Iron Man

Iron Man may soon be covered in lead paint. Walt Disney, the company not the ghost, said Monday that it will co-produce its next "Iron Man" movie with a Chinese partner in Hollywood's latest effort to forge closer ties with China's fast-growing film industry and billion potential filmgoers. "Iron Man 3," starring Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow and Don Cheadle, will begin filming this year, Disney and DMG Entertainment said. Disney said DMG will jointly produce the movie in China but gave no indication what parts might be filmed in this country.

The Man in the Can stayed fresh enough after two weeks to dampen Gatsby's big coming-out party. Iron Man 3 , with Robert Downey Jr. in the super suit, pulled down $72.5 million at U.S. theaters in its second weekend to lift its overall take to a heroic $284.9 mil. Worldwide, Iron Man , which was in its third weekend abroad, has racked up a gate of $949 million. But the Twenties can still roar. The remake of F. Scott Fitzgerald 's Jazz Age tale, The Great Gatsby , starring Leonardo DiCaprio , pulled in a healthy - and unexpected - $51.1 million on its debut weekend, despite less than glittering reviews.

If life were the movies, tonight - at the very moment that Lancaster Dick Gerhart passes the baton of the Glenn Miller Orchestra back to Larry O'Brien at Pottstown's legendary Sunnybrook Ballroom - Gerhart's daughter Ann will be delivering his second grandchild in Philadelphia. Since life is so stubbornly imprecise, Dick may decide at the last minute to rack up another 20 years of one-nighters while Ann's baby chooses to play peek-a-boo for a few more days. Let's hear it for the movies.

Just last summer, America celebrated the tenacity and dedication of one Cal Ripken, who overcame a multitude of sprains, strains and migraines to secure major-league baseball's longest consecutive-game playing streak. Today, racing fans everywhere get to cheer their own Iron Man when Terry Labonte marks his 513th consecutive Winston Cup race - tying the mark set by Richard Petty - in the First Union 400 in North Wilkesboro, N.C. The 39-year-old Texan, in his 19th season, claimed the pole in Friday's qualifying and will pull even with the King on the track where Labonte's streak began in 1979.

Here's some ironclad success for you: Iron Man 3 had a $175.3 million domestic opening weekend and an overseas haul of a half-billion dollars in less than two weeks. No other solo superhero - not even Batman or Spider-Man - has managed that kind of business. Iron Man 3 delivered the second-biggest debut ever, behind the $207.4 million start last year for The Avengers , which teamed ol' Ironsides with other Marvel Comics heroes. Keira gets hitched! Oscar-nominated actress Keira Knightley said "oui" to rocker James Righton in a wedding ceremony Saturday that included about 10 people in southern France.

MICKEY ROURKE brings a Russian accent and electrified whip to "Iron Man 2," a franchise that gets goofier as it goes along. Director Jon Favreau isn't much for special effects, but he likes eccentric performances and gets them from Rourke, Robert Downey Jr. and Sam Rockwell. The story? Who remembers, but the cast has a lot of fun, and so did audiences. The DVD has few perks - most of the featurettes are packed into the Blu-ray edition. You get more extras on the DVD for "Get Him to the Greek," a rollicking spinoff of "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" featuring Jonah Hill as a worshipful PR guy shepherding a drug-crazed musician (Russell Brand)

With " Iron Man 2 " upping the character's profile more than ever, Marvel has a multitude of titles featuring the character on the shelves. For those who are fans of the movies, the best is "Iron Man: Legacy. " As the title makes obvious, the book is about how Tony Stark wants the world to remember him. It does not sugarcoat the fact that Stark made his name and fortune making weapons, and writer Fred Van Lente shows him as a man haunted by what he used to do, to the point of having nightmares involving thousands of dead children that are a direct result of the weapons of mass destruction he once made.

IT WAS a big weekend for two indestructible superheroes. Despite lesser reviews than its predecessor, "Iron Man 2," starring Robert Downey Jr. as Marvel's gadget-happy billionaire with real abs of steel, earned $133.6 million domestically on its opening weekend, according to Paramount Pictures' estimates. The opening rocketed past the 2008 original's $98.6 million debut and became the fifth-biggest movie-opening weekend of all time. Having taken in $194 million overseas since it began playing in many international markets last week, IM2's worldwide now exceeds $327 million.

Every morning, 7 o'clock, coach Eddie Robinson or one of his assistants walks the hallways of Grambling State University's football dormitory ringing a cowbell. It has been a Grambling tradition since World War II. But Robinson, who started the tradition, said that times have changed, and that although he hates to admit it, his graduation rate is down a bit lately. This means that at age 76, he can't let up on his players at all. "If he gets up and he gets to breakfast, he'll be up for an 8 o'clock class," Robinson said.

The Man in the Can stayed fresh enough after two weeks to dampen Gatsby's big coming-out party. Iron Man 3 , with Robert Downey Jr. in the super suit, pulled down $72.5 million at U.S. theaters in its second weekend to lift its overall take to a heroic $284.9 mil. Worldwide, Iron Man , which was in its third weekend abroad, has racked up a gate of $949 million. But the Twenties can still roar. The remake of F. Scott Fitzgerald 's Jazz Age tale, The Great Gatsby , starring Leonardo DiCaprio , pulled in a healthy - and unexpected - $51.1 million on its debut weekend, despite less than glittering reviews.

Last week and total box office in millions. Rank/Title/Studio Last Week   Total    Weeks Out   Per Location    1. Iron Man 3 (Disney) $174.1   $174.1   1   $40,946    2. Pain & Gain (Paramount) 7.5   33.8   2   2,285    3. 42 (Warner Bros.) 6.1   78.2   4   1,810    4. Oblivion (Universal) 5.6   75.8   3   1,645    5. The Croods (Fox) 4.2   168.7   7   1,442    6. The Big Wedding (LionsGate)

Here's some ironclad success for you: Iron Man 3 had a $175.3 million domestic opening weekend and an overseas haul of a half-billion dollars in less than two weeks. No other solo superhero - not even Batman or Spider-Man - has managed that kind of business. Iron Man 3 delivered the second-biggest debut ever, behind the $207.4 million start last year for The Avengers , which teamed ol' Ironsides with other Marvel Comics heroes. Keira gets hitched! Oscar-nominated actress Keira Knightley said "oui" to rocker James Righton in a wedding ceremony Saturday that included about 10 people in southern France.

"IRON MAN 3" is good fun, and the story of how the franchise got its groove back is one of those strange only-in-Hollywood tales. Cut to 2004, when fallen star Robert Downey Jr. was trying to mount a movie comeback after rehab and exile - a history of arrests and relapse had made him uninsurable and nearly unemployable. Producers withheld salary until wrap day; friends paid his insurance bond. He was offered the lead in an offbeat mystery-comedy called "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" and took it, and while the movie didn't make much money, it reaffirmed Downey's chops - his speed-bag way with dialogue, his gift for blink-of-an-eye shifts from comedy to drama.

Welsh-born Hollywood heavyweight Catherine Zeta-Jones , 43, who has been open about her struggles with bipolar mood disorder, has "proactively checked into a health-care facility" for treatment, her rep says. The Side Effects star is not in crisis: She has long planned to take a break so doctors could give her a medication tune-up, People says. TMZ says Michael Douglas ' better half will enjoy a 30-day inpatient sojourn. Zeta-Jones previously was treated for the condition at a facility in 2011.

Contrary to the Mayan calendar, which had Dec. 21, 2012, penciled in as the day everything was to go ka-boom, we're all still all here. But at the movies, the apocalypse is now. Take a look through the films premiering between next weekend - when Iron Man 3 explodes on a zillion screens, kick-starting Hollywood's summer season - and Labor Day weekend. Doom and gloom are everywhere, from global holocaust to alien invasions to putting Jay Gatsby and Jay-Z in the same movie.

If you can't stop the world, can you at least slow it down? Because lately it's wobbling way out of orbit. This week, Gwyneth Paltrow was anointed "The World's Most Beautiful Woman" by the ultimate arbiter of pulchritude, People magazine. What am I missing here? Not just beautiful, the most beautiful. In the world. I haven't been this shocked since Leonard Cohen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Paltrow's appearance might best be described as "fairly pleasant.

CLEARWATER, Fla. - One of the upshots of Kyle Kendrick's being guaranteed a rotation spot this winter is the freedom of a spring without worries. The results of his Grapefruit League appearances are meaningless. He will be the fourth starter come April. Kendrick's spring debut Tuesday against the New York Yankees was anticlimactic. The righthander allowed one run on three hits with a strikeout in a 4-3 Phillies win. His goal early in spring training is to develop a feel for his two most important pitches: the sinker and change-up.

To his comrades, he was "the Iron Man" of the Philadelphia Police Department. To himself, Sgt. Albert Gramlich is simply "fortunate" to have served a three-decade career in good health. "I just didn't get sick with anything," Gramlich said Friday as he clocked in his last day on the job. After 31 years on the force without taking a sick day off work, Gramlich said, his emotions ranged from "excited" to "nervous" as he paddled off to retirement. And a grand retirement it will be. "I'm going to travel around the country and enjoy myself," he said.

Traditionalists who lament the loss of the three-sport athlete always point to the good old days when top players regularly participated in football, basketball, and baseball. But if they really wanted to show these kids today what it was like in a golden era of sports at one high school, they would tell them about Ben Addiego. On the brink of his 80th birthday, Addiego is just as proud of his accomplishments as a dentist and orthodontist and military veteran as his feats in five different venues as a scholastic star at Collingswood High School.