• Wondering what to expect this summer when Kevin appears at Wizard World’s con? The latest issue promised this:

• The last page of the newest issue of Jane magazine has a full color shot of Shannon Elizabeth with her arms full of food from the J&SBSB craft services tables on the set. If someone has a scan, send it on. By the way, next month we hear that Jason Lee will be doing a piece for next month’s celebrity issue.
• If you wanna see more of that Bluntman & Chronic art we’ve been posting, join artist Mike Oeming’s mailing list to get more of it! Surf HERE and check it out.

• Here’s the Mad Magazine pic we mentioned in newsbites the other day.
• The guys over at The BackStage (The Backstage ) are premiering there latest masterpiece entitled “Pave the Whales” on July 13th. Also, along with the Premiere, they will be showing there film, The Blair Clown Project: The Special Edition. This new edition features 15 minutes of new footage and a new “making of” feature at the end of the film. Now, we all know that Jason Mewes has a small role in the film, but now, Kevin Smith has a role in the Special Edition. He appears at the beginning of the film’s introduction.

• Finally today, those of you who’ve seen the game “The Sims” might enjoy what folks have been up to with the new Jay & Silent Bob skins that were released for the characters. Ya gotta wonder about that Silent Bob…And especially that first photo of the duo there. Yikes.

• Well, it seems trailer downloads have calmed down enough again to get a few news items out here for ya. Posting updates has been an incredible chore since coming back from the weekend. Downloads from moviepoopshoot.com have picked up again, and the sites that are linking directly to there rather than our mirrors page are what the major cause of the problem is. Any download on that site puts a strain on our server as well. The server upgrade is still due to happen, but we have no timeframe to give you on that. You’ll know as soon as we do, though. Anyway, if you see strange stuff going on like missing talkbacks, e-mails bouncing, and the like, there’s not much we can do about it until the server gets this upgrade. Hang with us, though, and keep trying to get through, the site’s not going anywhere. It just might be REALLY slow for a while.

That being said, it’s still been relatively quiet, all things considered. The following NewsBites should catch things up for us. By the way, don’t forget to vote in this week’s new poll if ya didn’t already see it:

• Reel.com‘s summary of J&SBSB is either guessing or has an inside line on that Superhero cameo that will appear in the flick. Wanna know who it is? Swoop below to read their synopsis if you’re interested:

• Empire Magazine is holding an online vote over who should run the British political empire, and you guessed it, Silent Bob is one of the nominees. To vote, click HERE.
• The new issue of The Comics Journal (#233) has a piece poking fun of Kenneth Smith, TCJ’s uber-intellectual columnist, and Kevin Smith, via an Onion-style point-counterpoint. There’s a link to the piece on their web site, located HERE.
• A TV Guide online article has given a bit of information on “Uncle”, an upcoming flick with Jason Lee, directed by Kid In The Hall Bruce McCulloch:

The film is due out in Spring 2002.

• Stuff magazine (bastard child of Maxim) lists Jason Mewes in their list of favorite movie lines. They really liked the Dogma line: “I feel like I’m Han Solo, you’re Chewie, and she’s Ben Kenobi and we’re in that fucked up bar.” Our boy even had a little pic of his head next to the quote.

• Finally today, a couple of scans for ya. First, a scan from the June 2001 issue of Men’s Health. The piece appears in a section on how to get the most from convenience stores. There’s also a bonus Bluntman & Chonic scan from Mike Oeming’s latest e-mail newsletter. See ya next time.

• We’ve been meaning to post this, but it kept slipping my mind in the rush to get some news up here. Anyway, as many of you know, author Douglas Adams passed away this past weekend at the age of 49. Adams is most famous for his “Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” series of books, which influenced countless other books, movies, and computer games that followed it over the years. In fact, I became familar with Adams’ work while playing the classic Infocom text game on my Commodore 64 many, many years ago (Now I feel old). Play it free of charge online HERE by the way, if you like. You may also recall that Kevin listed Adams in his “Thanks” section of the Dogma credits. Adams himself had been attempting to get the Hitchhiker’s Guide motion picture made over the years. Hopefully this will still happen but without his influence, it just won’t be the same. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the friends and family of Mr. Adams. So Long, and Thanks for all the Laughs.

• Yep, it’s Monday morning, you know what that means! Three new exclusive pics straight from the set of Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back. First comes a pose that we’re surprised isn’t popping up all over the promotional circuits, Jay & Bob certainly speak for themselves in that pose. Then there’s another neat shot of the Mooby’s exterior, done by Ratface and crew. Those 2 shots come to us courtesy of DP Jamie Anderson. Finally, yet another of the Mosier classics, a great shot of Kev. Enjoy these, and we’ll of course see you back here with more great shots next week!

• Due to the traffic on the site last week, we were just plain unable to post these puppies as promised, so here they are just a little bit late. Three more sketches, courtesy of artist Mike Oeming, of the upcoming Bluntman & Chronic graphic novel this summer. Click the thumbnails for full shots of these, the first they’re seen on the web!

• Kevin weighs in on thoughts on the Internet trailer, and reveals that the flick’s already down to 110 minutes, likely to be down by 10 more, putting it at about 1:40, pretty average for a comedy flick. Don’t worry, though, they gotta be saving all the cut stuff for the DVD that’s been thought about since even before the movie started filming. Here’s Kevin:

From the sound of things they’re going to give up some of the bigger surprises (maybe even Hamill’s character, which would be a real shame) in the theatrical trailer, but let’s hope not. Guess time will tell!

• Vincent was kind enough to hook us up with the final two screenshots from the “A Better Place” DVD, which reveal some cool stuff about the release. First of all, the deleted scenes not only have scene by scene access (thankfully), but also a very nice menu system for getting around to re-watch your favorites. Even cooler, they’ve packed the disc with even more by adding a comparison of the original sound mix to the new Skywalker 5.1 sound mix. You won’t believe the difference that a remix can make. Anyway, check out the screens, and don’t forget to order your disc from the Stash to get all the signatures and film clipping! Street date is June 19th.

• Check out the poll at the Yahoo Movies site regarding the film you’re most looking forward to this summer. Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back of course made the list…So…You know…choose wisely!
• Premiere Magazine‘s July 2001 issue (Jude Law on the cover) has a blurb about Jay & Bob with some minor plot details and a new quote from Kevin about Hamill’s character, so read at your own risk:

• Here’s a scan of that poll that Jason Lee won handily in Total Film magazine regarding his deserving A-list status. Click to enlarge.
• As you may or may not know, readers can get a free 3 year subscription to MAD Magazine by providing a picture of them w/ the celeb holding the mag. Welp, someone took a pic w/ Kevin to accomplish this. There’s a little blurb w/ the pic that reads as follows:

Alas, we’ve got no scan to include with this.

• Finally today, those of you looking forward to the flick may want to use this fan-made wallpaper for your PC, which features a ton of screengrabs from the new trailer. Enjoy the weekend, folks.

• Alrighty, so things are finally STARTING to get back to normal around here. The server is still receiving MUCH higher than normal traffic, which is amazing considering the trailer has been around for almost 3 full days now. We’re currently sharing bandwidth with Moviepoopshoot.com, thus any site that’s linking directly to the trailer there is slowing down News Askew as well. Again, if you’re downloading the trailer to watch it again or save a copy, PLEASE try the mirrors listed over at Scooping The Monkey first.

Believe it or not, the news is pretty slow, most folks must just be watching the trailer over and over again. Many fans are piecing stuff together from the many, many quick clips in the trailer, and the net is going crazy over this thing. Countingdown, Dark Horizons, Total Film, Cinescape, and TONS more are picking up on this story and the response has been incredible. For this reason, we don’t HAVE a lot of scoops, so if you have yet to receive a reply on a scoop, or they bounce back, please keep trying to get your e-mail through. Things should slow down this weekend.

By the way, as a result of this, News Askew and View Askew WILL be receiving a massive server upgrade…More disk space, bandwidth, memory, the whole nine. Watch for that soon. You should see faster loading times, talkback generation times, faster forums, and, best of all, a slowdown like this should not happen again. We’re planning it all out now, and hope for a seamless transition to the new boxes very soon.

Also, a couple strange requests: First of all, is there by any chance anyone here who works for a print shop? I’ve got a couple of postscript files that I’d like printed out, but very large…I’m talking about maybe a couple of high-quality gloss decals that are about 3 feet by 1 1/2 feet. If I took these things to a print shop, they’d charge me an arm and a leg, but I thought if someone worked in one, you might be able to help out. If you can, please drop me a line.

Finally, has anyone seen a copy of that Japanese Survivor-like flick with kids fighting to the death called “Battle Royale” out there anywhere? If so, again, drop us a line. Thanks, and now on with the show…Just two very very small newsbites, but hey, it helps to clean out the mailbox: