Details, both truthful and speculative, on the death of David Carradine are still making their way onto and around the Internet, so there’s no point in us commenting on or relaying certain information regarding the tragedy. But with the actor gone, we can and shall concentrate on his legacy, which is really the most important thing to focus on anyway.

For most of my generation, Carradine is primarily known for being significant to the work of Quentin Tarantino, whether in the reference to the TV series Kung Fu in Pulp Fiction or in the Golden Globe-nominated performance from the actor in the titular role of Kill Bill. But there is so much more that Carradine has left us with, so let’s see what the blogosphere has to say in tribute to his memory and career:
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Word is starting to spread through the Twittersphere that actor David Carradine of Bound for Glory, Kung Fu, Kill Bill and most recently Crank 2 fame has been found dead in a Bangkok hotel room. The apparent cause of death is hanging, and it looks like a suicide. So far this report in Thailand’s English-language newspaper The Nation is the only news story I can find on the matter; if it turns out there’s more to report I’ll add to this post. In the meantime, watch some memorable Carradine moments after the jump.

UPDATE: Fox News is reporting that Carradine’s death may have been an accident, and that his body was found with a rope “tied around his penis and another rope around his neck.”

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Christmas is a time of peace and harmony, where we remember baby Jesus, born into a manger. There were shepherds, wise men, sweet hay and swaddling clothes. But we often forget how dark the Christmas story actually is. First of all you’ve got poor Joseph, convinced that his fiance has been knocked up by another man. Then she gives birth in a barn, which would not be sweet or pleasant in any way. If that weren’t bad enough, the wise men tip Herod off to the fact that a new king has been born, and he goes and kills all the first born sons in Judea, forcing the Holy Family into exile. Real smooth, wise men, did you miss the star that told you to keep your mouths shut?

There are plenty of movies about Christmas, a few about the nativity and plenty more about Santa. But there aren’t any that capture the despair and desperation of the original tale. Placed within the larger narrative of the Christian gospel, the nativity is about a god being subjected to the vulnerability of an infancy, in order to enter a cruel world whose purpose it is to kill him. Sure, it all works out in the end, but it’s still a pretty dark story.

This lack of grit in Christmas movies became clear to me two years ago. Around Christmas, 2006, both The Nativity Story and Children of Men were released. I saw them both within a few days of one another. I was struck by how boring The Nativity Story was, especially compared to Cuarón’s post-apocalyptic masterpiece. When I think of a baby bringing peace on Earth, I can think of no better image than Clive Owen stumbling out of a shattered building with a screaming infant, its cries literally silencing tanks.

In that spirit, here are five gritty movies where everything rides on the tiny shoulders of a baby.

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I never knew it was so easy to add lightsaber effects to any YouTube clip. Earlier this week, when I wrote about the new Clone Wars lightsaber game for the Nintendo Wii, I saw it done with the infamous “Star Wars Kid” video (see it here). And now, thanks again to Fark.com, I see it done with a clip from The Princess Bride (above).

Apparently, this is only the latest in a trend; people have been changing swords to lightsabers in nearly every movie featuring swashbuckling, including the Pirates of the Caribbean movies (see here and here), the Lord of the Rings movies (here), the recent Zorro movies (here), Kill Bill (here), Gladiator (here) and 300 (here). Someone even recently added the effect to the end of Boogie Nights (here).
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I keep forgetting that Kung Fu Panda is a real movie. I mostly relate the computer-animated panda character with his cross-promotional spots for AMC Theatres (memory escapes me again: is it for silencing your cellphone or anti-piracy or something entirely different?). But now that we have this full trailer for the DreamWorks Animation movie, I’m reminded that it is in fact a feature release. Unfortunately, it arrived a few days after the new trailer for The Forbidden Kingdom, and I’ve already laid dibs on my most anticipated martial arts film of 2008. Sure, Kung Fu Panda also features Jackie Chan (or his voice, anyway), here as “Master Monkey”, but when it comes to kung fu beginners, I’ll take Michael Angarano over the voice of Jack Black any day.

I shouldn’t be too harsh on Black (especially after yesterday’s unnecessarily mean-spirited trailer-of-the-day), though I couldn’t help but notice his own personal shtick making its way into the anthropomorphic actions of the cartoon bear when I saw that AMC spot (by the way, AMC, National CineMedia scored Martin Scorsese for a better promo — jealous?). And I simply can’t stand it when any animated film character is made to sound and look and behave like the Hollywood star providing its voice. Nothing will ever be as distracting as Robin William’s overcooked performance as the Genie in Aladdin, but it’s still always annoying. It’s odd that Black ever disliked the idea of Kung Fu Panda. What hammy actor would ever dislike an idea that permitted for such scene-chewing? …Read more

Harvey Weinstein has always prided himself on being a maverick, the go-to guy for filmmakers whose visions didn’t fit within the standard Hollywood rules. And it used to work pretty well for him. “Let me see someone break my [Oscar] record,” he boasts in this week’s FORTUNE Magazine. “I’ll be the first to give them the cup. I’ll be Bobby Hull passing the baton to Wayne Gretzky.” But both Harvey’s record and his reputation were largely cultivated on Disney’s dime, and in a post-Miramax world, success-via-audacity has proven harder to come by. Here are three signs from recent press stories that the Weinstein camp is starting to look a lot like a “real” studio”

1. Harvey Sides With Powerful Politician Over Filmmaker

One of the more entertaining segments in Sicko is a montage devoted to Hillary Clinton’s attempt to reform health care in the early 1990s. Using long-forgotten TV clips and archival photos, Michael Moore first paints the first lady as a hero, a glamorous spitfire (that hair! those suits!) who gave those grumpy old men of Congress an injection of much needed “sass.” But in typical Moore style, it’s all set-up for the real volley: not only did Hillary fail to actually socialize American medicine, but as a Senator Mrs. Clinton has become the second-highest recipient of financial contributions from health care companies.

Harvey Weinstein is not only a Clinton supporter, but a family friend. According to the Washington Post, the mogul “begged” Moore to remove the second, damning part of the montage from the film. Moore refused, and Harvey eventually gave up — but does this sound like the same Harvey Weinstein whose support Moore thanked God for when Disney wouldn’t distribute his last film?

2. Quentin’s Making Sequels

You might not have noticed this, but Hollywood makes a lot of sequels (and prequels, and (gag) threequels, and ad infinitum). This is not because fine auteurs like Tim Story and Gore Verbinski really believe they need six or eight hours spread across three years in order to tell their epic stories properly–it’s because, in accordance with simple consumer theory, the studios believe that what they were able to sell once, they’ll be able to sell again.

IMDB currently knows nothing about it, but this past weekend, Kill Bill producer Bennett Walsh told press at the Shanghai Film Festival that two Bill sequels are potentially on the way. Quentin Tarantino had previously alluded to following up with several of the Bill characters years down the road, but according to Walsh, “plotlines [have] already been written”, and production could begin in China “somewhat earlier” than originally expected.

This is all speculation, but bear with me. Imagine, for a moment, that you’re a much-ballyhooed director coming off a super-pricey failure, one your longtime friend/producer and his studio clearly see as an embarrassment. Would it be inconceivable for someone (maybe even that longtime friend/producer, who is under pressure to come up with a handful of hits, and fast) to suggest that your safest bet going forward would be to shore up commercial credibility by pushing up plans to revisit a past success?

3. The Weinstein Board is Hiring A CEO

That FORTUNE story also promises that the board of The Weinstein Company is looking for an outside CEO-type to come in and manage day-to-day operations, so that Harvey can get back to the business of supporting filmmakers. It would be a big deal if it actually happens, but who’s gonna want the job of telling Harvey (and Quentin and Kevin and Bob Rodriguez…) to reign in the spending? As Nikki Finke puts it, “Good luck finding, as one board director said, somebody who’s both a top-level CEO and would be compatible with the market and investors and the brothers.”