• If this gets posted up before midnight, a word of warning – Today’s update is the largest EVER storywise, which means that some newer stories from earlier today actually already wound up in the ARCHIVES. So, if you’ve been gone a day or (god help you) longer than that, PLEASE check the archives for August 2001 for everything you might have missed (and before submitting any scoops you think WE missed). Thanks, and enjoy.

• Once again, we do like to keep 99% of the reviews off the front page and have you post them over in the Forums area, but for the big ones, we’ll make an exception. Roger Ebert has just revealed a THREE STAR review for Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back. Three out of four ain’t bad for sure, and this also should mean a thumbs-up from him on his television program this weekend.

Check out the entire review HERE. There’s some glaring errors in it as far as character names and previous film appearances, so the review is far from perfect journalism, but hey, at least Ebert liked the flick.

• Today’s second round of articles from around the world is here for your reading pleasure:

• Box Office Guru predicts a 20 million dollar winning weekend for Jay & Bob:

• Last minute radio appearance: Kevin will call into Star 94 (94.1 FM) tomorrow morning for anyone living in the Atlanta area. The show runs from 6 to 10 AM, and guests USUALLY call in between 8 and 9. We’ll try and get info or a transcription or audio for ya.
• An update to the J&SBSB soundtrack listing: It’s currently at #7 on the Hollywood Reporter’s soundtrack sales listing, and climbing!
• Kevin is apparently a character or card or something in this strange Pokemon-like game.
• The Dogma SE DVD tied for third place in the Best Performance in A Commentary category at the DVD awards, part of the International Recording Media Associations and Medialine’s DVD Entertainment 2001 Conference. The complete list of winners can be found HERE.
• Mallrats alum Jeremy London has landed a role in the $51 million “Gods and Generals”, the prequel to “Gettysburg” scheduled to start filming soon.
• From today’s Reuter’s “Notable Quotes” area:

• Things have been so hectic here that the week FLEW by and, believe it or not…Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back opens in theaters across North America TOMORROW! That didn’t take long at all, did it? Anyway, we realize that a ton of you have already seen the flick, but urge you to check it out again this weekend and bring your friends. Being someone who saw the film twice in the span of 3 days, I can honestly say that it holds up and is just as fun to watch again, especially with a big audience. Take advantage of your chance to see Jay & Silent Bob’s last live action adventure on the big screen while you still can.

As always, we’ve got a MASSIVE update today, including a ton of multimedia, like Kevin’s short but fun appearance on The Tonight Show last night (which was really fun to watch), news on the MTV2 special, more press for the film…You know, just another normal day here at News Askew! Let’s take a look:

Van Explosion

Jay Emoting

Watching Playback

• The “hate site” JayandSilentbob.Com (and all the sister sites) have revealed some new behind the scenes footage from the film! This stuff will likely be featured in the huge DVD documentary that they’re putting together. There’s 3 clips in total, including the explosion sequence, some of Jay’s acting chops, and Kevin and Jay checking out some action on a monitor. Check them all out HERE!

• FX Guru Vincent Guastini, who did all of Dogma’s and Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back’s practical visual effects, checked in with this press release and some photos from the set. We’re blurring the thumbnails as they will spoil a few very minor jokes in the film, so, if you’ve yet to see it, you may wanna wait. This text that follows, also, contains some minor joke spoilers, so read at your own risk:

Kevin Smith’s “Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back” was no walk in the park, it was a challenge, but I really loved working on this film,” says Special Make-up Effects Artist and Creature Designer Vincent Guastini. His company, Vincent Guastini Productions, has done effects or such films and TV projects as ” Requiem For A Dream”, “Dogma”, “Virus” “The Last Of The Mohicans” Stephen King’s “Thinner” “Man On The Moon”, and “Saturday Night Live”, as well as early concept designs for films including “Hannibal” and “Below” as well as many others.

“We went all out on the apes for this movie” Guastini remarks. “There’s a scene in Kevin’s film where he does homage to the first Planet of the Apes. He recreated the opening of that film in his movie. I really wanted to go elaborate, so the main gorilla’s on horseback was actually a full animatronic mask. Full brow movement, snarl you well name it. I knew the new movie was coming out but I wanted to have an original look to the apes, which both had a feel for the old ones, but with a new modern twist. Also for the film we had the pleasure of turning Star Wars’ Mark Hamill into a character called “COCKKNOCKER” he has this huge hand and he does battle with Jay and Silent Bob. We also made a full orangutan suit that doubles for the real monkey in the film.

In addition, we created this fun over the top gag of Brian O’ Halloran’s (CLERKS) brain being operated on by real chimpanzees in a flash back sequence in the film. We also made some outrageous braces for actor Sean William Scott (AMERICAN PIE).”

“Only disappointment for me in the movie was that the Scooby Doo sequence was dropped a day before the dog was to be shot. The original scene involved the dog getting high and attacking Jay & Bob and getting quite horny and humping a van window. It was a fully animatronic robot Scooby Doo dog. It could bulge and move it’s eyes, ear movement, talk, smile, breathe, hump, wag its tail, full working and swelling genitals, as well as move it’s tongue forward so far it could touch its nose and lick it. Hopefully in the DVD you’ll get to see what could have been.”

Damn if that pooch ain’t realistic, too! Nice work all around, Vinnie.

• Kevin made another fantastic appearance on Wednesday morning’s Howard Stern radio program. After playing sound effects guru Fred in a trivia contest, he’s joined by Jennifer, Jay and Afroman. We’ve got an MP3 version, which is over 6MB and 35 minutes long, but people who are on a slower connection should be able to paste the address into Winamp (Ctrl+L) or their other favorite media player and it should be able to stream without much of a problem.

If you prefer, we also offer a RealAudio streaming version, which should also suit as well and work nice for slower connections. Enjoy!

• Here ya go, folks, clips of Kevin’s historic appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno last night! It was a short but fun interview, where the two exchanged a few jabs at one another, discussed the film, and showed a highly edited clip of the film (The Holden, Jay & Bob scene at the interet). Was it past your bedtime? Were you out getting blitzed? Don’t worry, Will’s got the clips encoded for us right here. Check them out with RealVideo in 56k or 150k speeds.

• Thge MTV2 channel (you know, the one that actually shows VIDEOS) is airing a special where Kevin hosts an hour of his favorite videos. It’s already aired a couple times, and we’ve got some clips online, but you’ll probably prefer catching it on TV. Here’s the upcoming airtimes: