Dr. Strangelove

Tuesday

Kelly Chapman

The Dr. Strangelove taxonomy of DC types

I tweeted the other day that my social life in Trump’s DC is just getting dinner or drinks with a different Dr. Strangelove character every week. It sounds like an exaggeration, but it’s not. Not really. Every week brings its own apocalypse – and the cast of characters responds accordingly. Find here a taxonomy of DC types: Dr. Strangelove (The theorist) The end of the world approaches and only the strong will survive it. Hands trembling slightly from too much caffeine and suppressed grandeur, he (it’s always a he) declares his grand theory of the world in so many words. Women, of course, will be spared. Perhaps you, too, will be counted among the lucky ones. Oh, you’re over 30? If you just read a little more Spengler. Learned a little more about semiconductors.

dr strangelove

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

RIP James Earl Jones

The death of the great actor James Earl Jones, at the robust age of ninety-three, has been marked with tributes from every walk of society, not least the acting profession. There were many remarkable things about Jones’s career, from his being the last surviving member of the cast of Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove to his many and varied Shakespearean roles, all of which he excelled in (save, perhaps, Mark Rylance’s misguided attempt to cast him as a superannuated Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing at the Old Vic in London in 2013, which was critically ridiculed). Yet the reason why he has a fame and repute far beyond just about any other actor of his generation is simple: he was the voice of Darth Vader.

james earl jones