Free Enterprise: Star Trek Beyond, reviewed.

Zachary Quinto is all ears. (Kimberly French/Paramount)

Star Trek Beyond, the third Trek in the 50-year-old franchise's rebooted "Kelvin timeline," wants to be a Skyfall-style cocktail of tradition and modernity. I wish it were bolder, but it's energetic and fun. Here's my NPR review.

Hot Buzz: I interviewed Simon Pegg for Air & Space / Smithsonian

Sofia Boutella and Simon Pegg in Star Trek Beyond (Kimberly French/Paramount).

What a pleasure it was to speak with Simon Pegg, an actor and writer whose work I've long admired, for my day job with Air & Space / Smithsonian magazine. I've been overseeing a special section of our September issue commemorating the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, and I was especially keen to have Pegg — as the co-screenwriter of the new movie Star Trek Beyond, as well as one of its key cast members — be a part of our coverage. He was as enthusiastic and smart and funny as I'd dared hope. You can read the interview here, and my NPR review of Star Trek Beyond will be up Friday.

I wanted to discuss the blog post he wrote about George Takei, but our time was limited and I thought he'd already explained his position quite eloquently in prose. There was an obvious moment when we might've talked about how subsequent Trek movies might deal with the tragic death of Anton Yelchin last month, but I'll be honest: In the moment, I just didn't think to ask the question. Or about his role as Ogden Morrow in the film version of Ernest Cline's novel Ready Player One that Steven Spielberg just started shooting last month. He's a busy guy, this guy.

They mostly come out at night, mostly: ALIENS, briefly recalled on All Things Considered

Writer/director James Cameron with Sigourney Weaver and Michael Biehn on the Pinewood Studios set of ALIENS circa 1985. (Fox)

I was thrilled to get an invitation from All Things Considered to blab briefly with the great Audie Cornish about one of my favorite movies on the 30th anniversary of its release: SpaceCamp. No, it was ALIENS. Duh. The segment aired at the very end of an ATC that started off with live audio of the "Roll Call Vote!" chant from the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. They're coming out of the goddamn walls, just like Private Hudson said.

You can hear the segment here. I had more to say than they could use, but that's radio, and hey, this is a show primarily devoted to, you know, real news. One of the first pieces I ever wrote for NPR was largely about ALIENS. I have a narrow range of interests, I guess.

Sock Pulpit: Hand to God, reviewed.

Liam Forde is affixed to a demonic puppet in Studio's Hand to God. (Amy Horan)

My review of Studio Theatre's terrific production of Robert Askins' Broadway hit Hand to God is in today's Washington City Paper.

Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Year With Which We're Still Making Contact, or We Ain't Afraid of No Ghosts But It Would Be Better If We Were

The ghostbustin' Class of 2016.

With the release of a new iteration of Ghostbusters — Sequel? Reboot? Don't know; the DC screening conflicted with the first session of the new Boxing Fundamentals class I'm teaching at Y — every single one of 1984's ten highest-grossing films has either been sequeled or remade. I believe '84 is the only year for which this is the case. In terms of what ruled the box office, it resembled 2014 a lot more than it did '83 or '85. Because I enjoy staring at box office charts, apparently, I wrote about this discovery for NPR Monkey See.

When the Legend Becomes Fact: Tarzan, reviewed.

Samuel L. Jackson as real-life Renaissance man George Washington Williams, with Alexander Skarsgård as fictional he-man Tarzan. (Jonathan Olley)

For NPR, I wrestled with the 201st (give or take) iteration of The Legend of Tarzan, a movie wherein in the Uncanny Valley is often represented by a valley. 

Dealer's Choice: The Trump Card, reviewed.

Mike Daisey performs The Last Cargo Cult at Woolly Mammoth in 2010 (Stan Barouh).

This took a few days longer to appear than it should've, for boring reasons only partly within my control. Anyway, last Friday I attended a workshop of a new monologue by Mike Daisey — an artist I've written a lot over the last six or seven years. I didn't find room in the piece to mention that the monologue was directed by Isaac Butler, who has been doing some terrific writing on the theatre for Slate. The oral history of Angels and America that he and my sometimes-editor Dan Kois posted this week is marvelous piece of historical journalism. Anyway, my Washington City Paper review of the still-developing The Trump Card is (finally) here.

Gay for Play: La Cage Aux Folles, reviewed.

Brent Barrett surrounded by Les Cagelles (Signature).

My review of Signature Theatre's robust revival of Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein's beloved Reagan-era musical farce La Cage Aux Folles is in this week's Washington City Paper. I like the show, but I don't like my review as much as the one I wrote of the Goodspeed Opera House's production about a year ago, as part of my coursework for the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center's National Critics Institute. Which is odd, because I remember thinking I was producing mostly unpublishable copy while I was there. I've never been a fast writer. Most days we had copy due at 8:30 or 9 a.m. about the show we'd seen the night before. Anyway, the Critic Class of 2016 starts their two-week term on Saturday. Good luck, you guys. I envy you, sort of — just not your early-a.m. deadlines or your accommodations or your on-campus meals. 

Actually, the coffee was pretty decent. I drank a lot of it, at any rate.