His feature directing career began with the third installment of the Alien franchise, and before Benjamin Button all his movies were noirish thrillers of a sort.

The one thing that no democrat may assume is that the people are dear good souls, fully competent for their task. The most valuable leaders never assume that. No one, for example, would accuse Karl Marx of disloyalty to workingmen. Yet in 1850 he could write at the demagogues among his friends: “While we draw the attention of the German workman to the undeveloped state of the proletariat in Germany, you flatter the national spirit and the guild prejudices of the German artisans in the grossest manner, a method of procedure without doubt the more popular of the two. Just as the democrats made a sort of fetich of the words, ‘the people,’ so you make one of the word ‘proletariat.’” John Spargo quotes this statement in his “Life.” Marx, we are told, could use phrases like “democratic miasma.” He never seems to have made the mistake of confusing democracy with demolatry.

For the common man in the sixteenth century, a calendar which paced not just the seasons but also the life of Christ would have to be divinely inspired. It would capture his heart and his mind. Pope Gregory's four hundred-year-one would become mincemeat.

The windward boat must give way to the leeward boat.