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WEREDEER Comedy horror - review
Weredeer is a 2022 comedy horror film about a young woman that gets bitten by a deer and begins to change when the moon is full. Directed and co-produced by Andrew Dyson from a screenplay co-written with T.C. De Witt and Blair Hoyle. Also produced by Matt Kiser. The movie stars Anna Broadway, Tierney Leigh Cody, Blair Hoyle, Katie King, Matt Kiser, John Lineberry, Ian F. Scott, Tyler Stafford,…
Horror Tease: Grimmwood poster
Horror Tease: Grimmwood poster
The Slash Gang Productions crew is back with an urban legend feature from the team of Matt Kiser and Blair Hoyle. GRIMMWOOD follows a journalist and his sister seeking the truth behind a town that’s cursed from a witch execution some time ago. As of now production will start in November and the first poster has been released. Look for more updates in the near future and check out the poster ahead.
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“[W]hat if we recovered the more positive aspects of the biblical sexual ethic, paying attention to the God who says, ‘Do this, not that’? When Jesus told his disciples that they should be known for the quality of their love, he did not give them a pass on how they showed love in sexual relations. If we are called to strive for self-giving, self-denying, other-serving love in general, then this must surely apply as much to sexuality as to hospitality and friendship.
What would recovering this aspect of the biblical sexual ethic look like? It would undoubtedly mean a shift in teaching and writing. But hopefully it would also mean far more than that. Ideas only go so far—and when it comes to sex, they often don't go far at all. That's because, as James K. A. Smith argues in his provocative book Desiring the Kingdom, ‘worldview’-focused responses to sin are usually doomed from the start because they misapprehend the nature of our humanity. They assume that we are primarily thinking beings whose problems can be corrected either by correcting our thinking or by trying harder to think the right thoughts.
But as Smith vividly conveys, the most powerful forces at work on us—all the more potent for the stealth with which they operate—are anything but ideas. They don't win because they have the most persuasive arguments for our brains. They win because they're embedded in highly embodied practices. As Smith puts it,
‘While the mall, Victoria's Secret, and Jerry Bruckheimer are grabbing hold of our gut (kardia) by means of our body and its senses—in stories and images, sights and sound, and commercial versions of 'smells and bells'—the church's response is oddly rationalist. It plunks us down in a 'worship' service, the culmination of which is a forty-five-minute didactic sermon, a sort of holy lecture, trying to convince us of the dangers by implanting doctrines and beliefs in our minds …. While secular liturgies are after our hearts through our bodies, the church thinks it only has to get into our heads. While Victoria's Secret is fanning a flame in our kardia, the church is trucking water to our minds.’
This, I would respectfully submit, is why so much of the church's teaching on sexuality has failed to accomplish its aim—greater submission to God in this part of our lives—and why each new hand-wringing piece, even if it runs to the length of a book, does little better. Content-dumps have little effectiveness in a general pedagogical sense, much less when their aim is to constrain some of the most deeply embodied desires in life.
If Smith is right, as I think he is, and it is actually practices, habits, liturgies (in his parlance) that have the most power to shape our daily lives and even beliefs (though their true shape may often be hidden from us until a situation where our actions spell a surprising manifesto), what then are the practices that cultivate and foster in us, the body of God, a more distinctively loving sexuality? What are the practices we, the church, might take up—or resume—to encourage greater bodily obedience to God in our sexuality?”
— Anna Broadway, Practicing Trust: The self-giving ethos of biblical sexuality
excerpt:
“[W]hat if we recovered the more positive aspects of the biblical sexual ethic, paying attention to the God who says, ‘Do this, not that’? When Jesus told his disciples that they should be known for the quality of their love, he did not give them a pass on how they showed love in sexual relations. If we are called to strive for self-giving, self-denying, other-serving love in general, then this must surely apply as much to sexuality as to hospitality and friendship.
What would recovering this aspect of the biblical sexual ethic look like? It would undoubtedly mean a shift in teaching and writing. But hopefully it would also mean far more than that. Ideas only go so far—and when it comes to sex, they often don't go far at all. That's because, as James K. A. Smith argues in his provocative book Desiring the Kingdom, ‘worldview’-focused responses to sin are usually doomed from the start because they misapprehend the nature of our humanity. They assume that we are primarily thinking beings whose problems can be corrected either by correcting our thinking or by trying harder to think the right thoughts.
But as Smith vividly conveys, the most powerful forces at work on us—all the more potent for the stealth with which they operate—are anything but ideas. They don't win because they have the most persuasive arguments for our brains. They win because they're embedded in highly embodied practices. As Smith puts it,
‘While the mall, Victoria's Secret, and Jerry Bruckheimer are grabbing hold of our gut (kardia) by means of our body and its senses—in stories and images, sights and sound, and commercial versions of 'smells and bells'—the church's response is oddly rationalist. It plunks us down in a 'worship' service, the culmination of which is a forty-five-minute didactic sermon, a sort of holy lecture, trying to convince us of the dangers by implanting doctrines and beliefs in our minds …. While secular liturgies are after our hearts through our bodies, the church thinks it only has to get into our heads. While Victoria's Secret is fanning a flame in our kardia, the church is trucking water to our minds.’
This, I would respectfully submit, is why so much of the church's teaching on sexuality has failed to accomplish its aim—greater submission to God in this part of our lives—and why each new hand-wringing piece, even if it runs to the length of a book, does little better. Content-dumps have little effectiveness in a general pedagogical sense, much less when their aim is to constrain some of the most deeply embodied desires in life.
If Smith is right, as I think he is, and it is actually practices, habits, liturgies (in his parlance) that have the most power to shape our daily lives and even beliefs (though their true shape may often be hidden from us until a situation where our actions spell a surprising manifesto), what then are the practices that cultivate and foster in us, the body of God, a more distinctively loving sexuality? What are the practices we, the church, might take up—or resume—to encourage greater bodily obedience to God in our sexuality?”
excerpts:
“The more that we conflate identity with genital activity, the more destructively we may act.
But sex grasped through force, self-denial, or deceit falls grossly short of the intimate union God intended and I think most people ultimately want. It not only uses and damages others; it dehumanizes the one who grasps it. Demanding sex, whether overtly or implicitly, feeds your worst self, not your best.
I say all this because I want the men of my generation to flourish. A lot of you seem to be struggling, but I want you to succeed in life. I want you to use every resource and ability you've been entrusted with — to get the most out of your life and be all that you can for your community and the time in which you were born.
Hopefully that eventually includes a healthy, mutually satisfying sexual relationship. But you sell yourself criminally short if you would reduce your potential, your success and your identity to regularly leaving sperm with someone.”
———————
“I suspect that one of the greatest lies our culture tells its young men is that being a good lover takes lots of practice in bed. I'm sure practice doesn't hurt, but the very root of the English word lover is the verb love: that action by which the God of the Bible defines himself, and by which Jesus said people would always recognize his followers. ‘Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends,’ Jesus said.
Though ‘love’ may have given its name to those proficient in the bedroom, life outside the bedroom has far more influence on what kind of true lovers we become. That means all us can become more self-sacrificial lovers, whether we get to practice that in sex or not. That should be a great encouragement for all so-called virgins — and I hope you among them.”
Lessons from Caine’s Arcade: The Vital Joy of Making Things
Watching the film for the first time this week, I was filled with a joy so overwhelming it eventually brought tears. According to Nirvan’s Twitter stream, I was not alone in that reaction. Even grown men allegedly cried.
Perhaps it was the storytelling, which is lovely, lean and effective. Perhaps it was a longing for the simpler days when arcade games provided a technological thrill that we understood was restricted to certain locations, at certain hours, rather than at such close reach, pleasure is sometimes indistinguishable from a prison.
But maybe Caine’s story strikes us because in him we see the embodiment of something we’d like to think the American people still are, but haven’t seen in evidence much anymore.
