Blood makes noise.

We finished Season 1 of Smallville. Smallville at its core is about family and friends and specifically about a boy becoming a man within the family instruction he has received and in terms of the blood running through his veins.

The Weight of Blood.

I'm thinking of blood due to Winter's Bone, which is among my favorite films of the year. Winter's Bone is about blood relations. About the power of blood. Like the best crime films, Bone is about nobility and honor. There are kings and queens, princes and princesses, in the hills of Arkansas and other such places, whether recognized by any civil law or not. The weight of blood makes its demands on its own terms. "I wouldn't know what to do without the weight of you two on my back." Our blood obligations define us whether we accept the responsibility or not.

Of course the film medium allows for visual representations of this. In A Nightmare on Elm St., the ridiculous remake, our hero Rooney drowns in a hall of blood as the grotesque villain attempts to settle a perceived blood debt. The movie is mostly stupid, but I enjoyed it more than about half a dozen other films from this year.

Gentleman Broncos is about gonads and mammary cannons and I didn't quite like it. Maybe Hess likes his characters, I'm pretty sure he does, but he does a disservice to both homeschool communities and sf communities over the course of this film. I know that there are creeps and weirdos and bad people in both of these communities, but my experience in both communities has been overwhelmingly positive. But maybe I'm missing the point of this film.

I'd make more sense and tie this all back together to blood, but I'm too distracted by those mammary cannons.

I fell asleep halfway through Sweetgrass and still haven't finished it. That's bad, isn't it? Bloody sheep.

I watched the first episode of The Walking Dead. Even being prepared by reading the comic, I was surprised by the graphic violence. A bullet through the head doesn't mean what it used to mean before the zombie apocalypse. Heavy blood.

My friend Matt helped me get shared in-law Internet access out in the sticks. I've signed back up for the $8.99 Netflix plan. My first Watch Instantly title: The Oath.

Okay, I'm annoyed. I tried writing about The Oath twice, but my iPod has chosen to delete my writing twice. Strange.

Anyhow, it's my favorite film of 2010. Sorry I don't feel like writing things all over again.

Here's a Martin Luther quote from his On war against the Turk:

"It is said, indeed, that the Turks are, among themselves, faithful and friendly and careful to tell the truth. I believe that, and I think that they probably have more fine virtues in them than that. No man is so bad that there is not something good in him."

In context, Luther has been defining Islam as satanic- built on lies, murder, and hatred of women, but here he pauses to point out apparent virtues.

[It should go without saying that I don't agree with Luther in all that he says, especially his historicist eschatology and his penchant for rabid insults, but, as always, I respect Luther as the mad genius and genuine servant of God that he was. There is plenty of wisdom applicable to today's circumstances to be found in Luther's stance on Islam and his call for Christian prayer and repentance to precede and correspond with any possible military action.]

We know (or ought to know) that these men depicted in The Oath are our enemies. The beauty of The Oath is that it goes far in helping us to understand and maybe even begin to love and respect our enemies even as we must meet them on the various battlefields yet to emerge.

Okay, I'm done writing this and posting it immediately so I don't lose anything else, especially since I've veered off into talking about Luther instead of the actual content of The Oath.