• Well well well, what have we got here? Thanks to generous Jimmy Palmiotti, we’ve got a nice exclusive for you at the Pittsburgh Con today: Check out the beautiful cover of DareDevil #6! This fine book will be in stores this week, and, we gotta tell ya, it’s good. Jimmy was kind enough to hand over his only copy to us and, having just finished reading the sucker, you’re gonna LOVE it. But, we don’t wanna say anything else that’ll spoil the issue, so, be sure and pick it up this week. It’s not too late if you missed the earlier issues, either — Get the trade paperback and get all caught up! The cover expands, as always, so click it for a much nicer view.

By the way, another GREAT show out in Pittsburgh – They put together an excellent package out there. It was very cool finally getting to meet Tom Savini as well…He’s a very nice guy in person, as expected, and was happy to talk shop about some of the FX he did in the past, as well as the sad direction a lot of it’s going with all this CGI. All in all, an excellent day. Now, to get some rest…

• It’s suppsed to be a beautiful day out there today, a nice one for a drive…So we’re heading out to the Pittsburgh con to see what’s goin’ on today. Lots of little stuff that we thought you might want to hear to keep you occupied on a Sunday though, so we figured we’d get this quick update online before we head out the door. It’s been awfully quiet lately after a couple weeks of crazy activity, and as you know, we enjoy the peace every once in a while!

• Dogma in a BOARD GAME already? Yup, believe it or not. Our scooper was playing the board game TriBond (where players must guess the common theme between three clues), and Chris Rock came up as the answer to a question linking 3 of his films: Lethal Weapon 4, some other flick, and Dogma!
• Kevin popped in at the WWWBoard over at Affleck.Com to see what was doin’ the other day — Check it out http://www.affleck.com/wwwboard/messages17/188.html.
• George Carlin’s new album, “You Are All Diseased”, is scheduled for release on May 5th. It’s the same material from this year’s HBO show, which was laugh-out-loud funny. You can’t go wrong with it if you’re a Carlin fan, or just want to hear some really GOOD stand-up.
• Woodstock.Com indeed reports that Alanis will be playing at the big festival this year – Surf over to their website for all the details. Surf on over to their site – They’ve got artist interviews, daily news, chat boards for each artist, and tons more.

Off to the ‘con! Catch ya later, folks…Oh and thanks also to Jay Haney for today’s poll topic. Don’t forget to vote.

• If anyone’s attending the Pittsburgh ComicCon, or attended already, could you PLEASE do us a big favor and send us the schedule for tomorrow (Sunday)? We’re thinking of heading out, but don’t know who’s going to be there tomorrow. We only want to go depending on the guests, and from what we recall last year, some are only there on certain days during the Con. So, please help us out if ya can! Thanks. Oh, and does anyone know if Savini made it? We’ll be back with some news later if anything comes up…

• There’s been much speculation about Dogma’s status at Cannes, so we’ll spell it out as simple as possible. DogmaIS an OFFICIAL SELECTION for the festival, yes, but the film will NOT be competing, but are still shown at the Palais.One scooper predicts that Dogma will be shown after the 7 and 10 PM “official” screenings, and says that, if this isthe case, that it will be a MADHOUSE. Apparently, when a highly anticipated flick is shown in this slot, TONS ofcelebs and fans are lining up to get in. This was the case with “Trainspotting” 2 years back.

Don’t be disappointed at all that Dogma won’t be in official competition. This is really an excellent situation forthe film – No pressure to win any awards (in fact, we expect speculation that the flick WOULD have taken awards wouldit have competed, which is even better), plenty of studios to expose the film to, and, best of all, a PREMIERE at CANNES!How cool is that? Kevin made some comments as well, that we thought we’d share with you:

And, since many of you have been asking: No, we won’t be attending the festival, unless some strange benefactor stepped out of the shadows and handed us twofestival passes and plane tickets to France. Anyone listening? 🙂

• Variety posted a fairly long article today going over all the selections at Cannes. You can read the entire article HERE, but if you’re just interested in the Dogma stuff, here ya go:

• Many of you wrote in with this news today, some in the hopes that we could deny that it’s true…Unfortunately, it seems not to be the case. DVDFile says:

Don’t shoot the messenger, folks! Hopefully we’ll be back with a new release date soon. Perhaps this means they’re going to 16:9 enhance the film, or add more special features? Or maybe it’s just business (more than likely for a Disney DVD release). Oh well. We’ll keep you posted on this story. Could someone from Disney or Buena Vista please keep us posted on this stuff? Hello? Is this thing on?

• And finally today, a pretty humorous picture of Jay, courtesy of Jill.

• Many of you are baffled as to Dogma’s exact status at Cannes. Will it compete and be up for awards, or will it just be showcased as one of the special features in the festival? From what we and our scoopers can uncover, we see that the film currently appears in the “special events” list. Still another link shows the film listed, but as “Out of Competition”. Defining this, it says:

The site also says the actual schedule will be posted after today’s press conference. We’re sure Dogma will get a nice slot, though. So, our source yesterday told us that Dogma was indeed an official selection, though whether this meant actual competition, we are unsure (though we assumed so). There’s no question about it, though, Cannes WANTS Dogma. And the film will get its world premiere at the festival, just as originally hoped. We’ll try and dig up some more info about which awards, if any, the film might be eligible for.

Either way, competition or no, it’s quite an honor to have a film selected for premiere at Cannes, and we know Dogma’s going to be the talk of the festival, just as we predicted ever since we saw the thing! Congratulations are definitely in order for Kevin & The Weinsteins, who will undoubetedly have a blast watching all the studios line up for distribution rights after they feast their eyes upon the flick.

• World famous gossip columnist Liz Smith has even gotten on board the Dogma press bandwagon. In her column today, she comments on the film’s newly found fame now that it’s gonna hit Cannes:

Speaking of who’ll be there, a few NA readers have also checked in to let us know they’ll be in town to scoop up all the Dogma dish that they can…Anyone wanna smuggle us in a suitcase?

• Howdy all – As you probably know, Cannes is the big story, with the official announcements about the films coming in today. Read all about what we know (as well as a Liz Smith column on the subject) below.

Also, NewsCam is now live and running again after almost a week of downtime. From what I hear, the cam’s still not working properly for Netscape browsers, something I plan to work on as soon as I get some free time.

For those of you wondering about my job situation…Here’s an update. I still have not been laid off although I have officially stated my desire to move on (rather than take a crappy mainframe job), so I expect the layoff to occur sometime next week (before the next pay period starts). This isn’t definite, but more than likely will happen. I’ve gotten some great leads from many of you so far, and I sincerely appreciate that! Once the layoff happens, I will have more time to schedule phone interviews and possibly travel to sites, which should make the search easier. I’m still searching as well, so if you know of something that might fit the bill, please drop me a line! Thanks again for your help, everyone. I’ll rest at ease once I know I’m employed again — It’s going to seem odd when this layoff happens and I’m not working every day!

And now, on with the news…

• Let me just say up front that my e-mail box has been incredibly busy lately, and between that, this site, wrapping up things at my current job AND looking for a new one, time has been very scarce. But rest assured, I will still read each and every mail and get back to you, but if the reply is small, please don’t be offended. We’re doing the best we can here!

On to other things…We had a ton of little stuff to get to today. Some of it’s important news, but there wasn’t really much to say, so we took the NewsBite route with tons – Don’t let that fool you. Mondo update ahead. Also, be sure and check out our new Armageddon DVD review…It’s a new feature we’re adding that’s just for View Askew DVDs or those featuring View Askew actors. We’ll pick and choose as we see fit, but you can count on at least the trilogy and probably a few more flicks here and there.