Film Review: The Martian (2015)

Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is a very smart man in a very bad situation. A member of a manned mission to Mars, he was struck by a piece of debris during a storm which separated him from the rest of his crew. Believing that Watney had been killed, and faced with the agonising choice between leaving him or being stranded themselves, his crew left and started their long, mournful journey back to Earth. Fortunately, Watney survived. Unfortunately, he's alone on Mars with limited supplies, no way of contacting his crew or NASA, and no means of escape. Faced with the prospect of a long stay on a dead planet, with eventual starvation the most likely outcome, Watney would be forgiven for giving in to despair. Instead, he becomes a regular Robinson Crusoe on Mars (though not the actual Robinson Crusoe on Mars) and uses the tools at hand and his scientific know-how to try and survive, no matter how much the odds are stacked against him.

Changing Horses: Thoughts on Community "History 101"

There's been a lot of hand-wringing and pontificating about the present and future of NBC's Community over the last year (some of which occurred on this very site) as the series struggled to stay afloat amidst a perfect storm of middling ratings, a reduced order of episodes followed by it being pulled from the schedules entirely, and the firing of creator/showrunner Dan Harmon. Even during the uncertain period when the show was in production but no one had a clue when it would see the light of day, there was the additional trauma of cast member and crotchety old man Chevy Chase leaving the show even though there were still episodes left to film. Admittedly that last one was less of a surprise given Chase's repeated assertion that he didn't want to be on the show, but it still couldn't have been easy for all those involved.

The Weirdest Timeline: The Complicated Nature of Community's Fourth Season Renewal

Back in November, I wrote about NBC's decision to hold the second half of Community's third season back until a later date, one which, at the time, was undetermined.The aim of that article was to establish why the news was not necessarily a sign that the cultishly adored sitcom was in imminent danger of being cancelled, and that everyone should calm the fuck down already.