Who says good news doesn’t come at the end of the week? On the heels of their Q&A at PaleyFest this week, NBC’s newest hit show, Community, has been given more life as the network has renewed the show for another season. Also to get another season are Parks and Recreation and the new Steve Carell-less Office.

It seems that though the shows weren’t performing up to expectations, they managed to get a stay of execution. THR spells it out with math. We hate math.

Veteran comedy The Office is delivering a 4.0 rating in the adults 18-49 demographic and averaging 7.7 million viewers for its current seventh season. Steve Carell‘s farewell episode is scheduled to air at the end of April, with Will Ferrell coming on for a multi-episode guest arc.

In the ratings, Amy Poehler‘s Parks and Rec, currently in its third season, is averaging a 2.8 in the key demo and 5.5 million viewers. With its move to the 9:30 p.m. time slot, the series is up 17 percent in the 18-49 demo (2.8 vs. 2.4) and up 9 percent in total viewers (5.5 million vs. 5.1 million).

Critical favorite Community, which has anchored the competitive 8 p.m. time slot on Thursdays for NBC and is led by The Soup host Joel McHale, has averaged a 2.1 in the 18-49 demo and 4.7 million viewers so far in its sophomore season.

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Just in case you thought things couldn’t get more ridiculous than Sharktopus, a film about a half-shark, half-octopus that terrorizes Eric Roberts and a bunch of D-list actors, we’ve got one more for you.

In a recent interview on This Week in Horror, master of the B-movie Roger Corman announced that as a followup to his underground smash-hit Sharktopus, he’s playing monster maker once again with his newest film, Piranhaconda.

Aside from creating new species, Corman is also pitting them against one another. His recent films are also Dinocroc vs. Supergator and has expressed his plans on battling even more of his Darwin-hating concoctions.

Check out what Corman has to say about PiranhaConda after the break.

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In the interest of full disclosure, I had the good fortune to meet Becoming Santa’s star, Jack, on the shuttle ferrying us from the horrendous labyrinthine beast of the Austin Convention Center to the heavenly outpost that is the Alamo Drafthouse. Yes, I know I’m mixing mythologies there, so bite me.

Anyway, I met and chatted with Jack before knowing whom he was or even that he had a documentary in the festival, and for those fifteen minutes we conversed, he was just as charming and articulate fellow as he comes across in Jeff Myers’ sweet little documentary.

So I met and liked the guy and ended up watching and liking his film, too. But the two likes are separate from each other; rest assured I’d tear it apart like an eel on a horse head if it were bad (as I well some other films whose directors I likewise met).

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I returned to the show floor bright and early today to check out the second of three independent games featured at this year’s PAX East. Each of these three are puzzle games with clever mechanics, but all stand out individually as awesome testaments to what independent gaming in the Boston area has to offer.

Blinding Science is a sound-based puzzle game, where you play as a blind man who can see through sound. Using a cane to hit objects in the level, players send sound waves out that allow them to observe the game level.

The objects also control workers in each level, who chop wood or smash stones, responding to the sounds you make as a player. The object of every level is to break a crystal guarded at the end, and players use the workers to open up barriers and reach the end goal.

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This was just too good to be true. A few months ago, it was announced that Darren Aronofsky had made his Sophie’s Choice between directing the upcoming Robocop reboot or working on the sequel for 20th Century’s X-Men spin-off X-Men Origins: Wolverine, titled simply, The Wolverine.

As amazing of an idea as it was to have an Oscar nominated director taking on one of Marvel’s most beloved characters, it was definitely too good to be true. It seems that Aronofsky has parted from 20th Century Fox and stepped down as director of The Wolverine. From EW.

In a statement issued by the studio, Aronofsky said, “It became clear that the production of The Wolverine would keep me out of the country for almost a year. I was not comfortable being away from my family for that length of time.” (The film was reportedly going to be set in Japan.) “I am sad that I won’t be able to see the project through,” continued Aronofsky, “as it is a terrific script and I was very much looking forward to working with my friend, Hugh Jackman, again.”

It looks as if this was a mutual break, however, as Fox is also pretty bummed.

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Stop playing with your shillelagh and take a second to reflect on St. Patrick’s Day and what it means to you. Well, unless you are Irish or Irish American, it probably just becomes a day of drinking… followed by more drinking.

But if you work here, you are sure to have a connection with at least one or two Marvel heroes of Irish descent. In celebration of St. Patrick’s Day, we take a look at some of the better known inhabitants of the Marvel U who will be getting their green on today.

Matt Murdock a.k.a. Daredevil

Probably one of the best known Irish Americans to grace a Marvel comic, Matt Murdock fits the Irish stereotype with his red locks and being raised by a tough as nails father who made his money as a boxer in Hell’s Kitchen.

Though his ethnic background hasn’t played a part in much of his current storylines as he faces off against hordes of Japanese ninjas, there is something about the Man Without Fear that can be found in every drunken bar brawl during St. Patrick’s Day.

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The Flickcast’s very own Cortney Zamm has been covering the amazing video game previews and news hot from the show floor at PAX East 2011 like nobody’s business. And yet, there is one game in particular that I felt deserved a bit of extra coverage.

That game is BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic, a story-driven MMO developed in conjunction with LucasArts. There’s a whole lot of anticipation for this game and with good reason: SWTOR will be the WoW of the Star Wars Universe. And the story will be deeper and more personal to each character. If you’re familiar with BioWare’s previous titles, you know how important story is to their game developers.

I’ve been following the developer’s blogs and various updates on this soon-to-be released title and recently, I was excited to hear that Bioware made a big showing at PAX East 2011 in Boston, offering fans a few new glimpses at this ambitious project.

Be sure to hit the jump to watch the developer’s walk-through video showcasing some of  SWTOR’s flash-points with tons of developer commentary and some amazing in-game footage.

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For those of you lamenting the lack of cool 4G smartphone offerings available for the Verizon Wireless network, this is the day you’ve been waiting for. Verizon Wireless’ first LTE handset, the HTC ThunderBolt, is now available on store shelves and online, ready to push the boundaries of wireless access.

If you plan on being one of the very first consumers to acquire the 4G handset, you have options as to where to pick it up. Verizon Wireless, Best Buy, and several others will be selling the handset for $250 with a two year contract.

However, if you don’t mind waiting for the device to be shipped to you, Wirefly will be selling it for $199.99. In addition, Amazon Wireless has it priced at $179.99. Plus, unless you live in certain areas of the country, no sales tax if you purchase at Amazon. Who doesn’t love that?

In case you’re not familiar with this 4G powerhouse, here’s a few stats to help get you excited:

• Powered by Android 2.2
• Latest version of the HTC Sense UI
• Support for Google Mobile Services, including Gmail, YouTube and Android Market
• 4G LTE optimized apps such as EA’s Rock Band, Gameloft’s Let’s Golf, Tunewiki and Bitbop
• 4G LTE – customers can expect download speeds of 5 to 12 Mbps and upload speeds of 2 to 5 Mbps in 4G Mobile Broadband coverage area
• 4.3” WVGA display
• 8- megapixel rear facing camera and HD (720p) video recording

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Probably one of the most anticipated games of 2011, any kind of footage or information for Batman: Arkham Asylum is getting gobbled up by fans the moment it hits the web. A few months ago, we got the first trailer for the game, which didn’t show us much. Now we’re finally getting some gameplay.

In this new trailer, we see not only some new villains make an appearance, such as Catwoman, Two Face, Hugo Strange, and Joker, but some great new features in what looks to be an almost open-world style game. Basically, what would Grand Theft Auto be like if you were Batman.

Some great new features have been added that we can pick up on, including the ability to practically fly through Gotham City with the use of the grappling gun and Batman’s cape-gliding skills, and some advanced combat skills.

Sadly, still no word on whether local or online multiplayer will be added in this sequel, but we still have a solid 6 months before the game is released on October 18th.

Check out the all-new extended trailer after the jump, and let us know what you think!

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Of the three films I’ve been most excited to see at SXSW, two of them were documentaries, and the two documentaries that pretty much everyone else has been the most excited to see: Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Errol Morris’s Tabloid.

Of the two, the one I was a little unsure of was Morris’s. I know Morris to be somewhat of an acquired taste, and I find his films to lag some, but his is a master of interview and editing: No line of dialogue, no word, uttered by a subject in a Morris documentary, is uninteresting.

And Tabloid is no exception—in fact, it may well be the best introduction to Morris and is certainly his funniest.

The story was new to me: Joyce McKinney is a former beauty queen who fell in love with a man who took up with the Mormon faith and left her to perform his required mission trip in London. Joyce tracked him down, supposedly kidnapped him, and further supposedly spirited him away to a cottage in Devon where she (even further) supposedly chained him to a bed and had her way with him.

That’s not the whole story, of course, and one of the best jokes of Tabloid is just how far the story of Joyce McKinney, the tabloid Joyce McKinney keeps going, and going, and going, and shows no intent of slowing down, right up to the now.

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That’s right this week bring an all new episode of The Flickcast. On this week’s show Chris and Matt take on another bunch of new and recurring topics to amuse, entertain and try to keep you awake for at least thirty to forty minutes.

Some of the things discussed this week include Battle: Los Angeles versus Independence Day, Super 8, X-Men: First Class, Paul, PAX East, Super, SXSW, proper movie marketing and a whole lot more. And this week, virtually no Charlie Sheen. You’re welcome.

Of course, your hosts also made some picks this week including some great things you’re just going to have to listen to to find out. Sorry, we sometimes like to have our secrets.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook and MySpace or via email.

It seems like only yesterday when our planes were touching down, we were packing into our roach-heavy hotels, and ordering that first pint at the Alamo Drafthouse, eager to welcome SXSW 2011, but those days are long gone, and the Film Festival’s award-winners have now been announced.

Of course, those days really aren’t long gone, because there’s still plenty more films to see…and plenty more reviews for us to write up.

But as far as the awards go, it looks like Tristan Patterson’s skater-drug-love documentary Dragonslayer and Robbie Pickering’s Natural Selection, about a housewife’s quest to reunite her husband’s illegitimate son with his father. Take a look at the full winner list in a press release, after the jump.

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