Los Angeles - The National Film Critics Association (NFCA) today issued a press release to all of its members declaring an immediate ban on references to Akira Kurasowa’s 1950 film Rashomon. “It’s gotten completely out of control,” NFCA president Susan Jacobsen said in a phone interview from her office in Los Angeles. “Every goddamn piece of cinematic dreck that happens to look at the same events from several different points of view is suddenly Rashomon?! I don’t think so. Not if I’ve got anything to say about it.”
The association was prompted to take the unprecedented action by the February 22 release of the new Colombia Pictures film Vantage Point, which looks at an assassination attempt on the president from five different perspectives. “I’ve seen Vantage Point,” Ms. Jacobsen said, “and Vantage Point is no Rashomon.”
Ms. Jacobsen indicated that the NFCA had considered issuing such a ban in 1996 following the release of Courage Under Fire and then again in 2003 with the release of Basic. “I’ll tell you,” Ms. Jacobsen said, “Basic nearly did it. I mean, did you see that movie? But in the end we said to ourselves, ‘Okay, calm down, our members are all grown-ups, they are entirely capable of policing themselves.’ But now we can see that we were just being naive. These critics simply cannot be trusted.”
The ban will be in effect until further notice and covers all print, broadcast, and on-line reviews of films, novels, long form music videos, song cycles, narrative poetry (whether in rhyme or free verse), and even personal anecdotes. “We struggled with the anecdotes,” Ms. Jacobsen said, “but in the end we felt that drastic measures were called for.”
Ms. Jacobsen indicated that the association had not taken an action this significant since 2001, when it put a ten-year hold on the term “Hitchcockian.”
Photo: This is not Dennis Quaid
