Posts of Antiquity
The following pieces were composed prior to the site’s reincorporation at NicholasTam.ca in August 2007.
A word of caution: many of these posts are quite old by Internet standards, and most of their links are dead and possibly beyond recovery.
“Just like a toon to drop a safe on a guy’s head” (3 August 2006) was my entry into the fracas about the ignorance of many professional film critics when it comes to the art and craft of animation, an issue that surged to prominence when the motion-capture film Monster House was released to the tune of an obituary or two for the animator as a profession. I place it here not just because it earned me a rather flattering mention at Cartoon Brew, but also because it speaks to something I care about quite deeply: the impact of technology on storytelling.
By far my most popular post of all time was my gut-reaction impressions of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, in part because I posted it while most fan sites were still under spoiler lockdown, which made me one of the top Google hits for “Horcrux” for about a week. I don’t think the post itself was that big of a deal, but about a week later, I followed it up with “I don’t know anything about Horcruxes” (25 July 2005), where I took on National Post writer Colby Cosh for his assessment of J.K. Rowling’s long-term legacy. I’ve been blessed with the good fortune of actively keeping a blog in the height of Pottermania, and I consider that my best post on the subject.
In August 2004, I attended my first National Scrabble Championship, which was held in New Orleans that year. Rather than get enough sleep to play at a reasonable level of competence, I blogged the whole event. Where it got interesting was the LEZ incident in Game 3 of the Trey Wright/David Gibson final, which made for a fairly interesting headline in the mainstream press. Those curious to find out more stumbled upon my first-hand account, to which I later affixed a clarifying sequel.
I’ve written volumes about film. Of the straightforward and conventional movie reviews, I have a soft spot for “The First Law be damned” (21 July 2004), my piece on I, Robot and its inconsistent treatment of Asimov’s Three Laws. That said, my review of Alexander is probably a better indicator of what happens when I frolic in the open meadows of an independent publication without any word limits.
I have come to prefer critique over criticism, though, in that I find it more valuable to look at the big ideas in play than simply offer value judgments and consumer advice. For that, I recommend my admittedly polemic article on The Incredibles, elitism and educational reform. I also wrote a piece on the moral landscape of Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake, which I remark upon now because in it, I left myself some open questions that I answered a year and a half later in the form of a killer English paper.
Star Wars has always been a passion of mine, and I would be remiss to neglect my analysis of the edits in the 2004 DVDs and the Return of the Jedi Father’s Day special.
I write and think enough about music that I feel obligated to represent it here somehow. “Ptolemaic pianocentrism” (10 September 2005) outlines my theory that the centricity of Middle C arises from the dominance of keyboards as a visual representation, written in response to a proposal that C be stripped of its undue position of privilege in musical education. Perhaps an appropriate companion piece is “Für Elise the bell tolls” (20 June 2005), where my thoughts turn to the cultural persistence of two Beethoven pieces as I prepare them for a wedding.
Contrary to what one may think, I am actually capable of writing short posts. “Northern lightbulbs by the millihelen” (20 March 2006) is probably the exemplar, and as a pure act of composition I’m as satisfied with it as I ever will be. That may come off as narcissistic (as may most of this page), but you try witnessing an aurora from an airplane, and see if you can walk away uninspired.
