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A Star is Born Review

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In his directorial debut and her first ever major movie role, Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga shine in A Star is Born. Offering performances that will undoubtedly receive multiple award nominations, the duo play on each other’s strengths as an actor and musician to deliver the definitive version of the 1937 film of the same name.

Cooper portrays rock star Jackson Maine who discovers Gaga’s character, Ally, while she performs one night at a local drag bar after her shift as a restaurant worker. Her unrecognized talent as a singer doesn’t stop her from performing there every week, but when they lock eyes during her performance, time slows down and it’s clear Jackson sees something in her. What follows is an intimate journey as Jackson helps Ally discover herself as an artist that leads to her own fame and success she’s always dreamed of. The two fall in love in the process, but Jackson’s long battle with addiction and alcoholism cause strain on their relationship the audience gets to see unfold.

Watching the film and seeing Cooper portray a character go through such a real struggle that every generation has seen claim the lives of so many great musicians left me feeling as helpless as his character. As the fourth remake of the original 1937 film, the story isn’t meant to be original, but it shows just how familiar we are as a culture with watching the stars we love battle with their demons in the limelight. Cooper’s version of the film tells a story people can still learn from so the next time they witness or know someone struggling with addiction, they can have a better understanding of what it’s like and try to empathize.

The biggest strengths of the film are undoubtedly its soundtrack and musical performances that were shot live at real festivals and concerts. The film’s opening sequence of Cooper rocking out and performing to a screaming crowd instantly showcased his remarkable transformation from actor to musician, and the soundtrack solidifies Gaga as one of the most versatile artists of this generation, The film’s lead hit single “Shallow” not only sparks the beginning of Ally’s career in the film, but is also one of Gaga’s greatest hits she shares with Cooper. With hard rock songs like “Diggin’ My Grave” and “Black Eyes,” country songs like “Music to My Eyes,” and pop songs like “Hair Body Face” and “Why Did You Do That?,” there is a song for nearly everyone to enjoy.

With a runtime of 2 hours and 15 minutes, the film felt lengthy and slow at times, but the musical performances typically broke up any monotony found later in the story.

A Star is Born succeeds in telling a familiar story of love, passion, family, fame, and struggle that will have you leaving the theater in admiration for both Cooper and Gaga’s honest performances they clearly gave their all. Believe in the hype and catch this must see movie in theaters while you still can!

Dia De Los Muertos

UNR Celebrates Día de los Muertos

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The beginning of Halloween not only brings out the costume themed parties and the cute kids dressed in adorable costumes, it also brings out the Day of the Dead festivities.

It is believed that the veil between the land of the living and the afterlife is the weakest, beginning the night of Halloween. The deceased are then able to visit with their families for 24 hours.

Let me start off by saying that El Día de los Muertos is not the Mexican version of Halloween. This two day holiday celebrates the lives of the deceased with fiestas and offerings to those who have made the long journey from the afterlife to Earth.

“Many Latin American families’ altars are done so privately and intimately, but you sit around and eat food and share stories about the people on the altar. It’s a way for people to keep their memories alive,” said Ricky Salazar, program coordinator at The Center on the university’s campus.

These practices originated thousands of years ago from the Aztecs, who considered mourning the dead to be disrespectful. Instead, they celebrate life and the lives of those who have passed.

“We do it in such a festive way that it becomes happy, even when it’s sad. It’s an attempt to honor their memories and share their stories,” said Salazar. They commemorate the dead with altars, or ofrendas in Spanish. They decorate the altars to welcome back the dead to the land of the living. Each are personalized by their own family, but most will contain some sort of food or drink to give to the travelers as a reward for the long journey.

The Center for Cultural Diversity hosted their own event on Wednesday October 25th for groups of students to make their own altar. The groups were provided tools and supplies needed such as paper, candles, sugar skulls, flowers, plastic tablecloths, and banners.

The altars will be up from October 25th to November 1st. On the 1st of November, they held a reception where they crowned the best altar.

First place winner was Lambda Theta Pi, a latino fraternity on campus.

“For me, it’s the notion of connecting student to their roots. Most students know but don’t understand El Día de los Muertos. My job is to help them explore and learn their identity through events like this,” Salazar concluded.

Apartment Building in England

An American in England: Dealing With The Differences

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I remember writing pessimistically at eighteen about the things I had yet to accomplish and how I never saw myself reaching the day I would. I was overwhelmed by my decision of attending college in the fall. I felt that college was a pause and not a stepping stone to a brilliant future. I thought about all of the people I read biographies and memoirs on and compared my life at eighteen to theirs. I wasn’t a struggling artist or someone’s muse. I wasn’t moving across the country in the name of rebellion or forming a band. I was just doing what was expected after graduating high school. I had other ideas, though. I dreamt of traveling the world; I wanted to meet the rats of New York, have a drink in an English pub, run down the streets of Spain, and lead an extraordinary life full of creativity and travel. I wanted to live a life worth writing about. Though at the time I felt that college was getting in the way, it was actually granting me opportunities. Thanks to college, I’m studying abroad today. Writing to you from London, England. My home for the school year.

I decided to study abroad the spring of my freshman year. I sat in my dorm with my friends one night and I mentioned that I wanted to go on holiday and do something different with my life for awhile, but I couldn’t because school postponed my plans until graduation. My friends suggested I look into study abroad. I grabbed my laptop and started scrolling through the programs USAC offered to students. I saw that England was one of the options. It was then I decided that studying abroad was going to happen. I told them it was meant to be. I chose England because I had always been fascinated by our common language, but vast difference in culture. Also, The Beatles (my favorite band) were from England. There were four options in England, but I chose London. I figured it I was going to do this thing, I had to do right and go to the city where things happen. I couldn’t wait to join the London groove.

This “London groove” has been harder to join than I expected. I underestimated the differences and thought I was going to have the confidence I have in the states, in England. The United States and England share the same language, but share nothing else. Coming here for school, I was aware of the grading differences, but I figured the rest was nothing to be thrown off by. Since freshman year, I have studied in Reno and have gotten to understand how UNR runs its campus. Studying abroad is like being a college freshman again. You have to learn a whole new routine, understand a new campus, meet different people, and ask basic questions all over again. Below are the differences and similarities I’ve noted between London Metropolitan University and the University of Nevada, Reno.

  1. The Look: Reno has given UNR its own area in the city and because of the strip of buildings and dorms, UNR is a community and Reno has become a college town. London Met is just a few buildings tucked between the streets of London. Barely squeezing it. I can’t blame them, though. This can be seen in other major cities in the world like New York and San Francisco. Universities become buildings that blend with the rest of the city’s landscape.
  2. Class Locations: At London Met, we don’t really have college specific buildings. We have one main building where all classes take place. It’s a large and confusing building, but everything can be found! I’ve been enrolled for a month now, but I still have trouble finding my English class in the mornings.
  3. Class Times: Your class is only once a week and three hours long. I have one class a day, but for three hours that consists of lecture, break, and exercises or more discussion. Though it sounds terrible compared to our fifty minute lectures, it’s not too bad if you have a passionate instructor/professor who engages the class.
  4. The Professors: After some misleading research online, I thought my professors and instructors were going to be dismissive and unwilling to help. Fortunately, my professors/instructors are kind and willing to help. Like UNR, they encourage you to visit them during their office hours. I’ve only spotted two major differences: they’re much quieter and a bit more reserved.
  5. Workload and Expectations: Weekly quizzes and assignments aren’t really a thing at London Metropolitan. If we do have an assignment, it’s mostly just for practice and we have a week to do it. It sounds easy and peaceful, but it’s actually more arduous than it seems. Reading is critical and required. You must read a great amount of texts per week and per class. Though you’re not being tested on them at the moment, your final projects (where your final grade really comes from) will reflect how much you studied throughout the semester. Like UNR, accountability is key if you want good grades. Both universities have high expectations for their students.
  6. School Spirit: I think massive school pride is an American thing. We don’t have mascots, fall football games, and or students running around in London Met gear. I kinda miss the wolf pack pride.
  7. Resources: People walk or take the tube, so there aren’t things like the silver or blue line. If you need to go to the London Met Moorgate campus and you live the north campus, you have to take the tube. London Met does have a library, counseling, a student union, and advice centers.
  8. The Food: Since UNR is its own little community, we have places to grab food on campus. At London Met, I’m only aware of two or three different areas that serve food. It’s mostly cold food like sandwiches, warm pastries, tea and coffee, and crisps (chips), though. Because the campus is located on a busy road, there are many restaurants you could easily access by stepping outside.
Alan

Pack Profile: Alan Deutchman

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Journalism Professor Extraordinaire

In the suburban town of Woodbridge, New Jersey, 13-year-old Alan Deutchman sat in the back of his father’s car as they drove down to the News Tribune office to meet the paper’s Editor-in-Chief. Alan’s father, Hal, had recently called the paper asking if there were any employment opportunities for his son, but the paper responded by saying there were no paper delivery boy positions available at the moment.

After Hal explained that his young son didn’t want to deliver the paper but rather write in it, the News Tribune found the whole situation to be so humorous that they brought Alan in to discuss potential writing opportunities. But Alan had his first pitch ready to go: A profile on his 7th grade science teacher who wrote a song on how to teach the metric system, and thus Alan had his first writing gig even before entering high school.

Alan recalls being interested in reading and writing from a very young age. Growing up in the suburbs of New York City, he remembers his parents having a subscription of The New York Times and always reading it at breakfast. His love for reporting and storytelling translated into his production of a classroom newspaper in second grade, a published poem in Highlights Magazine, and, of course, his big break at the end of middle school with the News Tribune.

Throughout high school Alan continued to publish work with the News Tribune, writing cover stories for the weekend section as he continued to grow as a writer. After graduation he attended Princeton University.

During his college years Alan wrote for a slew of campus publications including Princeton Alumni Weekly, Daily Princetonian, and Business Today. Alan also spent a lot of his time writing song lyrics and comedy sketches for student theater productions.

By the time Deutchman was ready to graduate from college, he already had an impressive resume of summer internships including The Wall Street Journal, US News and World Report, American Society of Magazine Editors, was actively writing for Newsweek, and had written and published a book when he was 18 on how to get college scholarships, giving him a real taste in professional writing. Yet, Deutchman recalls still struggling to landing his first job.

“I applied to big city newspapers because I wanted to report and write my own stories, and they all said call back when you’ve had four to seven years of professional experience and I didn’t want to go back to a small town newspaper — I had been doing that since I was 14,” said Deutchman.

So Deutchman took a risk and used the money his parents had saved up for him to go to grad school and moved to an apartment in New York instead in hopes of meeting the right people and getting the right opportunities.

Just when Deutchman began to feel like he was making the wrong move and spending his grad school money on nothing, he landed a job as a fact checker and researcher for Fortune Magazine.

In addition to working as a fact checker, Deutchman would spend his nights and weekends crafting story pitches and sharing them in meetings only to have his story ideas assigned to other writers. But soon enough an idea of reporting on venture capital gave Deutchman the chance to fly across the country and write his first big story for Fortune.

After a couple years of fact checking, Deutchman got promoted to staff writer and wrote his first cover story for the magazine on 25-year-olds and their attitudes towards business. Deutchman recalls the issue doing incredibly well in part because one of the guys he interviewed looked like a young Tom Cruise and having him on the cover was a nice contrast from the usual old guys on the cover of Fortune.

With Fortune, Deutchman moved out to San Francisco to become the magazine’s west coast correspondent at the perfect time – when the Internet started to come into fruition which allowed him to do reporting in Seattle, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, and beyond as the Internet and tech became something everyone was interested in reading.

After four years of working in New York and three years working in San Francisco, Deutchman wanted a change. “When I turned 30 I thought ‘I just spent my 20s writing for business magazines’ and it was great experience, but there were so many other things I was interested in writing about like arts and culture, politics, and I wanted to go in a creative, literary direction with my writing,” he said.

During his year as a freelance writer in San Francisco, Deutchman received some of the wackiest story assignments which involved visiting a prison and almost getting arrested.

He received an assignment from Details Magazine to write about street prostitution in San Francisco near Union Square where street walkers were everywhere. The city created a program where they’d send police women undercover as prostitutes, and when men would solicit their services the police women would arrest them.

For punishment, the men could either go to jail or attend a class that would educate them on the societal effects of prostitution and why it’s harmful. With the green light from the head of the vice squad, Deutchman just needed permission from the district attorney in order to sit in on the educational class.

“I called and left messages, and she wouldn’t return my calls,” said Deutchman, “I would put on a suit and go down and hang out in the office, but there was no way to get through and my deadline was coming. I was a freelance writer, I needed my articles to get published to make money so I could pay my rent.”

In the meantime Deutchman interviewed the public defender who hated the program. He remembers her saying that if he went out with her on a Saturday she’d point out one of the undercover police women, and then he could go up to her and solicit her services. The undercover cop would then arrest him, so he could be in the class.

“I called my editor in New York and asked ‘is it okay if I commit a misdemeanor, a crime to get the story’ and they were like ‘yeah go for it,’ but then the district attorney called me back and let me sit in on the class, so I didn’t have to go get arrested to get the story,” said Deutchman.

That’s not the only time Deutchman came close to getting arrested for a story. Years after the prostitution story, Deutchman received an assignment from GQ to interview Sam Waksal, the man who conspired with Martha Stewart on the insider trading case, in a men’s minimum security prison. After Waksal’s family declined an interview, Deutchman decided to just go down to the prison and find Waksal hanging out.

Sure enough there were no fences, and the prisoners were just walking around. Before Deutchman could find Waksal, the prison guards brought him in for questioning.

“That was pretty funny because I had never been to a minimum security prison before, and it was the summer and I was wearing what I usually wear which is khaki pants, running shoes, a navy blue t-shirt, and a plain baseball hat, which is just kind of how I dress, and I didn’t realize that’s how the prisoners dress,” said Deutchman, “When you go to visit you’re not allowed to dress like that because you’ll look like one of the prisoners which I didn’t know any of that.”

Fortunately the guards let Deutchman off with a warning as he avoided jail time yet again.

Throughout the rest of his time freelancing, Deutchman wrote stories for The New York Times Magazine and Wired as well. But with the unpredictability of payment while freelancing full time, he moved to New York once again to take a job as a senior writer with GQ where he had his own column about business called The Profit Motive.

After a few years working for GQ it was back to San Francisco for Deutchman. This time around he had stable work as a contributing editor for GQ, Vanity Fair, and New York Magazine. He also pursued a literary direction at this point in his life writing books including The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, A Tale of Two Valleys, Change or Die, Walk the Walk, and How Steve Jobs Changed Our World.

Throughout the entirety of his writing career Deutchman always felt like he’d eventually want to teach, too. “My father was a professor for 45 years, so I grew up going to his university, watching him teach, liking being on campus, and I always had the idea that at some point I’d like to be a professor,” he said.

When he got into his 40s Deutchman’s father kept sending him job listings of professorships around the country and asked him what he was waiting for. After sending Deutchman all of these listings, Hal called his son up on the phone and said the journalism professorship at the University of Nevada, Reno, would be perfect for him.

Deutchman remembers taking a closer look at the job because of Reno’s proximity to the San Francisco Bay Area, but after coming out for the job visit he discovered he liked the faculty, had a good feeling, and took the job as the Donald W. Reynolds Professor of Business Journalism in January 2011.

In his seven years of teaching at UNR he’s taught classes in business journalism, magazine writing, multimedia reporting, and created a relatively new course called “Narrative: The Art of Storytelling”.

Deutchman’s favorite course to teach by far is magazine writing. “I love how in that course it creates a community of practice where the students contribute so much to each other and are so supportive and encouraging of each other’s writing, and it develops that dynamic where they respect and trust each other,” he said.

His advice to students now is “Don’t wait around for someone to tell you ‘you are a journalist’ or ‘you’re a writer’. No one is going to appoint you. You need people to give you opportunities or to mentor you, but you have to kind of know that this is who you are, and this is what you do with passion, with great energy, and commitment to your field,” he said.

In addition, he said finding a good mentor to help guide you through your career, having one to two great samples of your work, and developing subject matter expertise is crucial for a successful career as a writer.

With a daughter in first grade, Deutchman says he’ll be in Reno for a while and hopes to finish out his career teaching at the Reynolds School of Journalism.

Math Center table board

UNR’s Campus Resources

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There are many free resources on campus ready to aid undergraduate students in their academic, financial, and emotional endeavors, yet many students don’t know about or choose to utilize them. Here are some of the great organizations at the student body’s fingertips.

The University Writing and Speaking Center: The UWSC is open six days a week to assist with all types of writing, from a lab report to a personal statement. In addition, the UWSC provides support for ideas, speeches, and presentations related to public speaking. Located on the third floor of the PSAC in suite 350, this center offers writing feedback through conversation rather than the standard red-pen-edited work that can be one-sided in an academic setting.

The Math Center: UNR’s students know math can be challenging ó but a lot less so with the help from the Math Center. Open six days a week right across from the Writing and Speaking Center, the Math Center allows for one-on-one assistance, class-wide review sessions, and a friendly environment that students can thrive in to promote success in their math-related courses.

The Tutoring Center: Also on the third floor of the PSAC sits the Tutoring Center, an organization dedicated to helping students learn a variety of subjects. Through 50-minute sessions, study groups, and walk-in appointments, the Tutoring Center offers assistance for subjects ranging from business to foreign language from experienced, high-achieving students.

E.L. Wiegand Fitness Center: Stress can get to even the most dedicated students, and many find relief in exercising at the gym. The E.L. Wiegand Fitness Center offers an expansive 108,000 square foot space equipped with basketball courts, cardio equipment, a weightlifting area, and a 1/8th mile running track. In addition, they offer drop-in classes including acroyoga, Zumba, CrossFit, and more.

The Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center: The campus library, more often referred to as the KC, is an expansive building that offers databases, book checkout, and computers equipped with Adobe Creative Cloud. Perhaps most important, the library offers areas for quiet study, so you can feel ready for tests in an environment free of the distractions of campus life. The KC is open seven days a week and is large enough to accommodate for the influx of students cramming for exams right around finals.

Counseling Services: Students cope with many things during their collegiate years, and Counseling Services are available to all students who need an extra hand. With group therapy, self-help resources, outreach activities, and individual counseling, students are able to seek help with stress, grief, and other circumstances in order to promote academic and personal success. Students are able to make an appointment, complete an anonymous, personal health screening, or experience the virtual relaxation room through visiting unr.edu/counseling.

Student Health Center: The university’s Student Health Center is no stranger to campus flu season or the strange cough developed from life in a dorm, but rather, offers resources to prevent and remedy health concerns. Students are able to make free, one-on-one consultations by phone to assess any health issue in total anonymity. In addition, the Student Health Center offers free flu shots around campus, and will post their immunization dates and locations online starting in October. Complete with a fully stocked pharmacy and an efficient, same-day appointment system, students are able to tend to their healthy quickly and easily.