We hope we've adequately prepared you for this shock: Joaquin Phoenix's rap career may be an elaborate hoax. Yes, we've pointed this out before, but now, two sources are confirming the stunt to Entertainment Weekly:

We may never know whether Joaquin Phoenix donned oven mitts and rocked the Queer Lounge at Sundance, but today, we know far more about his disastrous "performance" in Las Vegas than we ever wanted to.

Britney Spears will somehow seduce a publisher into paying millions for three books from her; Lindsay Lohan wants to re-seduce Gotham via magazine spread and Dan Abrams keeps seducing actresses.

Many of you have wondered if the eccentric douchebag featured recently in our Sundance quotes roundup was none other than newly minted faux-idiot Joaquin Phoenix. Let's examine the evidence!

I know you were worried she'd leave, but it looks as though Katie Holmes might be staying here in New York for good. And she's keeping Tom with her.

...Because he's still going through with this pretend "quitting acting to become a rap star" chicanery. In fact, THR has broken more news about this supposed life trajectory that we are simply refusing to believe:

We'll admit that when Joaquin Phoenix first announced (in an incoherent mumble) that he would be quitting acting, we weren't quite sure whether it was all just an elaborate stunt. Then, we remembered the tale of Greenbo, Phoenix's brain-eating frog, and thought it was simply par for the course with the erratic actor. Still, since the announcement, Phoenix's weird behavior has felt increasingly staged for the cameras — and, in fact, he has his own cameras following him around, "recording his transition from film to music." The final straw came when we found an incriminating set of pictures from Phoenix's first performance, along with this explanation:

Every movie star everywhere is quitting! In today's case of old Clint Eastwood it makes sense, because he's, y'know, old and his directing career has been a lot more illustrious than his acting career has for the past decade or so. But the once-promising, now-squandered Joaquin Phoenix? Baby mill Angelina Jolie? Nicole Kidman?? If they leave, then what are we to do? Find new movie stars, I guess. Trouble is, there aren't really any good, young understudies waiting in the wings. But there might be some! We'll take a look at who could replace these four retiring (or maybe semi-retiring) actors after the jump.

We've been vexed, terribly vexed by Joaquin Phoenix's slurred proclamation to Extra that he planned to give up acting to follow in the illustrious, thesp rock footsteps of The Bacon Brothers and 30 Odd Foot of Grunts. Was he seriously quitting the business, or was it all a ruse for some forlorn, Sundance Channel takeoff of Punk'd? Then, at the Saturday AFI Fest part for Che, Phoenix did what any actor ready to leave Hollywood would do: a full red carpet press tour, complete with the hastily scrawled words "Bye!" and "Good" on opposite knuckles (perhaps he takes his sentence structure cues from the backwards "B"-sporting Ashley Todd). Said Phoenix to the AP:

♦ A "crazed" Madonna fan stormed the set of Guy Ritchie's new movie this weekend and threatened to kill him with a 12-inch knife before the 16-year-old was arrested. [Mirror, Daily Star]
♦ Is Ashley Olsen planning to marry boyfriend Justin Bartha in a secret wedding on the French Riviera? That's what the National Enquirer claims! Also: She supposedly wants Karl Lagerfeld to design her dress. [Daily Express]
♦ Joaquin Phoenix was acting "odd" and wobbly at an event in San Francisco last week, and now his friends are worried he's back to drinking and doing drugs. [P6]
♦ Beth Ostrosky and Ryan Reynolds both finished the NYC Marathon yesterday, along with about 35,000 other people. [NYDN]

When Extra revealed on Tuesday that Joaquin Phoenix had announced his mumbled retirement from acting, little did we know that the video of said declaration (captured at Monday's Paul Newman charity benefit) would immediately enshrine itself in the annals of red carpet awkwardness forever. Thanks to a clip furnished by E!, we've got the entire, baffling experience, as an out-of-it Phoenix confesses all to Extra correspondent Jerry Penacoli, takes offense at Penacoli's disbelieving laughter, then storms off.Phoenix is certainly no stranger to red carpet shenanigans (as his best buddy, Follicle Frog, will affirm) but the incident seems less like a joke (despite a nearby, hilariously deadpan Casey Affleck) and more like a Ray-Bans-clad cry for help. "Nommmf deadserious," Phoenix insists in the video, and his rep's awkward "That is what he told me" confirmation leads us to believe that Phoenix really is going through with his plans to ditch acting for a career in music. We didn't like Reservation Road much either, Joaquin, but we can't say we're looking forward to the alternative.

Though Joaquin Phoenix was once famously saved from a car wreck by wacko auteur Werner Herzog, apparently there's one aspect to the actor still in dangerous need of resuscitation: his love of acting. While attending a Paul Newman charity benefit last night, Phoenix told Extra that he's done, finished, finito with doing films, and he's got one shaky reason why:

Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft (and, sadly, only the third-richest man in the world these days) turns 53 today. Closer to home, Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi is also marking her 53rd. Others celebrating: Julia Roberts is 41. Joaquin Phoenix turns 34. Musician Ben Harper is 39. Bruce Jenner, the man to blame for bringing Brody Jenner into the world, is 59. Actress Lauren Holly is 45. And Dayanara Torres, former Miss Universe and former wife of Marc Anthony, is 34.

Likely to nobody's surprise, Defamer's interlude last week with Werner Herzog yielded far more than just a few minutes' worth of feud-worthy slaps at his contemporary Abel Ferrara, whose Bad Lieutenant Herzog is remaking continuing later this year with Nicolas Cage. We also had the opportunity to get Herzog's side of a story first reported two years back by the L.A. Times, in which Joaquin Phoenix credited eyewitness Herzog for relaxing him after the actor rolled his car in Laurel Canyon.

With the minor exception of missing out on Jim Toback's documentary on Mike Tyson (which will screen here this fall anyway — we can wait), the only regret we have so far about sitting out the Cannes Film Festival is our absence at the mini-riot that preceded the press screening of director James Gray's drama Two Lovers, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow. That's when we're at our best, as were Lou Lumenick and the "major U.S. film critic" (*cough* Manohla Dargis *cough*) who apparently exclaimed, "I'm not going to wait an hour for f—-ing James Gray" before an ensuing screening delay, shoving match and seating free-for-all.

After all that hullabaloo following Liv Tyler’s missing wedding ring (and missing date) at Monday’s Costume Institute Gala, the dimpled rocker spawn has officially announced that she and husband of five years Royston Langdon "have confirmed their separation." Whether this means those divorce rumors from weeks ago will materialize or that the pair is just going on one of those godawful “breaks” that never work out (see: Swank/Lowe and Richards/Sheen) is unknown so far. But after we took a look at Liv’s previous paramours, we have a feeling Tyler will have no problem finding a worthy suitor.

Pictured, an Italian Vanity Fair spread featuring a partially-nude former child star not likely to provoke the kinds of outrage elicited by the Miley Cyrus debacle. Rather, it features actor Joaquin Phoenix, in the process of receiving the tribal markings of the Yawanawa people of the Brazilian Amazon. (You'll recall indelible black markings figured prominently in his silent protest at this year's People's Choice Awards, as well.) Moments later, Phoenix was presented with an hallucinogenic tree toad—a ceremonial offering which he then licked greedily, causing one tribe elder to admonish him not to "Bogart the frog." His eyes then proceeded to dilate, and the actor giggled uncontrollably as he was promptly revisited by the large, amphibious friend who had once emerged from his hair on the Walk the Line red carpet.

After watching the People's Choice Awards clip we posted a little while ago, a commenter points out that Favorite Leading Man honoree Joaquin Phoenix seems to have misspelled his own name—an error that serves to further illustrate the point about how utterly lost actors are without their writers. [Defamer]

As the emotionally devastating cancellation of the Golden Globes has given us a newfound appreciation for every last awards show moment Hollywood finds a way to give us in this strike-crippled year, we'd like to take a minute to relive the silent acceptance speech Favorite Leading Man Joaquin Phoenix (an honor not to be confused with Favorite Male Movie Star) offered on last night's People's Choice Awards.

Responding to a query about how he so convincingly portrayed a vomiting fit in We Own the Night, method actor and occasional frog-envisioning, red carpet hallucinator Joaquin Phoenix explains his ralfing technique: "You take a lot of cereal, you drink a lot of milk and you pound down two waters in a row and you jump up and down and you put your hand down your throat and you wiggle it all around until you vomit." [pr-inside.com]