• Outrage on all the internet’s DVD sites started today with Alliance’s announcement that they’d been pressed by Disney into the discontinuation of their Special Edition DVDs, starting with the highly anticipated Chasing Amy and From Dusk ‘Til Dawn discs. The Digital Bits and DVD File both did a report on it. We’d definitely recommend you read the Bits’ editorial in full, though we’re not gonna reprint it here.

In summary though, their points are outstanding. Buena Vista got jealous and upset because Alliance was showing them how to handle a DVD release properly and making them look bad. Which they deserve. There’s just no excuse for taking a flick with tons of special edition content and putting it out stripped down, ESPECIALLY with full intention of re-releasing it 2 years down the road in a new edition. Then again, perhaps that’s what the suits had in mind all along — Release all their flicks stripped down then go back down the road with better versions in order to hit their customers up for their hard-earned cash TWICE. The Bits says this isn’t acceptable from Disney…We’ll take it a step further and say this is bad business no matter WHO you are. Just rotten. At least they got Clerks right.

Now, for those of you that ordered through DVD-Depot, whom we sponsored, they’ve checked in with a full report on what’s gonna happen to your orders. Sounds like they’ve got it all under control:

Alright, so you all feel bummed now, huh? Well, read the next story, it might perk ya up a bit.

• Looks like the answer’s finally arrived on the question surrounding the mythical Dogma script/book that you’ve all been waiting for! Word comes to us directly from the source today that Grove/Atlantic, Inc. has bought the rights to Kev’s Dogma script and will run the paperback off the presses in time for arrival on November 22nd. Get those orders in fast on the online sites, or wait and see if the Stash offers signed copies (we assume they will very soon). Here’s the full press release that went out to Grove’s sales force, along with some excellent quotes and info on the flick:

• Two MAJOR COOL new additions at the Stash today. First of all, the item that ALL of you must rush to the phone and place your order for immediately…The OFFICIAL Dogma one-sheet, personally signed by Kevin Smith himself! And for only 30 bucks? Hell, you should buy two of ‘em. Ming says:

Yes you read right, now available through the Stash, the Official ‘Dogma’ One-Sheet poster. You’ve seen it, you’ve downloaded it, now OWN it! The ‘Dogma’ one-sheet poster measures a standard 27 x 40 inches and features the principle cast (A winged Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, Salma Hayek, Chris Rock, Alan Rickman, Linda Fiorentino, Jason Mewes and KevinSmith) against an orange sky background. The ‘Dogma’ logo is featured prominently underneath along with the cast and crew credits. And to top that off – it comes signed by Kevin. $30.00 + s/h ORDER HERE!

And this big news on an incredibly LIMITED item…Ya better call right away!

We’ve got 50 copies of the Wizard #96 Exclusive issue of Daredevil ready for sale at the Stash. Features include the Smith, Quesada, Palmiotti issue of Daredevil #1/2, a special Wizard protective cover, and a Certificate of Authenticity. All this for only $10.00 + s/h ORDER HERE!

• This is a nifty little human interest piece…Seems that Alan Rickman, one of Dogma’s stars, might be throwing his hat into politics! Wow, and perfect timing with the flick out in a month and a half. Can’t complain about that. Here’s the story:

Film star Rickman’s toughest role yet: politics

BY JONATHAN OLIVER

FILM star Alan Rickman is being lined up to stand as Labour’s candidatein the Kensington and Chelsea by-election.

London Labour MPs have asked the Die Hard and Robin Hood actor to puthis name forward, believing that only a celebrity candidate would have achance of winning the safe Tory seat. Former Cabinet Minister MichaelPortillo is hot favourite to be the Tory candidate for the seat madevacant by the death of Alan Clark.

Rickman, 53, is a life-long Labour supporter and his girlfriend RimaHorton is a leading light in the Kensington and Chelsea party. One MPsaid: “Alan has expressed an interest in getting more involved inpolitics.

“He is very talented and has bags of charisma. He is the sort ofcandidate who just might be able to stop Portillo.”

Rickman now lives in fashionable Notting Hill, but he was brought up ina cramped house in Acton, West London. His painter and decorator fatherdied of cancer when he was eight.

Rickman says he has been a Labour Party member since the day he wasborn.His girlfriend Rima, who is a local councillor in Kensington, has threetimes tried and failed to be selected as a parliamentary candidate.

Rickman’s own canvassing experience has so far been limited. “He iscommitted to the cause,” said Rima. “He gives me a lot of moral supportbut he doesn’t come face to face with voters.

“He just delivers leaflets and then leaves. It could be embarrassmentwhich stops him, I don’t know. Not everyone enjoys being questioned onpolicy detail.”

Rickman may have little direct political experience, but on stage andscreen he has played many authority figures. Last year he took the roleof Mark Antony in a West End production of Shakespeare’s Antony andCleopatra, and he was the Sheriff of Nottingham in the Hollywoodblockbuster Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

The other leading candidate for the Labour nomination is RobertAtkinson, leader of the party on Kensington and Chelsea council. Mr Portillo, theformer defence secretary and darling of the Tory right, is the frontrunner to become the Tory candidate.

His main rivals are Rupert Allason, the bouffant-haired former Torbay MPand spy writer, and Express columnist Peter Hitchens. The constituencyis one of the safest Tory seats in the country.

The party had a majority of more than 9,500 at the 1997 election. TheConservatives won 54 per cent of the vote and Labour came second with 28per cent.

Mr Portillo, a hard-line Eurosceptic, is coming under pressure fromWilliam Hague to moderate his position. Mr Hague wants to offer MrPortillo a prominent front-bench position, but first the Tory leaderwants him to drop his opposition to the single currency.The official partypolicy is to rule out entry only for the next two parliaments.

One last bit…If anyone wants to catch a glimpse of William Donohue from the Catholic League (who’s been strangely quiet on the Dogma front these days), he’ll be on Charlie Rose tonight.

• Well, looks like all the fears are true. DVD-Depot confirms that the Chasing Amy DVD (as well as the From Dusk ‘Til Dawn DVD) have been cancelled by Alliance. It happened due to pressure from Disney, who wants to release the flicks concurrently here in the States through Buena Vista. More than likely this means no special edition for either, which is a shame, cuz both flicks have amazing SEs out on laserdisc right now. If Criterion takes on Amy, we’ll at least get a dupe of the laser a-la Clerks which would be good enough (though I’m STILL crossing my fingers for a 16:9 transfer!).

Chances are none of you who pre-ordered were charged, so it’ll all be forgotten. Don’t fret, though, if Disney stopped production on those discs, it means they plan to at least put the flicks out soon themselves. Stay tuned.

• US Magazine has listed Dogma in its November issue as one of “The Big Sleepers” Ten underdog fall movies you shouldn’t miss:

• The Hollywood Reporter has a blurb today on Ben & Matt‘s production, “The Third Wheel”:

• The Sun, an English tabloid, ran a piece in their Showbiz section on Dogma, featuring the Ben & Matt from the one-sheet,with the headline “Hellywood Angels”. Ouch. It spoke briefly about the plot of the film, and also mentioned Linda and Salma as “heavenly angels whose mission is to foil the boys”. No mention of Kev or any of the other crew. Oh well, anypublicity helps.
• It’s a ltitle early (and a lot odd) to report, but both “Clerks” and “Mallrats” are going to be screened at the GeekPride festival next spring in Boston. Ummm…Alllright. We’ll remind ya in the Spring. Til then, visit HERE.

• Not much to report on today…I continue battling this ultra nasty cold (by blowing my nose every 3 seconds), little by little we’re getting our stuff packed up and ready for moving day, and the View Askew news continues to happen.

Since there’s not much going on, we thought we’d take some time to answer some frequent questions coming into the mailbox these days: First of all, there is no confirmed date on the proposed Dogma benefit in New Jersey, and it hasn’t even been officially announced as happening yet. Our poll topic is more a what-if scenario, based on a post from Kevin (in September’s archives) where he mentioned one was in the planning stages.

Jay & Silent Bob #4 will indeed hit shelves in October, but many of you are still asking about Clerks: The Lost Scene. This book is NOT out yet, so fear not, you didn’t miss it, and will hit shelves well before the Holidays (similar to Clerks’ Holiday Special last year). We’re not sure if this means October, November, or even December, but rest assured the book’s being worked on and will be worth the wait.

Finally, there’s that Chasing Amy DVD. Well, let’s give that one a headline:

• Questions and concerns have been rolling in concerning the Chasing Amy DVD from Alliance. First of all, we can say that we have NO FACTS AT ALL on this disc. It seems very secretive, the entire project, but we can tell you what we’ve heard anyway: First of all, Kevin stated recently that Criterion has not licensed any of their Special Edition laserdisc material to Alliance, so the DVD can at most be the film and possibly a trailer. No commentary, deleted scenes, all that good stuff. Second, a while back we asked Vincent about the possibility of a 16:9 transfer for the flick. Again, no dice. Vincent said that he’d have known were something like that happening.

Now, the second part: Alliance has been coming under fire for releasing Canadian exclusive DVDs of Buena Vista’s material, and it’s going to stop. Looks like Amy may be the last (IF it shows up) of a dying breed. From now on, Alliance will release Canadian counterparts of flicks concurrently, and identical to, U.S. releases. Now, as for the chances that Amy won’t ship: We’ve gotten one confirmation from a dealer in Canada who states that he received confirmation that the shipment had already left the warehouse and would be in his store by Friday. This seems odd since it’s almost 2 weeks early in that case, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled and let ya know. We’ve also contacted the folks we partnered with to promote the DVD to see if they’ve heard any more.

So, in short, looks like we still WILL see the Amy DVD, though it’ll be a very stripped down version of the ineviatable re-release of the flick here in the US with all the Criterion stuff intact. And there’s no word on when that’s happening at this point.

• Ya know, it’s kinda funny…We’re cut off from updating for a week and TONS of stuff happens, then we come back and…poof! It’s dead! We didn’t even have anything to rap about yesterday. Well, today’s different. There’s lots of administrative type stuff going on that we wanna chat about, and a few news stories as well.

First of all, did anyone see “Mumford” this weekend? Gotta admit that neither of us did, mostly just because of some hectic life stuff going on right now (more on that in a minute) but we DO plan to see the flick ASAP. Anyway, the flick took in a miserable 2 million at the box office, yet, people are RAVING about it! It’s such a shame that a good movie just doesn’t make for a good gross a lot of times. I woke up to hear Howard Stern, who really has been one of the most brutal critics on movies over the years I’ve listened, was singing the PRAISES of Mumford, saying what a satisfying moviegoing experience it was. All of you agree. Mumford was great, and Lee shined in another scene-stealing performance. Hopefully word of mouth can push this puppy up to some better numbers next week, but it seems that these smaller vehicles, especially without a “name” star (like Willis in “The Sixth Sense”), have trouble getting off the ground. Damn shame.

You’ll notice a new poll topic’s FINALLY been chalked up there. It’s about time, huh? Sorry for all the trouble there, these scripts are always a pain to get running on the new server. Little by little, we’re getting it all back with some help from Ming as well as some trial and error.

And finally on our personal news front: We’re finally getting the hell away from each other. Actually, not that the roommate thing wasn’t working out, it’s just that I had to go and buy a house and screw it all up! So, by the end of October, I’ll be moving into my new digs (and paying a hefty mortgage payment) and Chris will be heading to an apartment. Shouldn’t affect the site TOO much, the internet provides all the networking we’ll need to work together as always. What we DID want to make you aware of is that those of you using our OLD e-mail addresses need to stop. The ones that ended in planetcable.net?Gone. Be sure and use brad@newsaskew.com and chris@newsaskew.com from now on. They’ll reach us anywhere we go, guaranteed. We’ll keep ya posted on the progress with the move (October is NOT gonna be a fun month…) and if anyone cares, maybe I’ll even post up a pic or two of my new place once I finish off the roll of film (Yep, still digital-cameraless!). So anyway, we’re going a little crazy lately. And to top it all off, I’ve got a cold. AGAIN. This has been my worst year for catching colds EVER! Sheesh.

But enough of the misery…There’s news to be told!

• Last update, we repoted on the possibility of a “Scream 3” cameo for Jay & Silent Bob. Most folks attributed this rumor to the fact that Kevin hinted that the duo has an unlikely appearance coming up, sometime in January. Well, the news broke today that Scream 3 will indeed be delayed until February, due to a busy December lineup (“The Green Mile”, if half as good as the books, should kick major ass). So, could this rumor be true? Well, here’s what we say: WAIT AND SEE! We’d much rather be surprised about it than know all the details, so we’re HOPEFUL that, if this happens, the studio can keep at least the details and context of their appearance in the flick under wraps. From what we’ve turned up, this and other cameos in the film are being kept as quiet as possible by the studios and the stars. We hope it stays that way.

Thanks to Dark Horizons, AICN, and Zentertainment (as well as our scoopers above) for the Scream 3 date change news.