• The Sunday edition of the Asbury Park Press featured a full page full of various articles relating to Kevin, the new DVD, and other various Askew-Related things. There’s some great stuff here, including pieces on Jay & Bob, Jennifer, Carlin, O’Halloran, Anderson, and more. The APP went all out this time, and got some great material yet again. Check out all the articles in one neat page right HERE.

Comcast’s got Jay & Bob as their “Video Pick of the Week” right now – By the way, the Clerks, Clerks TAS and Chasing Amy DVDs are all re-issued this week at around a 14.99 retail price point. If you missed them before for some reason, it’s a great time to build the collection up.

• J&SBSB’s title appears in Mad Magazine this month as part of a silly movie puzzle game.
• The Fourth Rail’s in with their Green Arrow #12 reviews, right on schedule! The book is very highly recommended this time by their two critics, with a 9/10 and an 8/10 review. Check them out HERE and HERE, and pick up the book this week!

• The Dark Horizons website reports in today with some interesting news from the Orlando Megacon. A few tidbits that we already knew about the next films, but some interesting info regarding Jersey Girl’s lead and a possible filming location change due to budget:

A very interesting change, indeed. We’ll keep you posted on this development, and have more news later.

• We’re proud to present a very cool exclusive at the site for you today: Bob Chapman at Graphitti Designs was kind enough to send us a packaged set of the Bluntman & Chonic figures to check out and show to all of you. Bob tells us we’re the first outside of the shop to nab a set, so this is quite an honor!

We’ve got our full review and a TON of new photos of Bluntman & Chronic now online, for your viewing pleasure. Contact Jay & Silent Bob’s Secret Stash or visit a comic or toy show near you soon to purchase your own set! These are another must-own classic item from Graphitti and View Askew. Check out the review, and thanks again to Bob and Graphitti for sending these guys to us.

(CLICK A FIGURE ABOVE TO LEARN MORE!) BLUNTMAN 360 Degree Movie CHRONIC 360 Degree Movie SUZANNE 360 Degree Movie

BLUNTMAN & CHRONIC FIGURES: EXCLUSIVE NEWS ASKEW FIRST LOOK REVIEW Graphitti Designs were kind enough to provide News Askew an with an exclusive early hands-on look at a set of their highly-anticipated Bluntman & Chronic action figures. We ripped open their boxes and put them to the test to give you an in-depth look at this dynamic duo for the new millennium. First of all, of course, Bluntman & Chronic come sealed, each in their own packages, looking like so: Sorry for the bad quality of some of these photos, it’s going to take some practice with this digital camera before the pictures actually look decent. You can at least get an idea from the blurs and the glare. Before we realized the pics sucked, we already had them ripped open and it was too late. Anyway, as you can see, a ton of accessories come with these guys, probably the coolest of which being Suzanne the ape, who comes with the Chronic figure. Great stuff. If you set her up correctly, you can have her hand in hand with Bluntman & Chronic. Chronic also comes with a banana and poop of some kind. Bluntman seems quite a bit more sturdy than Chronic, and rightfully so! He’s got a lot more weight to him (no offense, Kevin) and a way cool coat. There’s also 3 throwing star style pot leaves, for easy dispatching of any foes, as well as his trusty Bong Saber, which makes him look “pretty bad ass” when wielding. Both figures have interchangable hands, so they don’t look stupid if you don’t want them to hold anything. If ya do, the alternate hands are styled to easily grasp a light saber, pot leaf, banana, or even Suzanne’s hand. Articulation is outstanding with these guys. They stand up quite well, and their moving arms, legs, and heads allow you to strike them in some pretty cool poses. The hair is also quite well done and the faces show a lot of character and detail (though the look on Chronic’s face would probably scare a small child – It even gave me a fright). Check out some of the stuff we were able to do with the duo in the photos here. Of course, the possibilities are endless. As always, these figures were crafted with care, and are of top quality, as Graphitti Designs is known for. Whether you keep them in their packages, take them out and pose them somewhere on a shelf, or take them on adventures (maybe even make some mini-movies), they are sure to bring you years of joy. Like the Jay & Bob toys before them, these are sturdy, well made toys that any View Askew fan would be proud to own. All we can say now is…Bring on those Clerks figures! Bluntman & Chronic will soon (if not already) be available at comic stores and fine toy shops everywhere. You can also order your own set from Jay & Silent Bob’s Secret Stash.

• We’re proud to present the first look at shots from Kevin’s “Flying Cars” short, which makes its debut this Wednesday, February 27th, on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. It is the first time that the Tonight Show will premiere a short film. “Flying Cars” stars Brian O’Halloran and Jeff Anderson as Dante and Randal, as they have another one of those famous philosophical conversations of theirs (reminding us of the Clerks days). We’ve checked out the script, and it’s a sure classic – Do NOT miss this one! And if ya wanna see how it looks, check out the screens above.

• Clark University Appearance Info: Currently, the event is only open to students. Tickets will be given to students (free of charge) sometime in the beginning of March. If, when the date of the event gets closer, they haven’t given out as many tickets as there are seats (which is just around 650), they’ll open it up to the public for a small fee. Assume that the demand will be high though, so chances are this one will remain student only.
• DVDFile have posted a very positive review of the Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back DVD. Be sure to check that out HERE. If you missed ours last week, you can check it and all our reviews out HERE.

• In the current isue of Entertainment weekly, there are 2 View Askew DVD reviews. First, one of Criteion’s re-release of Chasing Amy (it’s the same disc that was out before). The second is for Drawing Flies, which gets a C+. We’re still getting to that Flies review, it’s been a busy week. Sit tight, we haven’t forgotten.
• Some new entries for Files Askew today – A dandy Clerks Wallpaper for Windows, made out of the new posters available at the Stash! You can download it both 1024*768 and 800*600 resolution versions.
• We’re receving tons of reports that The Jay & Bob DVD has started to hit shelves around the country – Look around, if you’re lucky and didn’t preorder, you might be able to pick one up a few days early and get a head start on all that new material on there. We hear that Walmart is a GREAT place to look, as they’re notorious for breaking street dates.
• Martin Short’s “Primetime Glick” show included a small Clerks reference in their recent episode — It appeared during a parody commercial of the Independent Film Channel, describing their weekly lineup – Monday through Thursday night, the movies advertised were all fakes – they delt with heroin addicts, hitchhikers, and lesbians (apparently their idea of main themes in independent flicks), and then “On Friday night, Kevin Smith’s Clerks”. The poster was shown as well. Guess they feel that IFC shows Clerks quite a bit.

• During last night’s programming, NBC aired a voiced-over preview of what is to come on Leno next week. In it, they showed a tiny clip of the “Flying Cars Short”, where we saw a car stuck in traffic, and then a shot through the windshield of Dante and Randal. We’ll have a screen capture later.
• The Daily Newspaper for University of Massachusetts Amherst ran a Kevin Smith interview today, here’s a preview:

Check the whole thing out HERE.

• AICN ran an article regarding Daredevil casting. You can check that out HERE.

• Dark Horizons recently debuted the one-sheet for Affleck’s next flick, “Changing Lanes”.
• American Cuisine will air on the WE channel, tonight at 8 PM. We’re not sure if it’s subtitled or dubbed (or both).

• This is an older pic, but never posted. A scooper sent it in so we figured we’d run it, as it does have a bit of a Chasing Amy reference. It comes from the Astouding Space Thrills website.

• It’s been incredibly busy around here lately, believe it or not, with the combination of the new DVDs, new swag, the Flying Cars short, and the comics. Thank goodness Kev’s not filming Jersey Girl already, or we’d be quitting our day jobs. At any rate, if you didn’t check out our extensive DVD review of Jay & Bob Strike Back, be sure check out our new and revamped DVD Section. Speaking of that, we are currently working on a Drawing Flies review as well, which will be a lot more extensive as to what’s been on the web so far. Don’t let all those reviews sway ya from the disc, though, as so far reviews have been harsh. We’ll give the disc a more fair spin and have that review for you soon.

• You can now check out Kevin’s first three Arena columns in one simple place here at News Askew, which includes scans of the articles as well as simple text translations for those of you with troubled eyesight, small monitors, or slow net connections. We’ll keep the area up to date with the latest columns, as well as announce them here on the front page news. Enjoy!

• A fun new “10 Questions” piece with Kevin Smith appears on IGN today. Learn fun stuff like Kev’s favorite TV series, favorite films, thoughts on Hollywood, and more. It’s a quick read, definitely click over and check it out.
• Comics Newsarama reports that Marvel head honcho Joe Quesada confirms that Kevin’s Black Cat run will be solicited in June, with Terry Dodson as artist. It will be a six-issue miniseries entitled: Spider-Man: The Evil That Men Do. We can’t wait.

• More comics news: The first four pages of next week’s Green Arrow #12 have appeared online, thanks again to the excellent Comics Continuum website. You can view them above. Mile High Comics also has some pages, though they’ve only posted the first three .
• A brief interview that Kevin conducted with Seann William Scott appears in the latest INTERVIEW magazine. If anyone’s got a scan or just the text, send it on.
• If you want to see the View Askew God play live, and free, here’s your chance:

There ya go, folks — Watch your new View Askew DVDs AND see an Alanis concert. Get those passes while ya still can.

• And speaking of live music, west-coasters can catch V3 house band, Merrick, performing live, at the Virgin Megastore on Sunset in LA this Saturday. Here’s the details from Virgin.com:

• Here’s a scan from the latest Star Wars Insider regarding Kevin Smith’s narration of the Star Woids documentary, now available from IndieDVD.
• Another note on that French “American Cuisine” (Region 2) DVD: The DVD only has a French audio track and no english subtitles. Because Lee and the other actors recorded scenes in both English and French, The Romance Classics version is mostly in English with some French. The DVD is the opposite. So, unless you’re fluent in French, you probably want to skip the DVD.
• A new interview with Joey Lauren Adams appears in the Winter 2002 issue of the Oxford American (issue #42). In it, she discusses the film she is currently developing, titled “Lovin’ Up A Storm”. She has written the script and plans to star and direct in it. Billy Bob Thornton has agreed to appear and executive produce it as well. She’s hoping that his name will help her get the backing she needs to make it. If anyone’s got a scan, feel free to send it on.

• Contrary to what that release said in yesterday’s post, Kevin’s “Flying Car” short will NOT be airing until NEXT Wednesday, February 27. Plus we’ve gotten word that Kevin will be on the show in person to introduce the short. Sorry for all of the confusion.