BY MARILYN BECK and STACY JENEL SMITH

With his “Son of the Dragon” Hallmark Movie Channel HD miniseries – which airs tomorrow (4/2) and Wednesday -- and the two “Chronicles of the White Crane” movies he has in the can, David Carradine’s been spending a lot of time in China over the past couple years – and hopes to go back to that land to shoot more installments of the forthcoming “White Crane” franchise.

Carradine finds he gets recognized on the streets in China now.  When he first went, 20 years ago, “I didn’t get recognized.  They did not have much television – so much of it was barred in the old days.  Now they do.  It’s opened up so much.  When the ‘Kung Fu’ series came out on DVD, it probably hit Beijing before it hit Los Angeles,” he notes with a laugh. 

“I went there on a pilgrimage to the Shaolin monastery in 1996, looked around, realized it was just exactly like what we had at Warner Bros.,” he recalls.  “In ’96, they’d never heard of the series.  I showed some of it to the abbot.  He was just amazed.  He said, ‘Are you Shaolin?’  And I said, ‘Yeah, that’s the story.’  ‘But you’re Caucasian.’  I said, ‘Well, in the story, just this one time they allow a Caucasian into the monastery.’  He said, ‘That’s a good idea.’  Then he told me to keep doing what I was doing.”

Now the “Kill Bill” star and martial arts icon is playing a wise former warrior known as Bird in “Son of the Dragon” -- a “Thief of Baghdad” remake transplanted to China.

“A remake of ‘The Thief of Baghdad’ sounded like more fun than I could imagine.  We’ve still got the magic carpet and all that stuff,” says Carradine.  “This sweet old guru is determined never to draw his sword again.  He takes care of the homeless kids and teaches them…It was as though it was written for me and in a sense it probably was.  I found out that Robert Halmi is a fan and he planned to do five more pictures with me.  We’ve done two already.”

Those two are the “White Crane” movies about the White Crane, a hero who is not a nice guy. 
   
EXIT DANCING:

After Penn Jillette’s expulsion from “Dancing With the Stars” last week, fellow contestant Steve Guttenberg: took Penn and his wife out for dinner to cheer her up (Jillette himself seemed fairly upbeat about his experience, we hear).   They discovered that Penn’s wife, Emily, and Steve have a connection in that her sister, April Blair, wrote “Major Movie Star” – the flick in which Steve costars with , due this summer.
   
THE VIDEOLAND VIEW:

“Your Mama Don’t Dance” judge Vitamin C says her job on the dance competition featuring father/daughter and mother/son dance teams is not as easy as it looks. “It’s really hard because they’re all at such different levels,” says the pop singer/dancer. “Some people are so technically advanced and dance so beautifully and there are other people who have never done this before but are so determined and so committed. It’s tough to figure out how you judge it.” Thus far, she says “a big leveling tool is we take into consideration their improvement. These characters are working so hard.” Of course, she adds “Ultimately we don’t make the final decision.” When the show’s finale airs April 18 it will be “up to the voters. America decides and America is fickle. You never know who they’re going to vote for, which makes it a little bit more exciting.

Photos by Charley Gallay and Ethan Miller, both from Getty Images

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With reports by Stephanie DuBois and Emily Feimster.

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