I know we’ve been here before…but I just saw Eclipse!  Last time, I wrote about the books.  Now let me indulge in the movie world.

I went with a girlfriend to see Eclipse at D.C.’s Uptown Theater this week; we resignedly raised the average age a good decade.  I have to say the producers/directors/screenwriter have nailed the movies.  (I know people complained about New Moon, but how can you expect Edward to be on screen when he spends the book away from Forks?  And I like watching people feeling lovelorn.)

The movies are fiercely stylized, which is the only way to tell such fantastical and romantic stories of vampires and werewolves.  It’s a delightfully choreographed dance that unfolds and resolves itself.  The screenwriter is a genius: she somehow communicates hundreds of pages of critical information.  Although I can’t believe that non-readers would pick up on all the nuances without the book as background.

The screen is a lush visual feast from the mountains and forests to the magical meadow where we start (and end?) each film.  I could never quite visualize the Cullen’s home in the books, but I love its representation and the way in which it adds an extra layer of differentiation between Edward and Jacob: contrasting the middle class, modernist, cultured home of the Cullens with the blue collar, down to earth, homes on the reservation.

The computer-animated wolves are a challenge, but at this point I’m used to them. However, I was horrified that Victoria is now played by Bryce Dallas Howard instead of Rachelle Lefevre.

Rachelle (top) kicked ass on screen and Bryce has no power!  She looks scared!  Thankfully she has little screen time, but it was a major casting error.

The center of the movie is appropriately the delicious rivalry between Edward and Jacob that reaches new heights in Eclipse!

Team Jacob has much to be proud of…Taylor Lautner looked even hotter than last time around and he gets all the wisecracks.  Team Edward must have thrilled at Robert Pattinson’s anger and his romanticism and the ring!

At the end, we were sated and yet hungry for more.  Not least, the human/vampire sex that awaits us in book four.  And knowing of our appetites, the producers are generously spinning out the finale into two movies.  I’m game.

The victory could not have been sweeter.  It took place in London and we defeated West Germany.  You might think the English would feel pretty confident in relation to the Germans after winning two world wars, but their post-war economic success and national confidence drives us crazy.  We feel the need to beat them over and over again.

1966 is burned into our collective psyche and the decades since have been a quest to repeat that fleeting, but perfect moment of happiness. I heard a survey on the radio where English men said they would give up sex for a year for a World Cup victory.  But, life has become a confrontation of the brutal reality that we are a shadow of our former selves; our sporting persona reflects our diminished status as a dismantled empire.

So right now we’re breathing a collective sigh of relief that we squeaked through the group round.  I read that English fans and commentators couldn’t believe their luck when it was first announced that we were in Group C with Algeria, Slovenia, and, laughably, the USA.  Now we’re all a little more humble.  Again.

The success of the US team is quite impressive.  And I can’t help but feel it’s because this is a young country that is constantly fighting to assert itself, that believes in winning and in national pride, even if soccer doesn’t rate as highly here.  The English players feel entitled to win without committing to fight.  The Americans are hungry whereas the rich Premier League players are fat and bloated.

We survived the week, but placing behind the US means we face our nemesis on Sunday.  You can feel the national stomach ache.  Everyone experienced a few minutes of euphoria when we beat Slovenia, and then that sinking feeling settled in as we realized the Germans are waiting.

Maybe we’ll find the fire in our stomachs and rise up again.  Or maybe we’ll end up crying into our beer and taking comfort in the fact that at least we’re not French.

The way the dog trots out the front door
every morning
without a hat or an umbrella,
without any money
or the keys to her dog house
never fails to fill the saucer of my heart
with milky admiration.

Who provides a finer example
of a life without encumbrance—
Thoreau in his curtainless hut
with a single plate, a single spoon?
Ghandi with his staff and his holy diapers?

Off she goes into the material world
with nothing but her brown coat
and her modest blue collar,
following only her wet nose,
the twin portals of her steady breathing,
followed only by the plume of her tail.

If only she did not shove the cat aside
every morning
and eat all his food
what a model of self-containment she would be,
what a paragon of earthly detachment.
If only she were not so eager
for a rub behind the ears,
so acrobatic in her welcomes,
if only I were not her god.

Having slept, the cat gets up by Kobayashi Issa

Having slept, the cat gets up,
yawns, goes out
to make love.