A double disappointment.

There has been a more than a faint sense of disappointment around these parts for the last couple of days or so.

Regular readers will know of the footballing allegiances hereabouts and will therefore not be surprised that Arsenal’s 2-1 defeat yesterday by Chelski has come as a huge disappointment. The game itself was a cracker but the result pretty much kills off Arsenal’s chances of winning the league title this year.

But here’s the thing. At the start of the season I thought that Arsenal would struggle. A 4^th place finish at best. So barring an unlikely collapse the potential of finishing third should be a cause for celebration. Except having seen the team in such commanding form for much of the season its now comes as a disappointment to expect to finish one place higher than I originally expected.

The frustration comes not in lacking hope. But rather not having it, then for various reasons acquiring some only to then lose it again.

The other disappointment was due to finally having seen the Robert Zemeckis film ‘Beowulf’. I’m not Mark Kermode so you won’t find a detailed critical appraisal of the film here. But all I can say was that it was ‘kind of OK. The motion capture was magnificent. But the attempt at photo realism was a bit too cartoony but was too photo realistic to be a stylised animation. There was some gore, crudity and just concealed nudity but I can’t help feeling that if the film had enough in it to have obtained a 15 certificate rather then the 12 which it achieved then it would have worked better. For all the slaughter illuminated in Herot’s flickering firelight it seemed to lack any real sense of terror or horror. The ‘enhanced’ Angelina Jolie as Grendel’s Mother was an enhanced Angelina Jolie, enough said. And Peter Jackson does better dragons

I really wanted to like this film. My English translation of ‘Beowulf’ is in absolute tatters through many reads as is my copy of John Gardner’s ‘Grendel’. And no, I didn’t expect the narrative in the film to be anything similar to the original story. In that I wasn’t disappointed.

I put on the DVD for the first time, plumped up my cushion, took a sip and waited to be blown away by the Zemeckis re-imagining. And waited and waited. And after about 20 minutes my attention started to wander. I watched the remainder whilst flicking through the days newspaper. Feeling a little let down.

Oh and for some reason my Technorati ‘Authority’ has dropped from 115 to 71 in little more than a week. I’m not sure how they work these things out (other than it’s something to do with links) but it can’t be good. Perhaps too many people have seen the Zemeckis Grendel and have decided it’s my fault.