Students’ Big-screen Dreams Shine at the Sun City Film Festival

EL PASO, Texas — The Sun City Film festival, supposedly a biannual event, seemed forgotten after a three-year absence, but finally it came back to life giving student film makers another opportunity to show El Paso their movie-making skills. Patrick Mullins, senior lecturer in the Communication department at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), first envisioned the festival as a biannual event, but things did not exactly turn out the way he had planned. “It had been three years. I think the original idea was if not a yearly than to have a biannual festival and because of other projects three years have gone by,” Mullins said. “We thought it was high time to have a student film festival here on campus again.”

The Sun City Film festival came back —April 30-May 1—and the response to it from the student filmmakers was positive.

Miner Fans — Show Pride in the Orange and Blue and Support Your Teams

EL PASO, Texas — Taking a page out of Peter Griffin’s book of “you know what grinds my gears?” is our fan base here at UTEP. Our fan base has to be one of the worst fan bases in all of sports! You ask why? Well it’s because we have a fan base that is made up of a bunch of complainers and fair weather fans. We have the only fan base that I know of, that calls into a sports show and complains about an extra surcharge on tickets.

Video Game Playing — Addiction or Just Plain Fun?

EL PASO, Texas — Equipped with a sniper rifle and shotgun, a Spartan II soldier takes one furtive step at a time under a blistering sun, trying to elude the enemy. Suddenly, he sees an enemy soldier and he goes to fire his weapon — but it’s too late — and a kill-shot to the head drops him on the spot. “Headshot,” the sniper yells out as six friends — all in their 20’s — in two teams of three players battle in the virtual warfare of Halo3. Playing video games, a way of life for the six of them, dominates their free time. But parents and doctors wonder if this behavior amounts to a dangerous addiction or just social interaction.