• Yes, UK readers, though we realize you often feel as if you are in the minority around here…Your day has come. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Inc. has been kind enough to provide us with FIVE (5) copies of the Clerks X DVD, coming to UK region 2 DVD on July 18th…Yes, this Monday! Please note this contest is ONLY open to UK readers. You must reside and have a shipping address in the UK to receive a copy.

Winning is simple, really. Well maybe not AS simple as we could have made it, but hey, you gotta work for your supper a LITTLE bit, right? So, here’s what you gotta do. Using our ARCHIVE SEARCH box, answer the following FIVE (5) questions. Be creative and use search terms that make sense, or simply visit our archives and attempt to track down the day that way, month by month. The answers are the DATES, Month, Day, and Year, when the following five events took place:

• The first Vulgarthon, Vulgarthon ‘98, took place in Red Bank, New Jersey on this day.
• The Clerks cartoon premiere episode aired for the first time on ABC television.
• We relaunched News Askew under its new name (previously, the site was known as “Drinks Askew”).
• MTV aired, for the first time, “Jay and SIlent Bob’s Video Stash”.
• The ‘Flying Car’ short made its debut on “The Tonight Show”.

Send your answers, in order, in an email to scoops@newsaskew.com. Include your name, first and last, and a valid e-mail address where we can get in touch with you. CONTEST ENDS MIDNIGHT, JULY 19TH, 2005, EST. You have from now until the end of Monday to get your entries to us.

Remember, ALL these answers can be found in the News Askew archives — But you might have to dig a little or use some brains to figure them all out. We’ll be selecting 5 entries, at random, from entrants who get all 5 dates correct. If no one does, or less than 5 do, we’ll go to 4 correct entires, and so on. ONE ENTRY PER PERSON IS ALLOWED. UK RESIDENTS ONLY. Multiple entries will get you thrown out of the contest. No, if you have 2 different e-mail addresses, you can’t enter from each one. Let’s keep it fair.

So good luck, and thanks again to Buena Vista for supplying us with the goodies! Good luck, UK readers! And for those of you who don’t win, you can own your very own Region 2 copy of Clerks X starting July 18th. Any View Askew fan will tell you, it’s more than worth the cash.

• It’s a day late due to a crazy weekend, so thanks for your patience: We’re proud to present another edition of our View Askew time capsule, News Askew Retro. This week, part TWO of the Clerks Feature Study. What you’re about to listen to is a case study of “Clerks”, conducted by a group of film students. They consider the film an excellent example due to the small budget and, obviously, huge success.

The timeframe of this study is about a year after Clerks was purchased off the independent film market, and marks the last major screening of Clerks BEFORE it went to a worldwide release.

Kevin, Mosier, Pierson, Hawk, and Sloss are in attendance to share stories of the experience of making Clerks with the audience. Check out the youth in Kev’s voice, in what’s likely to be one of the first lengthy Q&A sessions ever recorded on audio. Again, we’re very proud to present this one. It’s a true View Askew time capsule. Enjoy.

If you missed last week’s check the archives or scroll down for Part 1, dated last Sunday, or simply visit the Retro page to catch up on this and all items so far! We’ll be back with more Retro this Sunday night.

• Here we go again, folks — Another Sunday edition of Retro, featuring an audio clip never heard on the web anywhere before. Ever. This one’s the first of two parts, and easily the lengthiest bit of Retro so far. What you’re about to listen to is a case study of “Clerks”, conducted by a group of film students. They consider the film an excellent example due to the small budget and, obviously, huge success.

Kevin, Mosier, Pierson, Hawk, and Sloss are in attendance to share stories of the experience of making Clerks with the audience. Check out the youth in Kev’s voice, in what’s likely to be one of the first lengthy Q&A sessions ever recorded on audio. Part One today, you gotta wait 7 stinkin’ days for Part 2. We’re very proud to present this one. It’s a true View Askew time capsule. Enjoy.

• Smart-popcorn.com picks Chasing Amy as the 23rd most romantic film of all time! . We really dig the write-up, too, in fact it’s one of the best verses we’ve read on the film in quite some time:

• Double Dare, the documentary on two stunt women – which features some behind the scenes stuntwork on J&SBSB, is airing on PBS stations this week as part of their Independent Lens Series . The J&SBSB stuff isn’t that long, but overall the documentary is quite interesting.
• Movies Askew, our online short film contest is now accepting “Fan Films”. This means that you can submit now and not have to worry about licensing footage, music or actors. This broadens your horizons a TON! If you have a video camera and a little ambition, there’s now nothing stopping you from tossing in an entry. Good luck!

• Kevin spoke and took questions at a dinner thrown last night in Hollywood by Buena Vista Home Entertainment to promote the release of
  CLERKS X and JERSEY GIRL on DVD. (They were also plugging special editions of MULAN, ALADDIN, and the third season of ALIAS, but who cares?). We hear
  that he was hilarious, kicking off his part of the evening by noting that as a New Jersey native, he wanted to take the opportunity to announce that he’s a
  “gay American.” He had funny stuff to say about JERSEY GIRL (”I really loved this movie, until it underperformed; now I hate it.”) and Affleck and his
  career and Miramax (”which may not be around next month”) and various other topics, though no real scoops were imparted. (He touched on the whole “50 pages
  to go” on the HORNET script and reiterated that he’s not really interested in directing it, although Harvey Weinstein told him to finish the script before
  making up his mind on that for sure.)

Moviehole reports that Kevin stole the show:

• We love days like today, because it’s what we love doing…Breaking some big news that you haven’t seen before and can’t see anywhere else. Last week, we were lucky enough to receive the first, hot off the duplication machine, test discs of Clerks X. No one else has them, but we’re proud to say that we’ve spent more hours that EVER on a DVD set to bring you the first-anywhere, exclusive in-depth look at the greatness that is Clerks X. We’ve got a full review and tidbits on all the great stuff on this massive 3-disc set, TONS of new screenshots, and the verdict on what stuff you should be looking at first come September 7th. So, what are you waiting for? Read our exclusive first look at Clerks X: The 10th Anniversary Clerks DVD set RIGHT NOW!

• Yes folks, as we all know, September 7th is the biggest release date in View Askew history, with the largest DVD set ever to come out
  of Jersey, Clerks X, hitting the stands along with the first release of our newest flick, Jersey Girl. Both discs are worth your valuable time, money,
  and shelf space. Here’s a full list of all the features…And don’t forget, preordering from the Stash is the ONLY way to go — Why? Because both of
  them come personally signed by Kevin Smith himself, of course!

Do take note of all that’s on that Jersey Girl DVD after all — For a non-special edition, we’d still call that pretty darn special! There’s gonna be a lot
of couch time to put in starting September 7th, folks — Prepare your friends and family for a week or so without them seeing you. And place those orders
today!

• Here ya go, folks! As promised, a nice look at the print ad that’s going to start running in the trades to tout the Clerks X DVD release! This is the one that’s detailing all the features, and DOES erroneously mention the TV pilot inclusion (again, it ain’t on there). However, the feature list is huge and you can see our good pal O’Halloran is front and center to promote this, the biggest and most ambitious View Askew DVD release yet. Click the image above for a full screen look (and possibly a peek at the packaging, though we’re not sure that’s actually finalized just yet). Enjoy.

• DVD Supersite The Digital Bits ran a report over the long holiday
  weekend which detailed the extras included on the Clerks X DVD, due on September the 7th. They very kindly note that Kevin and View Askew
  always put a ton of work into their DVDs, so it’s nice to see that the community at large agrees that it doesn’t get much better than our
  special editions.

So, as for extras, there’s not much new here, aside from the fact that the documentary now has a clever title we hadn’t seen before: “Snowball
Effect” (as well as the fact that it runs a full 150 minutes, WOW). Now, the potential BIG news here was that the Clerks TV pilot was again
thrown onto the list. Well, we immediately did some fact checking, and we’re sorry to report that word has come down from above that the
press release is INCORRECT in that regard, and the Clerks TV pilot will NOT be in the set. Sorry, folks. We wanted to see it, too.

However, take a look at what the Bits had to say, we think it’ll have you drooling and marking your calendar days with glee as the 7th
of September draws closer:

We’re going to try and get our hands on both of these releases as soon as possible, and hope to give you some exclusive looks at all of the
amazing content coming your way in just a couple of short months. Stay tuned, more news later.

• Kevin was back at the Nuart on Friday, with a beautiful print of “Clerks” for the big screen, followed by a sit down Q&A with “movie geek” Marc Heuck as well as the always enjoyable audience Q&A. Kevin even stuck around until 5:30 AM to sign a few autographs (including one woman’s back, which she’s getting permanently inked), take photos, and meet fans. As always, Kevin made a few new announcements during the evening. Steve sent us a summary that we thought covers all the big stuff very well, so we’re going to let him take it away:

If you’d like to read more about the show from some other lucky attendees, Bikkit.com has a nice report of the event available, and Chris Ryall’s got a fantastically detailed story on the event, complete with photos, over at the ‘Shoot. Don’t miss it!