The Best of Youth

In the summer of 1967, two bohemian-looking 20-year-olds were wandering through New York's Washington Square Park, filled with its usual crowd of students, tourists, drug dealers, chess players and folk singers.
. "Oh, take their picture," said a woman to her husband, eyeing the young couple. "I think they're artists. They might be somebody someday." Her husband shrugged.
. "They're just kids."
[From the review of the book, "Just Kids", by Patti Smith pictured above. With her is Robert Mapplethorpe on the Coney Island boardwalk in 1969. The two enjoyed a relationship for two decades. Review appeared in the Sunday Jan 17, 2010 SF Chronicle, Section F.]

Care For A Stroll? Do You Have The Time?

Eric Rohmer--famed French New Wave film director, critic

Eric Rohmer, a former film critic who became one of France's most respected film-makers and was internationally known for movies such as "My Night at Maud's" and "Claire's Knee," died Monday in Paris. He was 89.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy called the writer-director a"great auteur who will continue to speak to us for years to come."
"Classic and romantic, wise and iconoclast, light and serious, sentimental and moralist, he created the 'Rohmer' style, which will outlive him." Sarkozy said in a statement. . . . It was not until "My Night at Maud's", an art house film hit released in 1970, that Rohmer was established as a major force in cinema. The film earned Academy Award nominations for best foreign language film and for Rohmer's screenplay. CSM writer David Sterritt wrote in 2001, [that Rohmer] focused with "good-humored intensity on dilemmas of life, love, and the penchant of well-meaning people to find themselves in ethhical quandaries."
Kevin Thomas said that Rohmer, whose films were known for their long conversations between characters, "made his mark getting us to pay attention to what people said to each other." His most recent film, "The Romance of Astrea and Celadon," was released in 2007.
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This obituary appeared in the SF Chronicle Friday January 15, 2009