On a lighter note, you can take this prediction to the bank: Robert Downey Jr. will be named People's Sexiest Man Alive within the next twelve months. It isn't that Downey has suddenly become all that more attractive, but People has been running short of reasonably presentable A-list actors for some time now (seriously—Matt Damon?), and a $100 million opening weekend is enough to make anyone look good.

A decade ago, Downey was in jail. Now he's Iron Man. Apparently there are second acts in some American lives. I was contemplating Downey's meteoric rise, and pondering the equally dramatic, but opposite, trend in the life of Tom Cruise over exactly the same period, when I remembered an astonishing fact:

Tom Cruise turned down the part of Iron Man.

Interesting, isn't it?

Was there a secret karmic transfer between Cruise and Downey in early 2005? Is the role of Iron Man the opposite of the Superman curse? And what does this mean for Gwyneth Paltrow? I'm sure that the blogosphere will uncover the real story soon...