A cultural diary of my life in New York
On DVD.
Watching The Third Man for the first time, I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of déjà vu. Anyone who has ever read anything about film noir is going to recognize Orson Welles’ first dramatic appearance, the scene of the Ferris wheel, the chase sequence through the sewers, the line about the cuckoo clock, and the beautifully odd zither score. Often, that kind of familiarity makes actually watching the film in question anticlimactic, but that wasn’t the case for me with The Third Man.
The Kronos Quartet and Wu Man, pipa, at Carnegie Hall on Friday, April 7.
I had never heard of the pipa before I attended this concert given by the Kronos Quartet and pipa player Wu Man, but I immediately recognized the sound of the lute-like instrument from countless Asian-themed movies. Part of the joy of the concert, however, was hearing Wu Man play the instrument as part of nontraditional compositions, music that doesn’t immediately bring to mind a watercolor image of a delicate woman in a silk cheongsam.
Much Review About Nothing 