Rastaman vibration

Never mind the big news that Martin Scorsese will be making the authorized Bob Marley documentary slated for a February 6, 2010 release -- which would have been the reggae superstar's 65th birthday. Scorsese, whose Rolling Stones concert doc, Shine a Light, came out a couple of months ago, and who has committed to making a George Harrison doc, too, bowed out of doing the Bob doc because of scheduling conflicts. (Scorsese is in the throes of Shutter Island, from a Dennis Lehane novel, with Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Kingsley, Emily Mortimer and Michelle Williams, right now.)

Anyway, no Marty, no cry. Jonathan Demme has been nabbed to replace Scorsese on the Marley bio, and in many ways he's better suited for the project. Demme has a history of music pics, from the groundbreaking Talking Heads title, Stop Making Sense, to the Robyn Hitchcock concert pic Storefront Hitchcock to catching Neil Young in Heart of Gold. Demme, who is editing a new Neil Young concert film right now, has also shown fine musical tastes in the soundtracks to his fiction features.

"I am thrilled and humbled by this extraordinary opportunity to participate in fashioning a motion picture that can serve as a worthy vessel for the spiritual and musical brilliance of Bob Marley," Demme said in a statement. 

Downey tests his metal

Caught on the phone in Paris the week before Iron Man exploded on screens with a worldwide opening weekend take of $200 million-plus, Robert Downey Jr. was already talking about sequels, about the kick he got playing the playboy industrialist superhero in the titanium flying suit.

"It's really weird, it’s very strange how engaging it is, and Jon [Favreau, the director] and I find ourselves sitting around dreaming up storylines for making a couple more of these," Downey says. (And this is before Marvel Entertainment announced that there would, indeed, be an Iron Man sequel.) "And you see the pitfalls, too, you see what historically happens: Usually, the first one’s the best one, the second one goes `bigger,' and the third one falls apart.

"So, that, to me, would be the real Zen of it -- it would be to actually make three movies that stood up on their own."