WalkTheLine Tagged Articles at Cinematical

In one of the oddest videos I've watched all year, Joaquin Phoenix tells E! that he's retiring from acting in order to pursue his music career. What's weird about the video is that the E! dude kind of laughs off the ultra-serious Phoenix when he claims he's quitting, and by doing so kind of insults the actor musician. As Phoenix walks away, peeved no one took him seriously during a moment that obviously meant a lot to him, the E! host struggles to regroup but it's too late. So then they grab Casey Affleck in mid-stride and he's all like, "Yeah, he's going to pursue this music thing" -- as if it was common knowledge.

Actually Casey, it's not common knowledge. And I'd be totally fine with this if it were, say, Jessica Simpson, but Joaquin Phoenix, in my opinion, is one of the best actors we have working today. What the hell? Phoenix's last completed movie was the James Gray-directed Two Lovers, due out in 2009, and that's it for now. If you want to follow the guy, you'll have to do so by checking out his band The Lady is a Tramp.

But is this for real? Actors with long beards often say crazy things in quiet voices because they want people to listen, and not that they want to be heard. (Don't know the difference? Watch White Men Can't Jump.) So check out the video after the jump and let us know what you think. Is this dude serious? And if he is, do you support his quest to pursue a career in music?

Should Joaquin Phoenix Retire from Acting?

Hell no!Yes, I never liked him anywayI'll support him if that's what he wants to doI could not care lessVote

It's been a battle of the rainy-day games on our Oscar derby this week, with Erik's magic 8 ball going head to head with Kim's kids and their post-it plastered paper donkey. Though the donkey method produced the prediction that George Clooney's going home with the biggest bounty on Sunday night, most of our experts are still pinning their tails, and hopes, on the cowboy craze. Elsewhere, we learned that fictional characters from the 70s don't have a *whole* lot to say about this year's races, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman would be wise to stop the Capote press train long enough to take note – Johnny Cash is on his ass.

In order to cash (pun intended) in on the film's Oscar buzz, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment has announced they will release Walk the Line on DVD this February 28th. Not only that, but there will be three different discs to choose from. Line will join a small list of major Oscar nominated films (Crash and Hustle and Flow to name two) actually available at the video store come awards time...and that makes me plenty happy because I have not seen it yet and am way too lazy to drag my ass out in the snow right about now.

Consumers (that's you!) will have a choice between a single-disc widescreen edition, a single-disc full-screen edition and, for those of you really into Johnny,  a two-disk special edition featuring three extended musical sequences, three featurettes and collectible postcards. Don't fret cheapos, both single-discs will also include a full-length commentary by director James Mangold and 10 deleted scenes. Though it was snubbed for Best Picture, Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon (both Golden Globe winners) are up for the Best Actor and Actress award. You can catch the awards on ABC this March 5th.

Two major Guilds released their nomination slates this morning. The Writers Guild of America (WGA), who regaled us with their Documentary Screenplay choices yesterday, have one day later released that puff of white smoke that indicates they've narrowed this year's top screenplays into five contenders for the writing world's version of Pope (except not). The list%uFFFD includes a few usual suspects – Crash, Good Night and Good Luck, Brokeback Mountain – and also two summer films, making semi-surprise appearances. The first, Cinderella Man, has been conspicuously absent from the awards swirl thus far. The same could be said for the fifth nominee, Judd Apatow's The 40-Year Old Virgin, but whilst it may be rare that comedies get recognition at all, it certainly couldn't be said that this screenplay doesn't deserve recognition.

On to the Producer's party. To my mind, the PGA has done absolutely nothing very surprising, but Variety is predictably spinning this set of noms as a big fat Indie Triumph. Whatever – Brokeback Mountain might be the work of an indie arm, but it's as much of a studio production as the one straight-ahead studio film on the list, plain old Fox's Walk the Line. Also nominated: Crash, Capote, and Good Night and Good Luck.

As with the Globes, Munich's absence is so conspicuous as to be troubling. Is Spielberg's latest dead?

Telluride Film Festival doesn't invite press, and it doesn't announce its lineup until the day before it starts. So with the projectors ready to roll tomorrow, Variety finally has a look at the upcoming weekend's slate.

"We probably have more world premieres of American features that we've ever had," says festival co-director Tom Luddy. They'll include: the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line; Everything is Illuminated, Liev Schreiber's adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer's novel; and Ang Lee's gay cowboy epic Brokeback Mountain (which is also screening in Venice this week). Also on the slate are Michael Haneke's Cannes winner Cache, and tributes to Mickey Rooney, Laurie Anderson, and Merian C. Cooper (including a screening of his version of King Kong). I'm most upset to be missing "Sacred Monsters", a Peter Bogdanovich program to be presented by the filmmaker/Turner Classic Movies spokesman himself.