The University of New Mexico’s duck pond is a fun and accessible location to practice nature photography. I will take photos of the animals in the area while waiting for my friends to get out of class, or when I have some free time.
Time to whip out your Ativan: auteur-at-large Ari Aster has returned for his third feature film, “Beau is Afraid.” Back at his old vices of troublesome familial dynamics and brutal weirdness, Aster now formats them into a hero’s journey with a darkly comic edge. “Beau is Afraid” is a valiant experiment diminished by its own bloated runtime and unsatisfying, loopy narrative structure. The film follows the titular Beau Wasserman (Joaquin Phoenix), an anxious and solitary man, as he attempts to return home for the burial of his overbearing mother Mona Wasserman. Along the way, he is plunged into a variety of surreal, tooth-pulling nightmare scenarios which serve to reaffirm Beau’s various Freudian neuroses.
Recently, the Daily Lobo ran an unjustly harsh review of the Cherry Reel Film Festival. Implicit bias was shown in the review, and while not intentional, ultimately the majority of the films we labeled as “disappointments” were made by students of color. This is meant to serve as an explanation of what happened, why it was wrong and how we are working to prevent this from happening again. The film industry is a white-dominated field. In 2019, only 14.4% of the directors of theatrical films were people of color and 91% of studio heads were white, according to Variety. The University of New Mexico and the film and digital arts program are both majority-minority and Cherry Reel is predominantly run by white students.
How much does a fan owe their team? Unconditional love and support? Buying concessions at a game? $10 a month until the end of time? University of New Mexico head football coach Danny Gonzalez recently announced a partnership with 505 Sports Venture Foundation — a local nonprofit dedicated to getting student-athletes endorsements and name, image and likeness deals — to create a new name, image and likeness collective with a subscription-based model. An NIL collective is a pool of money made up of smaller donations from fans and boosters. The money is then distributed to the players with the use of a third party to work around the fact that universities can’t pay their players directly.
If you thought television was a safe space from the reboot/remake/sequel bug of blockbuster filmmaking right now, you might want to check again. On Wednesday, April 12, Warner Bros. Discovery announced that a new Harry Potter television series is in development for the also newly announced combined HBO Max and Discovery+ streaming service, Max. Exactly a week later on Wednesday, April 19, Lionsgate TV announced that a new Twilight TV series is also in development for an unannounced network/streaming service.
Don’t bet against success. “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” brings adorable adaptations of the Mario characters to the silver screen for all audiences alike — from children and families to the most devoted Mushroom Kingdom gamers. Illumination’s animation style captures highly detailed depictions of the characters and the Mario universe, giving the audience background into the gaming environments that defined many of our childhoods. But if you think this movie is an attempt to encourage viewers to play more Mario games through nostalgia, you’re right.
Albuquerque Museum’s exhibition “Journey West: Danny Lyon” features 175 masterworks of photography, film and montage from celebrated American photographer Danny Lyon. His work on display spans a 60-year career and encompasses a wide range of topics. The exhibit draws from his series on the Civil Rights Movement, the Chicago Outlaw Motorcycle Club, the Texas prison system, various protests, and some of his more recent work on fires, drought and climate change in New Mexico.
If I had to pick an up-and-coming film trend bound to dominate both theaters and streaming platforms for the next couple of years, it would have to be the “nostalgia-ridden biopic featuring varyingly successful creative choices that feel subversive and fun for a subgenre largely dedicated to recounting real life stories.” This could describe a number of films released in recent years (2022’s “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story,” 2023’s “Tetris” and “Paint”). This list certainly includes “Air,” a film that is, if not anything else, moderately entertaining.
Yomi Tafdor’s newly released poetry collection “Bend Skin” combines prose with beautifully complex traditional poetry and rhythm, and small, full-color abstract art by illustrator Nujhat Adrita. Much of Tadfor’s poetry is based around her identity and the way it has changed over time. Tafdor, a current student at the University of New Mexico, is originally from Cameroon. Much of her poetry is about the lived experience of marginalized people in the United States and the way her experiences have influenced her sense of individuality and personhood.
In Lana Del Rey’s new album, “Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd,” released on March 24, she insists we are wrong about her. Del Rey embodies an attitude that succeeds in representing the violence and anxieties of girlhood, but fails to respond to her history of cultural appropriation. She fills 1 hour and 17 minutes with conflicted representations of family, memory and legacy. Her song “Grandfather please stand on the shoulders of my father while he’s deep-sea fishing,” the 11th song on the album, begins by confronting common claims about her manufactured identity into her lyricism: “I know they think that it took somebody else to make me beautiful … but they’re wrong.”
As midterms wrap up and the semester progresses, many students may find themselves burnt out or exhausted. David Hernandez, a third-year vocal performance and international studies student at the University of New Mexico, gave his tips on how he takes time to relax and be present as the second half of the semester starts. Yoga Yoga is a spiritual and physical practice that can be meditative and offer peace of mind, along with being a way to stretch and care for your body. Recently getting back into practicing yoga, Hernandez said it gives him a reason to wake up early and de-stress before the day.
The Albuquerque Isotopes unveiled their new concessions items for the upcoming 2023 season on Friday, March 24. Hungry fans can rest easy: almost everything sampled was a homerun. The executive chef of the ballpark, Jim Griego, crafted these new food creations; his inspiration came from wanting to give fans variety. “I wanted fans to feel like when they came to the park, there was choices. There were not just, a hot dog or a hamburger,” Griego said. “I wanted them to feel like they could come here and have a food destination.”
When I taught expository writing at the University of New Mexico in 2018, my students read “Animal Farm” by George Orwell. A staple of most high school English classes in the U.S., a lot of students dismiss the book as being just “a fairy story.” A few students asked me why they had to read it again in college, and I asked them to be patient and see if they could glean anything new. Once you understand a story’s plot, you can focus on dialogue, setting, characterization, theme, historical context — all elements of a good story that point a reader toward its deeper ideas.
The newest album by Fall Out Boy, titled “So Much (For) Stardust,” proves it was never just a phase, mom. The eighth album sees the band going back to their earlier work in more ways than one without feeling played out. The album feels like a reaffirmation by the band of what made them great with the intent to move forward. This album balances long ballads with shorter pieces of spoken poetry and monologues. This album is longer than the band's previous three albums with 13 tracks coming in at a total of 44 minutes and 20 seconds. Fall Out Boy makes good use of the time, repeating themes of moving on — but still holding on — throughout the album.
Oh, how we’ve missed you, 100 gecs. If you’ve been present in the online sphere since the duo, made up of Laura Les and Dylan Brady, released their first single, you’ve probably had at least one conversation with friends about whether the pair’s music is genuinely good or just a grating, mildly funny joke. Regardless, the group’s latest outing “10,000 gecs” proves that they’re here to stay, retaining the skilled production and irreverent self-awareness that made their debut so captivating while proving to have even more tricks up their sleeve.
In Arlene Goldbard’s book, “In the Camp of Angels of Freedom,” published on Jan, 24,, Goldbard asks her readers: what does it mean to be educated? In her book, she mixes personal narrative, political observation and portrait paintings; the combination of these highlights how her ideas of education have shifted and formed through personal experience; however, the final product is murky. The book has eleven essays, each focusing on one of her angels. Goldbard explains that her concept of angels comes from the Hebrew word “malakhim,” which, in Jewish mysticism, “are messengers between worlds, translating spiritual energy from the highest realms to the earth bound,” according to the book. Goldbard organizes her angels in a camp, in which the angels communicate a singular message that embodies a specific aspect of her personal ideology.
There’s a certain lifeless element to the modern blockbuster that’s difficult to pin down. Culprit not discussed often enough are the set designers and dressers; when done well, their work lends a deeper and more nuanced understanding to the characters and themes. When done poorly, it can kill a film. Though our on screen characters are hotter than ever, there’s an increased sterility in the way they move through their worlds; their arcs feel flat, their emotional situations contrived and their relationships to each other underdeveloped. Some of these issues originate from the performers themselves, but even more from the directors, screenwriters and producers who push out low-quality schlock with little regard for culture or art. There’s no question about it; something is rotten in the state of the blockbuster.
The past decade has seen a significant uptick in the popularity of secondhand shopping. Thrift stores have seen more traffic than ever due to an increase in trendiness and a decrease in the taboo of buying used, according to NPR. Run-of-the-mill thrift stores are now seeing a new generation of shoppers with different ways of thrifting, and the industry is having to shift in response. According to ThredUp’s Resale Market and Trend Report, the secondhand resale market saw an uptick of 58% in 2021, meaning supply and demand, as well as inflation, have caused these “shifts” to affect a good portion of low-income households.
Solutions by The State News
