For many people, the joy of books is a simple one. Typically, they serve as a quiet form of entertainment that stimulates the mind by allowing readers to experience the story in their heads. They are nothing more than “movies for the mind” to many.
Room is a painful film to watch, an experience provided very deliberately by director Lenny Abrahamson. One gets the sense that it should get easier to endure as it progresses, only to realize by the time the credits roll that an all-around happy ending to this kind of story would be the stuff of fantasy.
Helping others never tasted so sweet. Albuquerque’s first local cooking tournament came to a conclusion Thursday night when judges announced the season one tournament winner during the championship round at Pueblo Harvest Cafe. 505 Food Fight is an after-hours tournament in which local chefs create dishes out of mystery ingredients presented to them the night of the competition. Those dishes are then judged for presentation, creativity and flavor.
The UNM Wilderness Alliance and Southwest Film Center hope to bring the beauty, the inspirational and the excitement and thrill of the outdoors through the Telluride Mountain Film Festival, held this weekend. The Telluride Mountain Film Festival is composed of about 15 videos ranging anywhere from two minutes to 45 minutes in length. The content of the films vary their focus on nature’s presence, its beauty a prevalent theme throughout the whole film festival. Topics included in the project range from environmental sustainability to recreational outdoor sports.
AJ Styles in the WWE. That sentence itself is hard enough to fathom but it became reality when Styles was announced as the third entry in this past Sunday’s Royal Rumble. The longtime TNA stalwart finally made his way to the WWE after a couple of years traversing through the independent wrestling scene and New Japan Pro Wrestling.
Video games have always been a passion for Jason Montoya and Simon Kubiak. The two longtime friends played video games on a regular basis growing up, and Montoya used to hold weekly tournaments at his parent’s house during high school. Those events got so big that eventually Montoya had to find an actual venue for hosting tourneys. That love for video games has now led Montoya and Kubiak to start up Stream House ABQ, the idea of the company is to give gamers a chance to actually become professionals by livestreaming games and creating YouTube content while living in Stream House.
Long after Quentin Tarantino’s career is said and done – no matter how polarized the debate over his impact on cinema – film nerds and students alike might very well turn to his latest picture, The Hateful Eight, as the one that is the most Tarantino-esque in his catalog. That is to say, a gritty, consistently suspenseful, dialogue-drowned opus that blends multiple genres together in ways no one else can, and in a manner that is immensely satisfying, whether that satisfaction comes from bullets or from sheer filmmaking brawn. Tarantino’s eighth feature begins with bounty hunter John Ruth, otherwise known as “The Hangman”, transporting the captured Daisy Domergue to Red Rock to collect his reward, but not before running into old acquaintances and being forced to stop for shelter along the way at Minnie’s Haberdashery due to a storm.
After 25 years, a former curator for UNM has returned to collaborate with various artists around the country on projects that help publicize lithography. Diana Gaston recently transitioned from the position of lead curator at Fidelity Investments in Boston, to the director of Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque. Gaston originally started as a curator at UNM and soon found herself working for Fidelity’s Investments Corporate Art Collection as a curator. Gaston now begins the position at Tamarind while enjoying her return to New Mexico.
In the past, the WWE’s Royal Rumble has served as a golden opportunity for surprise appearances and victories. This year’s Royal Rumble match, which for the first time ever is for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, doesn’t have that feel to it. There really isn’t anything set up right now that makes fans feel that something big will happen. Maybe that's because by the time the Royal Rumble match itself starts, the fans will already know who more than half the entrants will be. Or it might be the fact that the Royal Rumble will be entirely focused on WWE champion Roman Reigns, who will enter the match as the No. 1, struggling to fight off 29 other competitors.
The New Mexico spirit squad knows it’s an uphill battle for them when participating at competitions This past weekend at UCA & UDA College Cheerleading and Dance Team National Championship in Orlando, UNM fell just short of making it into the finals in its three divisions. The Lobos participated in the Division I Small Coed, Large Coed Division and the Division IA Jazz. Even though UNM didn’t advance in any of the three divisions, second-year program coordinator Kelly Grice said the team improved on its scores from last season and that’s more important in the long run.
Much has been said about what the cast and crew of The Revenant had to endure while shooting the film: working in freezing temperatures outside the cozy confines of a typical studio, only having about an hour and a half each day to shoot scenes in natural light, literally going around the world just to find some snow. Leonardo DiCaprio's quest for his first Oscar sent him on a journey as desperate as the character he plays.
Many students dream of finally earning their degree and starting their dream job. A lot of those students wonder what it will be like – will all this work be worth it?
Pop icon David Bowie died on Sunday at just 69 years old, after an 18-month-long battle with liver cancer. The rock legend touch many lives with his music, fashion and innovation. Bowie played his final Albuquerque show at Tingley Coliseum in 2013, but fans and mourners can relive that concert here with the complete show set list:
The WWE has always had a penchant for falling back on old gimmicks and characters. That’s always been true for wrestling in general because it’s much easier to go back to something established, and the return of Vince McMahon’s onscreen character is no different. Yes, the owner of the largest wrestling company in the world made his TV comeback right before the calendar turned to the new year. It marked the first time in more than a year that the WWE chairman graced audiences with his presence.
On Friday night, Hayley Horowitz’s struggling chapter will come to a close. While obtaining a college degree is a valued milestone for the majority of college graduates, Horowitz’s journey to reach the plateau is unlike most. Horowitz has not completed a grade following sixth, when she left her house at the age of 13, and was forced to endure her teenage years as a member of the homeless community.
One UNM student, with the deck stacked against her, will graduate this semester and chase her dreams farther than she ever imagined. Daniela Romero was born in New Mexico and grew up in a one-parent home, she said. However, it wasn’t her parent who raised her, but her great grandmother.
Setting goals is often considered the first step when working toward achieving something in life. For one student, the goal of graduating college was apparent early on, posted on the bulletin board in her bedroom while she was still attending Rio Rancho High School. Even after switching majors, Jocelyn Fafard will graduate with a Bachelor of Applied Science in family studies in just three and a half years on Saturday. Fafard said college was on her mind early, and she was fortunate to have parents that provided strong support along the way.
After a long journey fighting numerous physical disabilities, Christmas is coming early for one UNM senior, and it’s in the form of a bachelor’s degree in economics. Ian Christmas will graduate from UNM this month, finishing his undergraduate studies with a 3.51 GPA. The road to graduation has been a challenging one: Christmas said he suffered a life-changing knee injury two weeks before graduating from One Station Unit Training at Fort Benning, Georgia as a U.S. Army infantryman in 1997.
Maria Andrea Aguilar is graduating from the College of Arts and Sciences this month, and she took a not-so-traditional path to her Spanish degree, completing the requirements in just two and a half years. Aguilar said that she has always known what is she capable of, and she always try to meet her goals. “I knew it would be possible for me to obtain my degree in less than four years, and therefore I had to do my best to do it,” she said.
Albuquerque residents sporting red AIDS ribbons and clothing gathered at the Old Town Plaza Tuesday night for the second annual candlelight vigil in honor of World AIDS Day. Candles were lit in honor of loved ones who lost their lives to the disease while the Highland High School Choir and the New Mexico Gay Men’s Chorus sang songs of love and peace and listeners shielded their flames from the cold wind.
Solutions by The State News
