
Colin Fleming
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Essay in Bloodvine on 1983's Sleepaway Camp
06.20.25
Best Classic Bands feature on the Beach Boys' "When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)"
06.12.2025
Brian Wilson's song of remarkabable perspicacity. "As the singer sings, we get a second lead voice, a Brian Wilson-led dialogic counterpoint—the sun-soaked pop variant of a Grecian choir, or a gentler—but equally firm—version of Lear’s Fool handling the high harmonies—that feels no less indomitable than the tick of time."
Bloodvine piece on John Brahm's The Lodger, the best of the Jack the Ripper pictures
06.03.2025
Overlooked core horror from 1944, with the talented Laird Cregar. "Brahm excelled at melodrama—costume pictures that didn’t look ostentatious but nailed the period details. Enter, then, The Lodger and its Victorian London of fog, soot, flagstones, ulsters, and labyrinthine mews with a gas lamp on one end and who knows what awaiting at the other. Anyone at the right time of night could have been Jack the Ripper to the susceptible imagination, and if that’s him upstairs? Not the easiest subject to broach."
Yardbirds feature in Best Classic Bands
05.28.2025
How the guitar became the star with the band's 1965 single, "Heart Full of Soul." "The Yardbirds never felt particularly English—as the Kinks were extremely so—or like a band with Americanized predilections. We encounter Eastern modalities, but a Yardbirds blues—which itself became a form of Yardbirds proto-metal—had an aspect of the sidereal to it."
Op-ed in the New York Daily News on America's finest war film
05.26.2025
Op-ed in the The Los Angeles Times on the realness of Cheers character Norm Peterson
05.21.2025
In recognition of the passing of actor George Wendt. "Norm never felt a need to embellish. He owned his struggles. What may have been his depression. His failings. He dished out the bon mot with each entrance like he was a thirsty Pascal who paid for his drinks in pensées, which made him an inspiration."
Best Classic Bands piece on concert recordings made at high schools
05.18.2025
Yogi Berra op-ed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
05.11.2025
An all-time great's centennial and why catchers are the best at the game of life. "Squatting in that heat, taking those foul tips off your body, getting your hands busted up, and then being expected to stand at the plate, bat in those hands, and deliver. And, by the way, if you can also lead our squad emotionally, mentally, physically—and even spiritually—that’d be great, too. It’s as if a catcher’s work is never done. Then again: Is any truly good person’s?"
A special op-ed for Mother's Day in the Chicago Tribune
05.11.2025
On mothers and a special mom. "What makes a mother a mother? I’m someone who’s had three. You might ask, 'Wait, how does this guy have three mothers?' but I did, and they were all important, although only one of them was truly my mom."
3600 word piece on Easter horror films
04.17.2025
From Bloodvine and will also be in Nightmares Be Damned: Writings About Horror Films Worth Staying Up For. "Remember: at the core of Easter is a ghost story. A man is murdered. His body is put in a cave. A spirit makes a round of visits. Three days after his internment, the man comes back from the dead."
Feature about the Beatles' ultimate record store day
04.12.2025
On the December 3, 1965 joint release of "Day Tripper"/"We Can Work It Out" and Rubber Soul in Best Classic Bands. "'Day Tripper' has some overlap with the shiny, shouty, brass and balls of the album-opening 'Drive My Car,' but this is closer to a soul number than it is a cross between an R&B groover and preternatural guitar extravaganza."
Brakhage and the Beatles essay in Bright Lights Film Journal
03.30.2025
The footage from the "A Day in the Life" orchestral recording session. "The scene looks like a birthing ground for chaos. Cinéma vérité has become cinéma psychedelia, with touches of Cocteau, Cornell, and Brakhage. The footage flickers, the camera cutting constantly. A scrim of darkness blankets what we see, which only serves to make these people – their exchanges, the way they regard each other, the looks – appear as if they’re part of a strobing nimbus of light. These are the goings-on of the other side of the looking glass."
Piece in Bloodvine on Irish horror films
03.17.2025
From the inn to the page to the gibbet to the crypt to the woods to the backyard to the screen. "We have the sense that Irish horror is meant for the enclave. The small group. Between neighbors. Kin. Tales are shared, which is rather different than tales being broadcast. Irish horror cinema tends to maintain a similar insularity, while not barring any would-be audience member. A story unfolds in a corner of the pub, but we are welcome to listen—or, in this case, watch."
Best Classic Bands piece on Thin Lizzy's Live and Dangerous
03.16.2025
Piece on the riotously outré 1962 cult horror film, The Brain that Wouldn't Die
02.18.2025
Bloodvine piece on Georges Méliès's 1901 film, Blue Beard
02.16.2025
Beatles op-ed in the New York Daily News
02.14.2025
Piece on the Beach Boys' "Don't Worry Baby" and the reinvention of the love song
02.13.2025
Piece on 1932's stately horror film, The Mummy
02.13.2025
An omnibus piece in Bloodvine on horror films perfect for Valentine's Day viewing
02.10.2025
Open up your heart (or have it be opened for you) to the likes of Le Corbeau, Let the Right One In, Spanish Dracula, and King Kong. "Horror fans are sharers. They love a movie, and they wish to help someone else experience it as well. They share the love. Their love. And, when you get down to it, is there a better thing that any of us can do in this world?"
Op-ed in the Chicago Tribune on sports officiating
02.09.2025
Op-ed in the New York Daily News on director D.W. Griffith and the art of compartmentalization
01.22.2025
Regarding the value of keeping things separate. "Compartmentalization stops us from numbering among our own enemies. We are less likely to cost ourselves from experiencing that which is useful and edifying, as well as people who can help us. But we need mental discipline, and we have to work at keeping our boxes separate. Don’t dump the contents of one into another."
Piece in Bloodvine about Hammer's Peter Cushing-led Cash on Demand
12.31.2024
On a heist-centered horror-thriller reimagining of A Christmas Carol. "Cushing evinces fear, and it wasn’t often that we saw him scared in the Hammer world, even if he was prying open a coffin to stake Dracula through the heart. Turns out a frightened Cushing makes for a frightening Cushing."