Kevin’s twitter has also become a great source for finding last minute tickets to events (Kevin’s kind enough to retweet for some folks selling tickets), and also continues to reward NHL team followers with a chance to watch hockey games with the man himself. And, of course, he’s dropping science on what’s happening in the world of View Askew Productions. Here’s a look at some of the most newsworthy tweets from the weekend, along with our editorial commentary as needed:

• Via @TaylorBetz “DICKS Trailer please” Saw first pass & dug it, but marketing wants to work on it more. Title, too, is still up in the air.
• Dear WB Marketing: Since we’ve gotta lose it, replacement title for A COUPLE OF DICKS can be A COUPLE OF NEW MOON (aka NEW MOON for short).
• Via @manichols717 “is there no plan for Mallrats on blu-ray?” There was a(n) HD DVD, so BD can’t be far. But Universal hasn’t called yet…
• Kevin retweets this clippage of he and daughter Harley at the “New Moon” premiere which aired on “The Jay Leno Show”. You out of US’ers can see it via YouTube instead of that evil, US-only Hulu.
• Zap2It’s video of the premiere is now online in a nice HD version as well. Watch Kevin and Harley run into the USA Today reported that ALMOST reviewed Kevin before Jen took the job!
• And hey, speaking of “Twilight”, which has been a hot twitter topic lately, here’s Kevin’s original San Diego rant that started it all.

For lots more, including Kevin’s latest thoughts on the “New Moon” phenom, and a lot of general chit chat with the fans, hit up the official twitter feed @ThatKevinSmith.

By the way, got a title change suggestion for “A Couple of Dicks”? Kevin is offering up a sleepover night at his place if the WB uses yours. Send your suggestions to dicks@viewaskew.com (not to the twitter feed).

But hurry, this presale is set to shut down sometime around noon tomorrow (Friday). Buy now!

Title aside, here’s the great news — The film seems to be testing through the roof. Normally, internet reviewers are pretty ruthless when they get a look at a film in the test process. For this one, the exciting tone we’re seeing is telling us that Kevin hit this one outta the park — “A Couple Of…” well, whatever…Should be cracking audiences up this February. Let’s take a look, first, at some clippage from the main review, which is likely getting a lot of looks at the popular Aint it Cool News website (as always, watch for the minor plot spoilers when you read this stuff) :

“…the movie ROCKED. The scenes with Stifler in the back of the car with Bruce and Tracy are fucking golden. I am going to keep this spoiler free but will mention a couple things which will prove to be memorable. We have Tracy dressed in a cellphone outfit while he is undercover which leads to the stock buddy-cop scene with Tracy and Bruce being shat on by their superior in his office for ruining an ongoing investigation. As they hand over their badge and gun the scene went from being a retread of EVERY Lethal Weapon and Beverly Hills Cop movie to completely kick-ass due to the outlandishness of Tracy STILL IN HIS CELL-PHONE OUTFIT during the whole scene. Oh, and he ends up on youtube stealing a kids bike in yes, you guessed, the cell-phone outfit.”

“…Kevin Smith has shown he can direct OPM (Other People’s Material) and still infuse his own wit. And he has nailed the tone and feel of the old-school cop movies we all grew up on.”

That last part is probably a blurb that we find accurate enough to fit any movie poster, newspaper ad, or DVD cover art to come. Much love there. Here’s a peek at something from our own News Askew inboxes of another fan who really dug the show:

“Was lucky enough to attend the test screening on the W.B. lot. Kev has really shown his directing chops, and this should prove without a doubt, that this fucker can direct action. Scenes that were in the movie that I know will be cut were filmed fantastically. I wish he had of gone through with The Green Hornet. But I think with the response of this film, “Hit Somebody” will come through in spades, and “Red State” will go off without a hitch now that funding is available.”

Finally, a reviewer over at Empire Movies simply reports, “It ROCKED”.

We sell ya yet? We know we’ll be there in line this February. It sure sounds like Kevin’s taken a funny script and kicked it up quite a few notches using his own keen comedic sensibilities and timing. We can’t wait.

“…We just did A Couple of Dicks here in the city all summer long, and there are more action sequences in it than anything I’ve ever done before. And those action sequences were like pulling f___ing teeth with me. You spend two days shooting storyboards and nobody is talking. That’s just not why I got into it.

The big ambition for me right now is a hockey movie. That will be a real test of visual storytelling skills. I mean, on A Couple of Dicks I think me and my DP Dave Klein definitely notched it up. I don’t think anybody’s going to believe I directed the movie, because it looks slick and good. I want to take what we learned there and bring it into the hockey flick, and that will have a lot of action. When you go to a live hockey game, it’s f___ing crazy. It’s the best sport you’ve ever seen — it’s the best thing you’ve ever seen. It goes beyond sports at some point and becomes this beautiful, poetic ballet, where dudes in costumes are skating, but it’s not the Ice Capades, and they’re hitting each other, and there’s an aim and a goal … I want to try and represent what it’s like to be there, watching the game, and so far that hasn’t really come across on film. We’re going to try it.

I think I’m ready for it. I’ve been doing this, I started in ’93, so like 16 years. You just get better at s___ the longer you do it, even if you start off being inept at it. You look at Clerks, that is inept filmmaking. That’s a guy that watched three Hal Hartley movies and four Jim Jarmusch movies and said I think I’m ready. I learned on the job.”

Don’t miss the entire Q&A at Techland.

Our own review’s running a little late this time, due to a shipping mix-up with Buena Vista and our screener, but we’ll be sure to have our own look at this set ASAP. Taking all the new content at once, this may very well be the most new, never-before-available content in a View Askew disc release. In the meantime, surf over to DVD Talk, a fantastic site who have done an amazing job at summing up the collection in just a couple of pages. Here’s what they said about a few of the biggest extras:

To that, one new feature of note has been added. In one of the most uproariously candid introductions in DVD history, Smith calls the Clerks Blu-ray a “vulgar cash grab,” but notes that they’ve “gotta keep wringing pennies out of this little black and white movie.” So, for what he calls the “15th Anniversary Give Us Your Money DVD,” he says he begged Miramax to let him add something new of value, in order to “take the sting out of having to buy Clerks for the 19th time.” (Although, he notes, “do you know how many times I’ve bought T2?”) What he added was “Oh, What a Lovely Tea Party: The Making of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” (3:18 intro, 1:27:17 feature), an intimate, fly-on-the-wall documentary directed by Smith’s wife, Jennifer Schwalbach, and his friend and fellow filmmaker Malcolm Ingram. It captures Kevin and the gang joking around on-set, supplemented by on-the-fly interviews with cast and crew (Affleck and Rock’s interviews are the highlights). It’s a tad overlong, and certainly feels homemade (Affleck’s interview is noticeably out of focus), but is a nice added treat for fans, even if it is, indeed, on the wrong disc.

Chasing Amy was originally released on laserdisc and DVD by Criterion, and unfortunately, that disc’s first-rate, uproarious commentary track is property of that label (as are the intros to the deleted scenes and a few other scattered extras) and therefore doesn’t make the leap. However, Buena Vista has done the right by the movie and worked up some excellent new bonus material. First of all, Smith and Mosier provide a new, “SModcast”-style Audio Commentary; they dub it a “technical commentary track,” and while it has some interesting technical information, it is also, in the style of their podcast, a pretty free-form ramble (my favorite detour was their way off-topic discussion of the pedophilia episode of Diff’rent Strokes). It’s a funny track, though not quite the scream that the Affleck-infused Criterion commentary was.

The treat of the disc, however, is “Tracing Amy: The Chasing Amy Doc” (1:21:15). Produced and directed by Zak Knutson and Joey Figueroa (who directed the similarly spiffy making-of docs for Clerks II and Zack and Miri, in addition to Smith’s most recent Evening With DVD), it is a well-constructed and compelling look at the making of the film, from their mindset coming out of the failure of Mallrats to the creation of the script (influenced by Mosier’s crush on Go Fish star Guin Turner, and Smith’s real-life relationship with Joey Lauren Adams) to the casting and budget woes, as well as Smith’s intensive rehearsals and Mosier’s stressful attempts to keep the film under budget. Most of the key players are interviewed-Smith, Mosier, Adams, Affleck, Lee (on the My Name is Earl set, in full Earl garb), Jason Mewes, cinematographer David Klein, associate producer Bob Hawk, Miramax acquisitions manager Mark Tusk, film critic (and Smith booster) Amy Taubin, and more-and wonderful vintage behind-the-scenes footage supplement the genuinely warm memories of the experience (check out Affleck’s sincere and heartfelt closing interview).

We’ll be spinning up the discs this week — In the meantime, if you’ve got a Bluray player or are planning on nabbing one for the holidays, the Stash is now taking orders for SIGNED SETS, the only place you can find them that way. It’s the perfect gift item for you or the View Askew fan in your life. Kevin also suggested grabbing a Dogma Bluray for just $7.99 to help complete the set via Twitter today. For current or future Bluray owners, this purchase is a no-brainer.

Prices range from $39 to $59 , making the show more affordable than most sporting events and concerts. And at 3+ hours, you’re sure to get your money’s worth. Kevin has been hitting home runs all year at theaters around the world, so don’t miss this show.

Via @smilinstanlee “Haven’t seen Kev for awhile. expecting call for Rats sequel” Alright: ur in the hockey flick, Stan. Damn needy actors…

So, it looks like Stan Lee will join Wil Wheaton (recently revealed to be quite evil on a “Big Bang Theory” episode) for “Hit Somebody”. Let the casting rumors continue!

The answer was apparent Friday night at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco, where the event was like a fantasy camp – except instead of paying $15,000 to play basketball with Michael Jordan or hockey with Wayne Gretzky, fans paid closer to $50 to hang out with Smith for a few hours. Part behind-the-scenes Hollywood tell-all, part stand-up comedy and part Catholic confession, Smith combined storytelling, the Socratic method and moments that bordered on motivational speaking to entertain a grateful crowd.

Smith has had about 50 years worth of career in the past 15 years, starting with “Clerks,” a 1994 art-house hit that Smith made for $27,000. He writes comics, acts sporadically and practically invented the modern bromantic comedy, where the male-female romance takes a back seat to the platonic man love between heterosexual leads. As critics started to say he was irrelevant – director Judd Apatow arguably played Oprah to Smith’s Phil Donahue – Smith connected with his fans more than ever on the Internet. Among his recent experiments: an online marathon where he answered questions on Twitter for 24 hours straight.

The hard-core fans greeted Smith like a hero as he walked on stage in ankle-length jeans shorts (and later, a bathrobe), launching into a 10-minute story about a test screening of the critically panned “Jersey Girl” in San Francisco. After that, he answered questions from the audience for three hours straight, displaying the rare combination of politeness and raunchiness, with a lack of hubris that made him likable even when describing his own excrement in detail. It was a night of many tangents and a few slow parts, but it was always comfortable.

Check out the entire article over at their official site. Then, check the upcoming appearances list over there on your right and get yourself booked for Kevin’s next show in your town.

Kevin Smith

Past Form: Smith’s had one or two minor hosting gigs in the past, but where he’s really worked is in his live Q&As, where he takes questions from the audience. Rambling and hilarious, he has to be experienced to be believed.

Show Highlights: Like Parker and Stone, he’d need a swear button, but he could bring on some more famous friends – like Ben Affleck – to help out with the wattage of the night.

It would be the first ever Oscars where the host opens the event with a monologue entirely dedicated to A) anal fissures and B) anal sex with his wife. Wait Didn’t David Letterman do that already?

Sample Speech: “That’s why you’ll never see my name next to Scorsese, Woody Allen, and Spike Lee. Scorsese speaks a lot at NYU, and I’m damn skippy no one’s ever been like, ‘I’ll suck your d**k for five bucks!'”

Regarding the news, Kevin tweets: “It’s like hearing the house you grew up in has burned to the ground. I’ve now watched Miramax die twice. *sigh*”

10. Stinky BJ – MALLRATS

The actual awkwardness of this blow-job is left to our imagination as Brodie (Jason Lee) tells TS (Jeremy London) his girlfriend dumped him because he farted while she was going down on him. The epitome of dick & fart jokes

• Already got date w/RedBank’s vampire king, Count Basie: MY 4OTH BDAY Q&A 8/2.
• Because you demanded it! The comic book flicks I’ve liked the best (in no particular order)
• Via @lexica_areola “just watched MANCHILD, hilarious!” Ah, MANCHILD. Here’s a little taste of what might’ve been: http://tinyurl.com/yj99vp6
• Via @s_spatz “Scale of 1-10… How was last nights show?” I missed a pretty big laugh line and the out wasn’t a gut-buster, but I’d say 8/9.
• A Q&A’s only as good as the questions. To the Bay-ers who filled @thewarfield last night: thanks for some good queries. Same time next year?
• Via @DrFACIALPhD “can’t find tickets to ur show in Edmonton.” Small room that sold out quick. I’ll be back for 3/7 Devs game, so maybe then?
• Wait a sec – @NHLDevils have less than 5k in followers?! Puck that: I wanna double it. Follow Devs and I’ll pick 12 or more per games I’m attending. First add @NHLDevils, Jersey’s Team. Then, Tweet “I wanna worship the Devs with Kev. @NHLDevils & @ThatKevinSmith”

Yep, that’s right — A simple follow on Twitter and you might join Kevin at an upcoming Devils game. How cool is that? Despite being a Flyers fans, we’ll take one for the team and follow the Devils too, as a sign of solidarity, in response to this tweet: “Flyers-lovers! You can do it too: add/follow @NHLDevils and you can watch a game in my box (which sounds more erotic than it really is).”

Wanna hear what Kevin thinks of Twitter? Catch him on “Q the Podcast” (from CBC Radio) talking about his and other celeb tweets, as well.

13. CLERKS (1994)

Kevin Smith’s debut, about a day in the life of two service-industry suburbanites, was made for $27,575. It’s hard to tell where all that money went, but the cruddy lensing and muddy sound actually enhance the experience. This spitball of nonstop scatology and pop-cult obsessiveness — what are the ethical implications of killing independent contractors aboard the Death Star? — feels like a bootleg copy of an adolescent mind. SIGNATURE LINE “I’m not even supposed to be here today.”

Earlier today, I heard you talking about how you were inspired by the movie Clerks. I thought that was somewhat surprising.

MW: I was inspired because there’s always been this story that the machinery of filmmaking was going to make its way down to the population. And I was inspired by the fact that this guy made a movie in his basement, and it was a complete movie, and it was entertaining, and he pulled it off. My wife and I went to Paris on the world’s cheapest vacation — $319 airfare, we stayed in someone else’s apartment — and all I remember is we went to the Pompidou Centre and I was like, “Clerks is playing here. That’s incredible!”

I found that very inspiring that, you know what? We all have these aspirations, and … just to see that that guy got off his a- and made that movie, I was blown away.

Kevin Smith is actually a massive Mad Men fan.

MW: Well, that’s cool!

The other day he sent me a question to ask you …

MW: Wow. Don will never try to fellate himself. (Everyone laughs)

Bummer. I never even heard about this. I love Kevin Smith. Might be time for me to find a new movie agent. One who doesn’t suck ass. That would have been amazing to be in Jay and Silent Bob… Huh…… Also, if you can let Kevin Smith know I would love him to stop up here to the web show. That would be rad. Also ask him if he knows any movie agents who are not money grubbing douche bags.

So, there ya go. Perhaps Kevin will find a use for Green in a future project. We think it’d be a good pairing, the guy’s got a fun, odd sense of humor that might be a good match for one of Kev’s scripts. Maybe he’ll even work him in “Hit Somebody”, with those whole Canadian thing going on. Never know.