Pros and Khans, or Star Trek into Dorkness: How the new movie reflects a 32-year-old battle for a 47-year-old franchise's soul.

I once attended a midnight screening of the Cadillac of Star Trek films -- that would be numero dos, The Wrath of Khan -- wherein the projector bulb burnt out right in the middle of Mr. Spock's heroic death scene. If the theater hadn't given us four free movie passes to compensate for this effrontery against all that is good and decent, I would have suspected an especially cruel prank, perhaps orchestrated by a partisan of the bloodless, squeaky-clean Next Generation-flavored Star Trek, which I suppose is okay if vanilla is what you like.

Naturally, I had to dig up my Khan DVD at home and watch the final 10 minutes before I could go to sleep that night. Spock's grand and tragic expiration would soon be reversed in a not-so-good movie with the surprise-negating subtitle The Search for Spock, but whatever.​

All of which is to say that my love for The Wrath of Khan is mean and true. And it fascinates me that that film, more than any other of the hundreds and hundreds of subsequent Star Trek items (a great number of which -- like the entire Deep Space Nine and Voyager and Enterprise series, for instance -- I've never seen or read), remains the primary source document that continues to guide the cinematic Star Trek universe, especially in the heavily Khan-indebted new movie Star Trek into Darkness.

J.J. Abrams' second Trek film  takes a generation-old, backstage fight over the meaning and purpose of Star Trek and drags it right to the center of the camera-flare-buffered frame. I make my case today on NPR's Monkey See blog.

​On further reflection, I guess The Wrath of Khan is really more like the Toyota Corolla of Trek than the Cadillac. It was the lowest-budgeted of the theatrical films by a good margin, and yet it's proven, three decades on, to be the most reliable one.

Oh, and I really wanted to quote John C. McGinley's unforgettable, rhymed description of Keanu Reeves' character in Point Break to describe Chris Pine's portrayal of the young horndog Kirk in the J.J. Abrams Star Trek pictures. Unsurprisingly, that didn't make it past Standards & Practices at NPR. But I tried, you guys. I tried.​

Poor Me, Pour Me Another: WSC Avant Bard's No Man's Land, reviewed.

Christopher Henley and Brian Hemmingsen as Spooner and Hirst.​

Allow myself to quote myself: Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land is a 38-year-old Rubik’s Cube covered in Rorschach blots, a confounding examination of memory and masculinity that resists easy interpretation like an Aikido master shrugging off an unwanted bear hug. I wrestle with that bear -- er, WSC Avant Bard's production of that bear-hug-avoiding Aikido master of a play, that is -- in this week's Washington City Paper.

Wrecks & Effects: Folger's Twelfth Night and Taffety Punk's The Golem, reviewed.

(Scott Suchman/Folger Theatre)​

No, Elvis Costello has not embarked upon a mandolin tour with Steve Nieve. That's Louis Butelli as Feste, whose performance is one of the highlights of the Folger Theatre's new production of Twelfth Night, which I review in today's Washington City Paper along with Taffety Punk's spooky The Golem. Grab yourself a copy wherever finer alt-weeklies are given away for free.

Shane Black Like Me, or Fear of a Shane Black Planet

Naturally you'll be rushing out to see Iron Man 3 this weekend. I'm afraid that film won't make one lick of goddamn sense to you if you do not study up by reading my Village Voice rewatch of the filmography of Iron Man 3 cowriter/director Shane Black.​

A Bit of the Old Albrecht Von: Wallenstein, reviewed

​Colin Carmody and Steve Pickering in Wallenstein.

My enthusiastic review of the Shakespeare Theatre's ironicized and much-slimmed-down new version of Wallenstein, an epic of the Thirty Years War first performed in 1798, is in today's Washington City Paper.