• Major news shocked the comic world today…Joe Quesada, who we all know and love from his work on the Daredevil series and the Marvel Knights, has been named the new editor in chief of Marvel Comics! Naturally, this makes one wonder how his duties on DD will continue, with a new busier schedule, but at any rate, bigtime congratulations are in order. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer dude. Here’s the skinny from WizardWorld, Comics Continuum and Fandom:

• Well, there hasn’t been much to say lately, so we can understand why it’s so quiet around here. With the Vulgarthon announcement, though, expect some excitement in the coming months. It’s nice to hear that the show will definitely go on.

TV is winding down for the summer with the last new episode of OZ until January airing tonight, as well as yet another unlucky soul getting the boot off of Big Brother (We’re putting the money on Curtis or Cassandra, if only due to the lack of excitement they offer to the show, not that anyone on there has been very fun — Have you seen George’s impressions lately? Yikes). But we digress. It was nice having some new TV to watch this summer, and with the new Fall season around the corner, there will be a couple new shows to watch on a weekly basis (though not many).

In other news, since summer is winding down, expect some site improvements around the corner. The thing bugging us the most right now is how slow the search and especially talkback features are. There’s a solution to dramatically speed up the talkbacks in planning phases, we’ll let ya know when that happens. Hopefully if you don’t hafta wait 30 seconds after posting a message, it’ll encourage more activity there. The site, as a whole, has been running quite well, though, and we’re glad that our big transition last May has been so successful.

So, in closing, there’s some cool stuff around the corner, so keep visiting. We’ll keep on top of the news, no matter how large or small (today, it’s certainly the latter):

• Kevin is featured on the cover of ‘Steamtunnels’ magazine this month (September 1st issue). It’s a free publication distributed on college campuses. The cover also features Affleck, Salma, and Matt Damon. It’s not too in depth, but it’s got a little Q&A with him on the inside cover. The full feature, however is located HERE on the Steamtunnels website. Enjoy.
• For those of you without DVD players, you may wanna know that Dogma’s sellthrough VHS release is happening on OCTOBER 24th. Local shops that sell videos should have plenty of copies.
• Cameron Crowe and his mother are interviewed HERE about his upcoming autobiographical “Almost Famous”. The piece features a couple quotes from Jason Lee, who as you know plays the lead singer of the fictional band in the film. It’s a good read, especially if you’re interested in the historical aspects of how the film came to be.

The film, by the way, will open in New York and Los Angeles in ONE theater on September 13th, open wider in those cities on the 15th, with more markets to follow on September 22nd. It will also be screened at the Toronto Film Festival and a couple special NYC dates.

• Director Philip Noyce has left the “Sum Of All Fears” Clancy project (currently slated to star Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan) due to scheduling conflicts. No replacement has yet been named.
• The upcoming issue of InStyle magazine with Drew Barrymore on the cover features an article with Joey Lauren Adams on her upcoming flick “Beautiful”.

• What’s this? Kevin’s famous Superman Lives script in the news yet AGAIN!?!??! Wow. It seems like a long shot, but DARK HORIZONS posted a rumor today that “City of Angels” director Brad Siberling is interested in helming the feature and, if given the chance, may go back to Kevin’s original first draft as a starting point. We hope he’d get rid of the silly giant spider, though. Anyway, while we think this probably won’t happen, it’s always nice to see folks sticking up for that original draft, which really was a Superman movie that was true to the man of steel in comic form.

• Attention Clerks fans in the Winnipeg, Canada area! Clerks will be played on the Imax theater in Portage Place shopping centre this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at 10:30pm as part of their 35mm Hollywood Classics. Admission is 5.00. Don’t miss it!
• And finally today, from the IMDB, the best case ever to take up a job at a casino:

Maybe it’s time to at least hit ‘ol Affleck up for some pointers since I dropped some dough at those Canadian blackjack tables…dammit.

• Vincent Pereira, who’s organizing Vulgarthon 2000 from start to finish, has just OFFICIALLY announced that Monday, October 30th, will be the date the event is held. Tickets will likely go on sale towards the end of September, and we’ll have advance warning (about a week or so) before that happens so you can get your dialing fingers ready. As we all know, there’s a limited number of seats, and they’re gonna go in record time. Stay tuned here at News Askew for all the latest V2K updates!

• A few things to report from the mouth of the man himself…He’s on draft #5 now, that being, the fifth draft of View Askew 5 (seems the appropriate time to stop, oddly) that’s been passed over to Bob Weinstein at Dimension.

Kev also said that TIFF couldn’t GET the Jaws print, thus the change. Anyway, that’s about it from Askew headquarters, it’s been quiet, but with all this writing and planning going on, we bet there’s some big news on the horizon.

• The second part of the Kevin Smith interview with John Pierson on Split Screen will air Saturday, September 2nd, at 5:30 PM, on The Independent Film Channel. Be sure and be there, as the first half was excellent.

• The September issue of In Style features Jason Lee in his “art-filled apartment in L.A.’s Koreatown.” We’ve got the pics from that piece, though not the text, as Win2000 still hates this Acer scanner. If anyone’s got OCR working, or a LOT of spare time, and wants to send us the text, we’ll print it.
• A small article appeared in Sunday’s New York Times, touting the DVDs of Kevin’s films. Unfortunately, the writer panned the Dogma DVD, not knowing of the upcoming special edition. Shame, shame. Speaking of the DVDs, there’s a site at www.dvdce.com featuring reviews of the Jersey Trilogy right now.

• Another quiet, relaxing weekend here at News Askew headquarters. Not too much to report, but some might-be interesting info for those of you who want to catch the Askew events in Toronto in September. Oh, one other thing too — We mistakenly caught an interview with Kevin & John Pierson on IFC at 5:30 PM today, chatting about the Dogma trials and tribulations as well as the premiere itself. We assume this was a rerun, but apologize for not mentioning it. The episode was part one of a two part interview, so if anyone sees the second part coming up on the air, please let us know.

We’ve also added a new poll topic. Thanks for your thoughts on the mousepads and t-shirts. Seems that the interest was quite high in them, with around 40% of you showing interest in BOTH items and around 40% of you showing interest in one of the items. Makes a strong case to get the suckers in production. We’re going to do all we can to help that along, so hopefully we’ll have some good news on that front soon.

• Nothing’s been officially announced yet, but an anonymous scooper caught a glance at a tentative schedule for the events at the Toronto Film Festival…So, while we can’t PROMISE these events or times, this may very well be the first place ANYWHERE you’re seeing this stuff. Enjoy!

The OFFICIAL schedule’s coming out on August 29th, so if anything changes or is added, we’ll have it for ya here. Otherwise, there’s your exclusive first look at the View Askew events schedule for TIFF. I should have stayed in Canada! The biggest news here is not only the premiere of the long-awaited Vulgar with Brian O’Halloran, but that it appears Kevin’s JAWS screening with comments afterward has been cancelled or changed to the DTRT screening, as JAWS was on a post-it and crossed out on their temporary schedule. That’s all we’ve got for now…