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Lou Pearlman, the boy band Svengali who helped guide the Backstreet Boys and ‘NSYNC to chart-topping success, was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison today for charges that he bilked investors and banks out of over $300 million dollars. Over two decades, Pearlman convinced investors to dump money into two companies that only existed on paper. Among Pearlman’s victims were “his family, his close friends and people in their 70s and 80s who have lost their life savings.” The sentencing brings to a close the story of Pearlman who, upon learning that federal charges were coming, escaped to Bali, only to be caught last June by Indonesian police.

Martin Scorsese’s planned Bob Marley documentary will now carry one without Martin Scorsese, as the famed auteur has left the project. The doc will still be made, however, with Stop Making Sense director Jonathan Demme at the helm. The film is due out February 6th, 2010, which would have been Marley’s sixty-fifth birthday. Scorsese left the Marley doc because of “scheduling reasons,” as the Goodfellas director also has a George Harrison documentary, a supposed Frank Sinatra biopic and lots of other projects in the works. Demme is no stranger to the music genre, though, as he directed the aforementioned Talking Heads flick as well as Neil Young: Heart of Gold and the upcoming Robyn Hitchcock doc Storefront Hitchcock. As previously reported, a biopic based on a book by Bob Marley’s widow is also in the works.

After fifteen years of dormancy, the Happy Mondays have already started work on their second album since reforming in 2007. Last year, Shaun Ryder and company released their still-unreleased-in-the-U.S. fifth album Uncle Dysfunktional, and leftover tracks from those sessions will make their way onto the next, still-untitled album, which the band hopes to release in early 2009. Since Dysfunktional dates back to 2005 (legal problems hindered its release), the band is eager to start working on new music again. “It’s sounding good,” Ryder says of the new material.