According to the Associated Press, 65-year-old singer-songwriter Isaac Hayes has passed away after being found unresponsive in his Memphis, TN home.

An indelible influence on the world of music, a pop culture icon besides for his work as Chef on "South Park" and in its full-length feature, Hayes will be most fondly remembered in the world of film for his award-winning theme to Shaft and his role as 'The Duke' in Escape from New York.

Hayes showed up in his fair share of other movies, apparently including a cameo as himself in the upcoming comedy Soul Men, starring Samuel L. Jackson and the late Bernie Mac -- this after making an appearance on "The Bernie Mac Show" in 2005 and an uncredited cameo in the 2000 version of Shaft, starring Jackson.

What do celebrities really know about movies? Samuel L. Jackson, for one, demonstrates a good knowledge of recent Asian cinema with his selection of "favorite 10 New Classic Asian Films" from the past 25 years for Entertainment Weekly. The best part? He picks the type of popcorn action flicks that got me interested in Asian films in the first place.

A couple of his selections are easy to understand: John Woo's Hard Boiled and Ringo Lam's City on Fire are definite guns 'n' gangsters classics of late 80s / early 90s Hong Kong cinema. (Quentin Tarantino blatantly stole borrowed from the latter for Reservoir Dogs.) Jackson also includes the great Infernal Affairs trilogy, directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, a high water mark from 2002 / 2003 and later remade into the Academy Award-winning The Departed.

His Korean picks are Park Chan-Wook's diabolical, masterful Oldboy and the visually splendid, yet somewhat shallow Duelist, from 2005. Cut from the same cloth, he also endorsed Japanese swordplay dazzler Azumi by director Ryuhei Kitamura (The Midnight Meat Train), and demonstrated his fondness for strong directors by selecting two films by Takashi Miike, the well-known, chilling horror flick Audition and the much less known Yakuza pic Family, which I confess I haven't seen.

Remember how for the longest time whenever anyone talked about Samuel L. Jackson it was usually followed by the description of Jackson as one of the hardest working actors in the business? Well, it is not like he didn't earn that reputation -- Jackson currently has one film already headed to theaters and three other films in production. Variety reports that Jackson will add the spy thriller Unthinkable to the pile.

Gregor Jordan (The Informers) has already signed to direct the story of a "major threat to the United States when the locations of three nuclear devices are shrouded in secrecy by a single terrorist. With only two days before they are deployed, a black-ops interrogator and a female FBI agent have to decide how far they will go to find them" -- knowing Jackson's flair for interrogation I can only assume he will play the interrogator in the film.

Jackson is still filming the musical comedy Soul Men with Bernie Mac, so production on Unthinkable won't start until this fall in Minneapolis. But remember, Jackson likes to keep busy, so stay tuned for those Nick Fury updates -- because let's face it, Unthinkable will likely not be the Jackson film everyone is talking about in 2009.

So am I the only one who thinks that in the first picture for the musical comedy Soul Men, Samuel L. Jackson looks a lot like good old Ordell Robbie? But I guess there are only so many different hairstyles and beards you can try before you start running into some repeats. The first picture for Malcolm D. Little's film has popped up on the official site of music legend and former 'Chef' Isaac Hayes. Hayes, who will appear in the film as himself, stars alongside Jackson, Bernie Mac, Sean Hayes (Will and Grace), and Sharon Leal.

Soul Men centers on two feuding back-up singers named Louis (Jackson) and Floyd (Mac). When their band splits, Louis and Floyd go there separate ways with varying degrees of success. More precisely, Louis robs banks and becomes a convict and Floyd becomes a laundromat baron and retires in style. When the leader of their former band dies, the two men put aside their bad blood and go on a road trip to the Apollo Theater to hold a tribute concert.