• As promised, here’s the full text from Roger Ebert’s Answer Man column from the Sun Times where Kev lends a hand:

• Here we’ve got a scan of the way cool one-page ad from Kevin’s upcoming hosting gig of the George Lucas edition of Exposure. It’s going to be a must-see television event. The show airs on Wednesday, August 23rd, at 10 PM. Hopefully the multi-hour Survivor finale will have ended by then, or it may be time to fire up the VCR! Click the thumbnail above for a closer look (and yes, Kevin does get mentioned!). 9 days and counting…
• August’s Previews had a picture of a new Clerks shirt. It’s a white shirt with the original logo of the movie (with the candy bar letters). The price is $17.95. No expected release was announced, but we assume the Stash will have the item as well.
• Jason Lee‘s featured with wife Carmen in some shots in the back of this month’s Jane magazine. Coincidentally, he’s also been popping up at the View Askew WWWBoard lately, spouting off Lee-isms and Burt Reynolds quotes. Stop in, you may catch one of the greatest View Askew personalities in action.

• This Yahoo/Variey news item confirms the Clerks DVDs planned January release:

• Scott Kurtz, webmaster of PVP Online, is pushing to nomiate Jason Lee as “King of the Underground”. We’re not sure what that means, or how important it is, but thought you might wanna know.
• The Fletch Won webmaster took a trip to the Stash and other landmarks and posted pics over at the site.
• Reel.Com has a small piece on “Almost Famous”. You can read it HERE.
• More Affleck castings abound! Does this guy ever sleep?

• Dogma gets a mention in the commentary track for the recently released George Romero DVD “Knightriders”. They’re from Pittsburgh (where Romero films his stuff), and mention “Silence of the Lambs” and Dogma among their favorite films made there.
• Alan Rickman (Dogma’s “Metatron”) is in talks to play Professor Snape in director Chris Columbus’ Harry Potter film, currently in development.
• Since it’s resurfacing again and we’re getting more mail about it (including from its producer), we again encourage you to check out “Film Club” over at the Mediatrip website. It’s a clever little short, and has a fun Kev reference to boot.
• Here’s a small mention that came off the newswire in Owensboro, Kentucky in an article about the very best “B” movies:

• Finally today, an extensive piece from the Dallas Observer on the San Diego con. Have a nice weekend, folks.

• We’re predicting another lull here (though we could be wrong) due to the major appearances being over and things quietly getting prepared for the next flick (VA5). If things are as fast-tracked as they seem, though, Kevin may have some more surprises than we’d expected. If they want to film this Fall, some castings should be confirmed very soon (in addition to those that Kevin already said he had on board earlier). From the folks he’s gotten back already, it sure seems like there’s going to be a lot going on in this flick. It ALSO seems like things will be kept fairly quiet, with only a few folks getting a look at the script. Let’s hope it stays that way. We’ll surely have as much news as we can reveal on the film, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a few genuine surprises in there, either.

On to other things: Anyone catch “Hollow Man” last weekend? Two words: Invisible puke. Still, movies have been on the lackluster side this summer, maybe it’s just that we’re becoming too jaded, but it takes more and more to impress these days, it seems. TV’s been overflowing with reality type stuff lately, too…Fox has a new show called American High that follows a bunch of high school kids around for a year, documentary-style. It was actually pretty good, too. There’s just too many of these shows running right now, though, something’s gonna hafta give. Just so long as that annoying Rich dude doesn’t take the prize in “Survivor”. Anything but that.

Today we’ve got a small bit of stuff for ya, including Kevin clearing the air on View Askew 5, a couple more pics and parting thoughts on the Chicago con, and some NewsBites. Like we said, things are gonna be quiet for a while. Let’s take a look:

• Well it was natural that when the partial cast list was announced that all of us would start speculating on the plot as well as how much of a “sequel” the film would really be. It sounds like Kevin’s given a lot of thought to that, and wisely wrote a movie that stands on its own for newcomers, but still contains enough slight references and in-jokes to make the film enjoyable on a different level for fans of the other ones. Here’s Kevin with the first of what we’re sure will be many posts regarding View Askew 5’s plot:

• Got some more pics of Kevin & the gang (including Jay, Joe Quesada, & Bryan Johnson) from Chicago here. This will about wrap up our coverage of the event. Feel free to continue to use the talkbacks area if you’d like to post about your experiences or discuss anything else about it. As always, we’ll have more coverage from the next appearance!

• Kevin answers the question “What is a Second Second Assitant Director?” in Roger Ebert’s “Movie Answer Man” column slated to run Sunday, August 13. Look for it.
• Variety reports today that the Clerks: TCS hits DVD in January. We’re not sure if the official word came down, or if this is more based on Kevin’s recent statements that he expects both Clerks TCS and Dogma SE in January, but it’s good news all the same. Both will be must-own discs for the collection, no doubt about it.
• Affleck & Damon’s new reality-based TV series “The Runner” is currently in the development phases, but the question is, how soon will it be in production, and will it win out over the other 20 shows similar to it that are also hoping to be the next “Survivor”? Here’s the latest on the saga from MSNBC:

• You can check out the official site for Jay’s new movie “Pot Luck” at. Not much there yet, but we assume it’ll change.
• A new online View Askew club has been started through Excite for the sharing of fan artwork. If you’re interested, check it out HERE.

• Finally today, here’s the one-sheet artwork for “Almost Famous”. Looks like they’re plugging the concept more than the actors since it’s more an ensemble than anything else. We’re sure Lee will be a big standout as always, though.

• As we stated below, the Lee casting is NOT yet official for Fletch (Though it seems to be everyone’s choice, including director Kev’s, so that’s the talk) and Affleck is included in the VA5 cast list, of course — It’s just tough when you hear items second or third hand, that’s all:

• As with most of Kevin’s public appearances, we learned a few things about his and some of the others’ upcoming plans. (See below for the big casting news). See below for some of the other stuff we thought you might be interested in. Also, we’ve included some pics submitted by our loyal NA scoopers who were lucky enough to snap some shots of/with Kevin and the gang. Click the thumbnails for larger versions. Here’s the tidbits:

• Kevin said he was going to do a Daredevil Hardcover self contained story.
• Jay told a story about how he was close to doing another film but the money had to back off because he was a Mexican mob guy and someone took someone hostage so he had to go back to Mexico to pay the ransom. Whoa.
• Also Jay just finished filming a movie called Pot Luck with High Times but doesn’t know when it’s gonna come out.

Feel free to use the TalkBacks area to discuss your experiences at Wizard World in Chicago!

• Hey folks, we’re back after taking the weekend off. Sorry that the news on the site (reports from the con, mainly) is a bit late. Traditionally, big news happens during the regular work week, this was just a rare case where Kevin was at a weekend event and dropped some bigger scoops. Unfortunately, in the summer months, there are times where one of us or both of us have plans and can’t pool our resources together to get an update online as timely as we’d like. Hopefully you can understand the occasional delays, we really do put a lot of time into the site and do our best to get you the news before anyone else. On those times where things are a day or so late, we hope you can understand that we’ve each got a lot of commitments outside of the website, and that there’s time where other stuff just has to come first.

That being said, let’s see what we’ve got here. Kevin’s big con revelation was the first CONFIRMED castings for View Askew 5. Given his cryptic list of initials posted a couple months back, most of you won’t be surprised, but it’s nice to see some actual names (and big ones at that) attached to the film. He also hinted at a possible casting for Fletch Won that we’d talked about since the flick was first announced. Read on for that big news now, we’ll be back with some pics and stories from the con, NewsBites, a new poll topic, and more later on today. See ya then.