I'm Still Here -- Film Review

VENICE -- Give up acting? Casey Affleck's energetic directorial debut, "I'm Still Here," basically scotches the idea that Joaquin Phoenix has retired as an actor to become a hip-hop artist, revealing it all to be an elaborate media hoax, albeit one that has seriously altered the actor's real-life image over the past year and a half. This sporadically engrossing mockumentary, which gets better as it rolls along, must have been planned way back before Phoenix bombed on "Late Show With David Letterman." Or is part of it for real?