Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

With counterculture heroes and vicious killers at the forefront of his repertoire, David Carradine is delighted to be showing a different side in his forthcoming "Chatham" film with Mariel Hemingway, Bruce Dern and Rip Torn.

"Here I am, at the age of 70, playing in a romance, a love story. It's the sweetest little picture," he says. "It's already getting attention. I'm as proud of it as anything I've done."

From Joseph C. Lincoln's novel, the film has three retired sea captains on Cape Cod, circa 1905, pursuing a lovely, middle-aged woman. "Rip Torn is funny as hell in the picture. Bruce Dern is great. John Savage is also in it, and Charles Durning. And Julie Harris even has a cameo," reports Carradine.

Moviegoers could see a veritable Carradine film festival in coming months, as the prolific actor has completed a string of upcoming movies that's long — even for him. Included are Al Ruddy's "Camille" with Sienna Miller and James Franco, Scott Anderson's "Richard III" with the Shakespearean drama set in modern-day Los Angeles, two installments of Robert Halmi's planned China-based movie franchise "Chronicles of the White Crane," and Halmi's two-night, four-hour Chinese extravaganza "Son of the Dragon." Inspired by "The Thief of Baghdad" — transplanted to China — "Son of the Dragon" will launch the Hallmark Channel's new Hallmark Movie Channel HD April 2 and April 3.

There's also "Hell Ride," the Larry Bishop homage to '70s biker flicks, which was produced by Quentin Tarantino and opened at the Sundance Film Festival. "It went through the roof there. You couldn't get in to see it. It's the closest I got to working with Quentin again. He introduced the film," says the "Kill Bill" star. "I'd love to do more with him. He's a lot of fun."

A MO' BRAINER: Emmy-winning actor Peter Coyote reports that the computer-based exercises for strengthening the brain revealed in the PBS documentary "The Brain Fitness Program" are "attracting a lot of attention. It's something people want to know and are worried about as the baby boomers grow older."

Coyote is hosting the program that premieres on PBS this week (check local listings) and airs throughout March. "First of all," he says. "It's really useful to understand that the brain never stops growing.

We think as we get older, we're going to lose our abilities and slow down, but when you exercise your brain, it builds the new neural pathways like these road maps, like making extra blood vessels. Once you do that, they can literally surround the area where the trouble was. It's like building a highway that goes around the decrepit city." He adds, "Even in people with Alzheimer's, if they have trained their brains assiduously enough, they build neural networks that go right around even the Alzheimer's."

Coyote says he's been personally working with the Brain Fitness program created by more than 50 neuroscientists. "They're very tough," he says. "On some of them, I had a 50 percent success rate. They're little exercises you do with headphones, and they play sounds that are increasingly close and increasingly rapid. They force you to listen more clearly and discriminate more visually."

WILL SHE OR WON'T SHE?: "Mad Men" regular Elisabeth Moss says she's being constantly confronted about her character having given birth to a surprise premature child in the season one finale of the AMC's hit drama, now in reruns.

"It's funny. I've had people come up to me and say 'I can't believe she doesn't keep the baby,'" says Moss, who plays a secretary-cum-ad-writer in the Golden-Globe nominated series about '60s ad men and the women struggling for recognition in that world. "I say, 'You don't really know that she gives the baby away.' In the hospital scene, she turns away when they bring the baby to her, and that's all we see, and I frankly can't really say anything more. I have an idea, but I think it's probably going to be unexpected to the audience. I think what happens will be a surprise to some people, but it's what Peggy would do." The whole troupe is ecstatic the writers' strike is over, she adds. "We've all been off since August on our show, so we were really itching to go back to work. We're on this kind of high, and everybody wants to make more episodes and see where it's going."

STICKING TO IT: "I actually worked at a private school years ago," comedic actor John Cho tells us about his first job as a teacher. The "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle" star admits it was a hard decision leaving his steady job for the fickle world of Hollywood, but he's glad he did it. "Once I made the decision to try to stop working straight jobs and took a leap of faith, it seemed to work out. I think it takes a little bit of betting on yourself. It's a hard bet to lay down, though."

With reports by Stephanie DuBois and Emily Feimster.

To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read their past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 MARILYN BECK AND STACY JENEL SMITH

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