As the famous saying goes, “Pride goeth before the fall.” And perhaps there’s no moment of greater pride in the world of entertainment than being nominated for an Oscar – a fact that Joaquin Phoenix knows all too well after scoring a nomination for his brilliant lead performance as Johnny Cash in “Walk the Line.”

But with the new film “I’m Still Here,” which was shot by his brother-in-law and fellow actor Casey Affleck in the two years following his near-triumph, Phoenix appears to show that fame has an incredibly destructive and debilitating side as well. Or does he?

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That central question – whether “I’m Still Here” is a straight documentary of an acclaimed movie star’s debilitating fall from grace, or if it’s a fake documentary shooting humorously poisoned darts straight at the heart of Hollywood – has been debated in Tinseltown and via gossip outlets for the past two years. The reason is that Affleck carried around a camera to follow Phoenix as he appeared to declare his retirement from acting due to artistic dissatisfaction and the pressures of fame, and instead embarked on a bizarre attempt at a rap career.

Perhaps the most infamous moment of Phoenix’s exploits during that time occurred when he appeared on the David Letterman show to plug his art-house film “Two Lovers,” and proceeded to mumble one or two word answers while hiding behind shades, and unkempt hair and beard worthy of the Unabomber. Footage of that train wreck – which was alternately funny and mortifying – is readily available (and highly recommended) on YouTube, and the incident caused many to wonder if Phoenix had lost his marbles or if it was a brilliant ruse with Letterman in on the joke. (more…)

Lots of filmmakers set out to make an evocative picture without concern for making an engaging one. Their motivation, I believe, is to do something out of the ordinary that will set them apart as artists. They see storytelling as a conventional skill, subject to, well, convention: Why bother with tension and release and plot? Anybody can do that. I, the artist, will evoke a mood. And that certainly can turn out okay, but most of the time it does not. Most of the time, it results in another volume for the ongoing arthouse library of self-indulgent twaddle.

Two Lovers is a splendid exception, both evoking a mood and telling a story. Not a complicated story, not a Jurassic Park story, and not even a Moody Family Drama story, but a story of familiar feelings in what for most us will be an unfamiliar setting populated by unfamiliar people. Two Lovers is mood-heavy account of a young man’s simultaneous romances with two women. Instead of ending up in bathos–the usual destination–the filmmakers show this young man carrying around his past while he tries to find a happy future. This conflict directs the nature and depth of the romances. In the end we see how happy endings are sometimes the saddest of all. (more…)

Why is it that on the silver screen, the Jewish chick is always the undesirable one, the safe choice, the ugly/annoying one?  Even women who are Jewish (or half) in real life play the “desirable gentile goddess” while the Jewish woman character is the second fiddle.  It might have something to do with the self-hatred of many male Jews in Hollywood for whom the Jewish woman is exactly that stereotype; besides, many of them need to justify marrying outside of the faith.  Or maybe it’s just the self-hatred.

I ask this because in “Two Lovers,” which hit nationwide release this week, Joaquin Phoenix plays a Jewish guy whose parents want him to date (and marry) the beautiful Jewish daughter (Vinessa Shaw), of the couple who are buying their business.  But, instead, he prefers the hot blonde gentile woman (played by the half-Jewish Gwyneth Paltrow) who doesn’t want him.  The Jewish woman as the safe, not-as-sexy-or-hot choice is nothing new in Hollywood.  We’ve seen it in sooo many TV shows and flicks, like the 1972 incarnation of “The Heartbreak Kid” in which Elliott Gould Charles Grodin dumps the homely Jewish stereotype-ette for the hot (at that time) Cybill Shepherd. (more…)