reel yet again.

• We forgot to mention that Oni Press released the Clerks : The Lost Scene comic yesterday. It was in our countdowns, so hopefully you got your issue. Sorry for the lack of info on the book and advance shots, our contacts with Oni have kinda of fizzled out as of late, but we hope to get some better communication going for future books (though none are actually on the immediate horizon). Anyway, we hear the book’s quite good. It features art from Phil Hester, inking my Ande Parks, a cover by Duncan Fegredo, and of course that wonderful new Kevin Smith story. The Stash is now selling the book for $3.00 unsigned, and $10.00 signed.
• A quote from Kim shows up in the January 2000 issue of Details Magazine. She’s on page 111 in an article titled “Have You Annoyed Your Boss Today” The article is a collection of things that bosses say their employees do that annoys them. Kim’s quote really has nothing to do with that, though, and is as follows:

“The Boiler Room” Full Trailer: Lo-Res (3.4Mb, MOV) “The Boiler Room” Full Trailer: Hi-Res (11.2Mb, MOV)

• The official “Boiler Room” trailer is now online. I know you had this on a few weeks ago but it was footage from Extra. This is the final version, as you see in theaters. We caught it when we went to see Princess Mononokee last week, and the flick looks quite good. Plus we’re big “Glengarry Glenross” fans, so we’ll sign up just to see Affleck’s cameo, really.
• Salma Hayek will return to her native language for ”La Gran Vida (The Great Life),” a Spanish comedy about a suicidal man who arranges for his own death but wants out of the deal when he meets a beautiful waitress. We’d avert death for Salma any old day of the week, that’s for damn sure. And then some.
• Wizard is having a popularity contest in which they will decide the pieces to a Marvel/USAopoly board game (based on the Monopoly board). Perhaps you’d like to go over and place a vote for Marvel regular Daredevil?
• We received a note today stating that, oddly enough, our Chasing Amy Drinking Game has been included in the OpenHere.com index and search engine. The site’s a family-friendly search engine for the net. Huh. Go figure. Ummm…Thanks.

We’ll catch ya later, folks!!! Have fun opening those presents. We’ll take anything that you don’t want. Especially if it’s a couple digital cameras. Send us your extras. 🙂

• Several outlets are running this rumor today, and we’re not sure who was the first, but it’s again become one of those hot stories that gets started in one outlet and spreads like a virus across the media (not unlike the one we started up ourselves above!). Anyway, Liz Smith, The Internet Movie Database, and Mr. Showbiz are all reporting that Ben Affleck is a “major contender” for the lead role in the next Batman movie. No word is given on the source, though we THINK this all originated from Liz Smith.

As those of you who stop here regularly know, we’ve reported this rumor often in the past, but no decisions have been made by Warner Brothers regarding the path of the next movie OR who’s going to take over the role. We’ve also heard that Dave Boreanaz (TV’s “Angel”) is possibly being fitted for mask and cape as well. He’d do fine, too, we think. We just hope that they don’t bring Joel Schumacher back. For the love of God.

• Vincent Pereira was kind enough to give us some more of his horror epic, “Autograph”, to read, and man, was it ever gripping! There’s a mystery going on that’s got us both baffled as to who the killer is, and some VERY nasty murders to boot. This one’s gonna turn some heads, and we’re hopeful that Vincent gets to make the film exactly how he’s describing it in this script, because there’s the makings of some fantastic direction there already. Plus, we’re both big fans of the horror genre, and think this film is a perfect one to revive it again (sorta like “Scream” did, except without all the goofy stuff).

Anyway, we’re sorry that we can’t divulge any of the plot details, we had to swear to that, but even we’ve only been given enough of the script to keep us interested. Vincent cut us off and we’re DYING (no pun intended) to read the rest, so we’re sure audiences will eat this one up. We’re looking forward to following Autograph all the way from preproduction into the theaters, and you can count on full coverage right here.

• Howdy all. It’s been amazingly quiet around here lately, you all must really be doing the last minute shopping! Not a lot of news going on, either, though we did manage to muster up a few stories to finish off the day. Be sure and check Dogma RC for some new articles and reviews, too, courtesy of Nick Whitehouse, Lodgepole, Boyd Hilton, & Canadian Boy. Lots of good stuff there, including the Heat magazine review, and 2 NEW article/interviews with Kevin & Jay courtesy of the Film Unlimited website.

In regards to this little project we’re working on, well, it’s turned into a real monster! Sadly, there’s no way we’re making our Y2K hopeful release, in fact, it’ll probably be well into January until we can unveil anything, god willing that early even, but trust us, it’ll all be worth the wait. At least we hope YOU think so. Until then, things will continue business as usual around here, but don’t expect any super special bells and whistles as this is taking up a lot of our spare time at the moment.

Alright, let’s roll on with some news, here…

• Howdy folks. We’re working on gathering up a few stories for an update tomorrow, so never fear, we’re around, things are just a little slow with all of you holiday shopping and everything. In the meantime, we thought we could escape this, but a lot of you keep asking about the house pics of our respective new domiciles, so here’s mine. Chris doesn’t have any pics at the moment, but hopefully we can get some up in the future. Just click HERE to go to a page with some thumbnails and descriptions of my humble abode. And if ya don’t care to see them (lord knows I wouldn’t!), just skip the link and rest assured we’ll be back with some REAL News Askew tomorrow. See ya then.

• Fairly quiet weekend around these parts…Mostly UK news today, naturally, with Dogma just a little over a week away. TV Networks and the print media continue to promote the film, though critical reaction has been mixed for sure. Other than that, nothing much else to report — We’d like to take this opportunity to say that the Flyers kick ass though, and are going to win the Stanley Cup this year. Thank you.

• Our scoopers continue to revise the Nails cigarette box cutouts, so instead of replacing just one of the files, we’re now posting both versions. Choose your favorite in our Files Askew section.
• The Johnny Vaughn Film Show aired the Kevin interview, which was good, along with some short clips from the trailer this weekend. The panel that reviewed the film didn’t like it too much, yet they LOVED Mystery Men…So obviously the panel was on crack.
• In other UK news, Gail Porter’s Channel 5 Movie Show is on Wednesday, December 22nd at 7pm.
• Barry Norman reviewed Dogma on Thursday night, on his show Barry Norman’s Film Night, and found it highly enjoyable, although he also found it a bit long and messy.
• Dogma & View Askew stuff appears quite a bit in the latest issue of Premiere Magazine. Here’s a summary:

• 1) A quiz where one of the questions was: In Dogma, Linda Fiorentino plays a descendant of Christ who works where?

  2) A big feature piece of Matt Damon

• 3) A small piece on Salma about her 3-week stint with Vancover’s finest

  4) A piece about how Satan has been in all of these movies lately. It showed a picture of Jason Lee and says: An obnoxious demon (Jason Lee) and his hocky-stick-toting goons attempt to use two fallen angels (Matt Damon and Ben Affleck) to nullify the existence of God.

• In the January 2000 US Magazine, Dogma is mentioned in #42 in the Ninety-nine Stories of 1999:

• Clerks will be airing on Film Four in the UK this January:

• And last, but certainly not least, Dogma made Owen Gleiberman’s top ten best movies of 1999 list in Entertainment Weekly:

A very cool list, as well. Run Lola Run was definitely one of the coolest of this past year, and ya gotta love Malkovich if even just for the originality. Looking through that list, 1999 really was an interesting and fun year at the movies.